Monsieur le Commandant (6 page)

In the words of Michelet, Monsieur le Commandant, France is not a
race
, in the strict sense of the word; it is a
people
.

To be sure, there is no point in denying that the French Nation was created in successive waves. The Greco-Latin civilisation, and later the Christian, were built atop the ancient Celtic or Gaulish foundation. In the fifth century after Jesus Christ, the Gallo-Romans were in turn submerged by the Visigoths, the Burgundians, and above all the Franks.

The millennial layers do not disappear for all that, but the civilisations and ethnic groups have blended one with another over the centuries. Materially, certain physical and juridical traits of the Franks tend to dominate, at least north of the Loire; at the moral and religious levels, it is above all the traditions and sensibility of the Greco-Latins that have shaped the French soul. As to the Gaulish temperament, passionate and generous, it will live forever!

To this Gallo-Roman-Frankish scaffolding we must add those provinces that were part of ancient Gaul, and are indisputably incorporated into French geographic territory, but are peopled with independent races: the Bretons, the Basques, the Catalans, the Allobroges, and so on.

The miracle lies in the fact that, thanks to the policies of our kings – centralising and regionalist in equal measure – all these ethnic layers have been fused in the common crucible and have adopted, if not the same physical type, customs and tastes that are at least very similar.

The Frenchman approaches his work with enthusiasm, as he does all his undertakings. Historically, our people were the pioneers of
every chivalric mission. In the Middle Ages, moved by the populist fervour embodied in Peter the Hermit, we invented the Crusades, and participated at the forefront of each and every one. In the eighteenth century we crusaded again, not against the Muslims but for the notion of liberty – an abstract and anarchic chimera, perhaps, but the Frenchman has a need to defend a higher cause, and to compel the rest of Europe to join in. In the nineteenth century, the Frenchman crusaded for all the altruistic ideals: the beautiful and the just, which gave rise to his missionary and charitable work; and the utopian, such as Equality and Fraternity.

To satisfy his sense of honour and his need for something larger than himself, the Frenchman introduced the concept of Chivalry. Regardless of the nobility of his birth, the Frenchman was a born Knight in his respect for maidens, widows and all those weaker than himself (the Jews cleverly exploited this national trait to drag us into their war by persuading us to come to Poland’s assistance); in staying true to his own word; and in his penchant for selfless gestures and even futile loyalties.

My gesture may have been selfless – if my daughter-in-law had not come to plead for my help, I would undoubtedly have stayed at home, contemptuous of the mass flight – but I counted on my efforts to bear fruit. The night had given me leisure to gather my thoughts and study the map. Avoiding Chartres and Le Mans (which could very well be quickly overrun in the event that Paris, sensing the German pincer about to close, abruptly gave way to panic), I decided to pursue our south-westerly route as directly as possible. And if the front continued to advance, and the rout deteriorated further, we could head southwards all the way to the Pyrenees. I had, and still have, good friends in Spain, both in the General Staff and the diplomatic corps. It also occurred to me that I could make use of Maréchal Pétain’s contacts, since he was a fellow Academy member and a personal friend of General Franco’s,
and had made the best of impressions in Madrid. Having decided to remain neutral in the midst of the European upheavals, Spain could serve as a temporary safe haven for Ilse if she was really so terrified of the Germans.

From Evreux, which we were obliged to circumvent, we reached Conches and the Ouche region, whose jittery population was packing up and readying to flee in its turn. Other runaways were arriving en masse from Vexin. The more the morning advanced, the more the roads grew clogged with vehicles of all sorts, while the village bells rang out the alarm everywhere continually. The wind of panic was blowing across my lovely farming country, thrown headlong and unsuspecting into war and exodus. Our farmers now joined the horde of northerners – Dutch, Belgians and Picards – who had been streaming by for days under their mocking or compassionate gaze. The situation was deteriorating from one hour to the next. The road to Verneuil-sur-Avre was already considerably congested with carts, horses and automobiles; that to Alençon, it seemed to me, was at a complete standstill.

Disorganised units of the Tenth Army were pulling back, before having made any contact with the enemy, to join the chaotic tide of deserters of all ages and social classes. We encountered a long column of French military, led by light tanks that advanced with a grinding metallic noise, followed by a convoy of ambulances and mobile artillery, and an endless file of trucks in camouflage at the rear. Shortly afterwards, some thirty kilometres to our left, your air force pounded a military airfield, pulverising our planes on the ground and blowing up the fuel depots. Vast columns of black smoke rose above abandoned fields, where cows ran back and forth mooing in desperate concert, begging to be milked. The stench of burning permeated the air, adding to the stifling heat. We had not brought enough water and Hermione
was already complaining of thirst. I stopped at a farmhouse, where without compunction they charged us three francs a litre for well water.

Outraged by the peasants’ greed, the refugees returned the favour by blithely helping themselves to fruit and vegetables in the field. In the small towns, I saw smashed windows and grocers’ shops looted by the crowds. I noted that even the disbanded soldiers participated in these misdeeds. At the wheel of our overladen car, now pinioned in one great traffic jam, I raged at the unprecedented spectacle of my country’s sudden abasement. A collective madness had taken hold of France and the French. All our values seemed to have been cast into the gutter, creating a disgusting flotsam caught up in a vortex of selfishness, impotence, chaos, defeatism, anger, stupidity, incoherence, submission, cupidity, cowardice, drunkenness, rancour, hatred and resignation, all in the tragic turmoil of a vast, incomprehensible and uncontrolled scramble to safety, every man for himself.

These Frenchmen that I have described, Monsieur le Commandant, this heroic people – I no longer recognised them. As I later came to understand, their fall was merely the reflection of a deeper corruption: the evil had taken root in the very depths of our men; it had entered their bloodstreams. It had undermined their souls to an extent that none had dared to imagine, and it had taken this collapse to reveal the damage in all its tragic scope.

If our victorious Army of the Great War had thrown in the towel a mere four weeks into the assault, it was not only the result of the enemy’s superior manpower and weaponry. It was because the French Army, like the Nation from which it emanated, had also been eroded by a terrible leprosy.

Ever since its victory in 1918, France had never ceased to dodge, to scheme, to close its eyes to the developments around it. In an unforgivable abandonment of resolve, it had consistently refused to rise to any effort, to make the least sacrifice; it had been content merely
to enjoy itself, relying on others to provide it with the means. It had opted for ease, illusion, delirium, anything rather than labour for its own salvation.

Need I add that any country that abandons itself to such impulses is irremediably doomed to suffer the worst forms of servitude?

I decided to bear west, heading for Argentan via L’Aigle. This route was clear, being perpendicular to the direction of the exodus, and once we had broken from the horde it took us only half an hour to reach L’Aigle, where we ate in the dining room of a hotel packed with travellers. The radio thundered out the latest news: the Tenth Army had abandoned Versailles and pulled back towards Alençon, where it would join forces with General Héring’s Sixth Army and General Frère’s Seventh to form a new defensive front along a line stretching from Caen through Alençon and Fontainebleau to Sens.

I estimated that, at that time, we were only one or two days ahead of the enemy. That was not even counting his air force, whose raids could strike deep into our territory and whose Stukas, it was said, did not hesitate to strafe columns of civilians mercilessly. Our fighter force with its outdated Moranes paled by comparison, while the English had perfidiously deserted the skies, opting for a cautious withdrawal to their island while they waited to see how the situation would play out. We ate quickly and struck out again to the west, passing two Hotchkiss tanks that had been abandoned by the side of the road for lack of fuel. In Nonant-le-Pin, we had the devil of a time crossing the monstrous flow of vehicles heading south along the main road: trucks; ambulances; cars of all ages, their roofs covered in mattresses, their interiors chock-a-block with the most ridiculous cargo of brooms, hat boxes, birdcages, bundles of laundry and silverware, not to mention pets; carts loaded with pathetic, haphazard possessions; exhausted packhorses; motorcycles; sidecars; bikes; tandems; perambulators and
even wheelbarrows. The poorest trudged on foot at the sides of the road, harassed and covered in dust. I had to honk my horn, shout, order people to make way. I pretended that I needed to reach my unit, which drew oaths and insults. The masses considered all officers to be cowards. ‘We’re done for because of you!’ one man yelled in the midst of a chorus of catcalls. I sped up as fists rained down on the roof and spittle splattered the windows. Hermione was crying, while Ilse sought to reassure her with calming words; once again, I could only admire her sangfroid.

Since the Argentan road veered north-west, as soon as I was able I turned left onto a by-road that led into the Orne valley, deep into a delightful, bucolic landscape where the war seemed to belong to another time, another world.

I stopped the Rochet-Schneider on a shady hillside. The fuel gauge indicated an almost empty tank and I brought out two cans to fill it up, sheltered from the covetous stares of passers-by. My passengers stepped away to relieve themselves. I studied the map. We would soon reach the northernmost stretch of the Écouves forest; passing through Rânes would bring us to La Ferté-Macé, a major junction where we could turn south towards Mayenne and Laval while skirting Alençon and avoiding the main road to Le Mans, which I had no doubt was already clogged with traffic. I hoped to cross the Loire somewhere between Tours and Nantes.

In the little town of Rânes, a petrol station was still selling fuel, one can per person, and some fifty cars were already queuing at the pump. I had seen much worse on our journey: many tanks in the area had already been drained dry, while people were forced to wait hours in the sun at those that had not. We still had a long way to go to reach the Loire, and I thought it wise to stop here and fill one of the two cans that I had emptied. We had been waiting some twenty minutes when a group of five or six infantrymen falling back from Argentan
– I knew they were deserters, as they were without their rifles – took notice of my car, the most luxurious in the queue. They approached us hurling the most vulgar insults, among them the allegation that I was one of those officers who had ‘sold us to the Boches’ and that I was sneaking off to the Côte d’Azur with my nurse, who they claimed – pointing and laughing at the terrified child in the back of the car – was obviously not only an unmarried mother but a soldier’s tart.

They clearly intended to make off with our car in order to speed their flight from the enemy. I could see bottles sticking out of the pockets of their coats, and their breath reeked of alcohol.

I had time neither to protest nor to take up my weapon to defend myself. The drunken deserters pulled me from the car and began to pummel and kick me as I rolled in the dust. I heard Hermione scream shrilly. A shot rang out, and the beating suddenly stopped.

I saw, among the mud-caked combat boots and legs wrapped in khaki puttees, two elegant shoes topped with black hose, and the hem of a white dress. Ilse had fired a warning shot in the air and was now pointing her automatic at the thugs. ‘Leave my father alone,’ she cried. ‘What kind of cowards hit an old man, a disabled veteran? It’s because of shirkers like you that we’re losing the war!’ The soldiers, deflated and shamefaced, ran off without another word. My daughter-in-law, followed by several drivers who had watched the beating without lifting a finger, came and helped carry me to the shade of a plane tree. It hurt me to breathe, I had a nasty cut over my eyebrow, I could feel my face begin to swell, and my nose dripped with blood.

Unable to drive, I suggested that Ilse take the wheel, but she was alarmed by my condition and determined that I should not attempt to travel in the prevailing hazardous circumstances. She went to speak to the owner of a café that rented out rooms, and although the establishment was fully booked, he agreed, for thirty francs a night, to let us have a room in the shed at the bottom of the garden. I was
carried there and passed out, awaking an hour later to find myself being examined by a doctor. The little country town had not given in to panic, and most of the locals, more afraid of being looted by the refugees than of being aggressed by the German troops, had chosen to remain in their houses and farms. I had two broken ribs and several contusions.

We spent eight days in Rânes, where my daughter-in-law cared for me with admirable devotion. The room was furnished with a big old peasant bed, and the café owner’s wife had a cot brought in for Hermione. It was in this way that circumstances led me, for the first time in my life, to share a bed with my son’s spouse.

I was barely aware of this development on the first night, having succumbed to a high fever. The past and the present intermingled in my consciousness; I spoke to Marguerite, to Jeanne, and when I came to I found myself trembling with humiliation. I had been incapable of protecting the person I loved; rather, it had been she who had saved us by putting our attackers to flight, calling me an ‘old man’ and claiming me as her father.

Her father
. Was that how Ilse thought of me? I considered this question for the first time. In the eyes of the German, of the Jewess, was I a substitute for her own father, lost somewhere in Berlin or Palestine, and perhaps dead? Was the affection in which the young woman clearly held me merely – I say ‘merely’, though it was undoubtedly deeply as well – a filial one?

I had lost Jeanne, my precious child, but had not the Lord in His infinite goodness compensated me with the love and presence of a second daughter?

If that were the case, the ‘amorous’ love that I experienced for her in such an incandescent way was an abominable and blasphemous one.

In the middle of the night I burst into hysterical laughter; my
bedfellow thought that I was delirious. I heard the roof timbers creaking in the wind, the wood cracking; my body was racked with trembling, and my hair stood on end. I tossed and turned, the sheets damp with my sweat, a taste of ashes in my mouth and nausea rising in my belly, my guts in knots. I was back in the trenches; shells whistled overhead and churned the martyred earth. The sky was yellow. I found myself once again in the ‘ravine of death’ between Douaumont and Vaux. Branchless tree trunks pointing at the sky. A donkey struck down, half-eaten by dogs; headless German corpses. I pushed back the sheets, raised my fist and cried out to the Almighty: ‘He who created ears, will He not hear me without ears? He who created eyes, will He not see me without eyes?’ A nurse in a white veil held me by the shoulders, begged me to remain calm. Sobbing, I called her Jeanne. ‘Jeanne, my darling girl, you have returned from the dead …’

Ilse turned away, and I heard her crying.