Nightfall

The battle had reached little Belverne, just a few kilometers away. Nights were tense, German soldiers bunking in every home and barn. While they waited for liberation, the Etobonais were afraid to sleep in their own homes.

Wednesday, October 18

We risked sleeping in our own house last night.  At five o’clock, sinister screaming sound, incredible boom!  A section of the school was pulverized, all the windows blown out.  We ran down to the cellar, where the old boche Karl met us in his nightshirt.

The Cossacks pass by in a flooding rain.  They’re wearing incredible get-ups, even women’s overcoats.

Knowing that I was having terrible problems with my knee, old Henri took it upon himself to go look for the Doktor of the unit.  He’s a handsome man with a beautiful black beard.  He advises me to … rest.

Thursday, October 19

Every evening now, at nightfall, we have a band of Germans staying at our house.  What’s the most disagreeable is to listen to them “chewing the fat” together.  But we have to put up with it.

In the rain, the Cossacks have come back at the gallop on their little horses.  As hard as it is to say, it’s a beautiful sight.  But, they’re better off seen from afar.  From close up, they have frightening faces.

Some people from Belverne tell us that the village has been severely damaged.  Up to 10 shells on a single home.  The adjutant Mignerey has been mortally wounded.  Lots of livestock killed.

At Etobon, a shell that didn’t explode fell into Juliette Surleau’s bedroom, making a little hole in the floor; from there, it destroyed the sofa and an oak buffet, went a little way into the wall, bounced back to the ceiling, and from there to the stove, which it reduced to rubble.  The three boches who terrorize the house, sitting around a table in the middle of the room, didn’t have a single scratch.

Friday, October 20

Robert Chevalley, the man from the cemetery at Héricourt, leaning on his crutches, now moves around the village.  To the boches who question him, he says he was wounded in a bombardment in Paris.

At night, we abandon our house to our “renters.”  Everything is open, doors and cupboards.  There’s the woodworker Karl, half deaf, and young Willy, who’s had enough of war, both of them nurses.  Sleeping in the stable, there’s the big peasant George, of the supply service, as dirty as he is cunning, always the first in line at distributions, where he grabs the largest portion.  Just as well, as he takes neither hay nor oats from us.  Sometimes he even gives us food, thanks to which we can feed Jarko, in his hideout in the pines.

Monday, October 23

This morning, a lieutenant and interpreter came to give orders to the mayor.  Since they had already shot him, it’s me, the vice mayor, who receives these idiots.  They want me to organize a communal potato harvest.  Half for them, half for the owners of the fields. 

This evening, as I was going to set the clock in the tower, I had to take care not to step on the bodies of two German officers laid out at the foot of the steps where they put the stretchers.  There are two more at Mignerey’s place, and two have been in front of the school all day.  Strange!

Before supper, we open the stable door and say, “George, essen …”  “Ya, ya …”  And in he comes.  We never need to look any farther than the stable for him; he’s always cleaning, sweeping.  The stable has never been so clean.  And he feeds and waters our cows and cuts up beets for them.  Perfectly domestic, a widower with two children.  Since he doesn’t understand a word of French, I say to him sometimes, “You’re a good beast, George …”  “Ya, ya.”  “When you’re taken prisoner, you’ll come be a servant at our house.”  “Ya, ya.”

As for Karl and Willy, they’re at the infirmary all day long, in our friends the Christens’ house.

Today, the road to Vernes was blown up.  I have to say that the Germans are mining the land around Chenebier in an extraordinary manner.  They’re putting them everywhere.  And it was while they were placing a huge anti-tank mine, under the road to Vernes, that it exploded prematurely, killing an officer, a sergeant-major, and several soldiers.  You can’t win them all!

Quite a Day

The shelling that had been destroying orchards and roofs now began to create human casualties in Etobon. Even Aline, Jules Perret's daughter-in-law, was wounded. How much longer could they survive?

Tuesday, October 24

The lieutenant and the interpreter are back.  I have to have the potatoes dug, gather the apples that they will themselves put into barrels that I have to furnish, and send all the milk to Belverne.  The jerk even threatened me in German.  Karl, who heard everything, said as soon as they left, “Be careful, Papa!  The lieutenant is a real rogue!  Be careful!”  A little later, the interpreter came back and demanded some schnapps.  He’s a little guy, with no hair.  Once he had drunk his schnapps, his tongue loosened, he said to me in impeccable French, “Don’t do it.  I’ll be sent here every morning to help you in your work, and, between us, we’ll get around it.  Boy, your schnapps is good!  Do I dare ask you to pour me another?”

Wednesday, October 25

So, the interpreter came back.  I asked him pointed questions.  Then, we got our people together at the town hall and made them aware of the demands of the provisional victors.  A little later, a big superior officer, with several subordinates, came to my house and we held a war council.  (This colonel was the infamous Vonalt, who had our children shot!  Thank God I didn’t know who he was.)

So much talk!  Understanding reached on the potatoes, the apples, the barrels.  They will give us half the schnapps and pay us 100 francs per liter for the rest.  And every day we’ll furnish them with 100 liters of milk.  And the still, of course, and a team of men to make the schnapps.  What else?

During this whole one-sided conversation, the colonel had been relying on the interpreter.  Suddenly, in French, he says to me, “Mister mayor, I would like you to tell me, in all confidence, man to man, where my friend is buried, the officer who was killed in this village.”

Uh-oh.  Was he talking about the general or lieutenant X? The second, I imagine.  It was time to beat around the bush.  I took the tack that I had always been a pacifist, and my family as well, and for proof I showed him a clipping of an announcement I had placed in the newspaper in 1937, in which, to work for understanding between peoples, I had offered to welcome a young German into my home for 10 days.  The colonel read the clipping and shook my hand.  (I wonder what I would have done if I had known that the same hand had signed my son’s death order?)

It was understood that the interpreter would come every day by motorcycle to take care of things with me.  I’d share the work with three councilmen who had also escaped the massacre.  Jules Magni would take care of the leek harvesters.  Albert would take care of the shares of each household and the Germans.  Fernand Mignerey was in charge of transportation.  The milk, collected at the dairy, would be measured by Charles Surleau and the boche part taken to Belverne by hand-cart every day, at the price of 3 francs per liter.

As I was coming back from Julot’s house, following a Cossack officer whose dirty face I wanted to see, I met Aline who was going to make a little soup for the poor civilians taken from the foot of the Côtes.  Suddenly, BOOM!  I fell flat on my belly.  Aline, next to me, cried out, “Papa!  Oh Papa!”  “But, I’m not hurt.”  “It’s me – I’m wounded!”  “Where?”  “In the head.”  Blood was pouring down over her shoulders.  I grabbed her and dragged her to Albert’s cellar.  I had a bloody nose, too, from the explosion.  We trimmed some of her hair away and found a cut on the back of Aline’s head.  So!  We had both escaped and could thank God!  How Philippe cried, seeing his mother covered with blood!  Then we took her to the infirmary, where the doctor gave her a tetanus shot.  In the kitchen of the infirmary, the dead and wounded, all from the Mignerey house.  Other dead, Cossacks, behind Croissant’s house, along with nine sheep, all mingled together.

And when I went to set the clock, there was a new officer laid out on the pavement, covered with blood, under the steeple.

This was quite a day.

Urgent

In an earlier post, I wrote about Elisabeth Matthieu, who as a young nurse, risked her life with one of her friends to save the children of Etobon. They drove a truck with a piece of fabric marked with a red cross over the bed to Etobon, through artillery fire, loaded the children and then took them to the Swiss frontier. Jules Perret writes of the urgency of the mission.

Saturday, October 28, 1944

A note from the Red Cross for the evacuation of the children to Switzerland.  It’s urgent because the shelling is getting worse.  Dr. Rudy Rauch, that unwashed bear, is beginning to become human.  The reason?  He just moved in with a pretty lady with lovely hair, a refugee at Etobon, whose husband is at the front … French.  Some others are becoming more human, too, because they’re ashamed of the massacre in September.  At least, they realize they may be on the losing side and are looking for sympathy that might be useful when the final destruction comes.  An example:  they’ve given us three thirty-liter buckets for the 100 liters of milk that we have to deliver to them.  So 10 liters are left at the dairy.  And the interpreter says to me, “We’ll pay for 100 liters and you keep 10 that I’ll hide.  No use telling the colonel about this little irregularity.”

New orders:  be ready to send the snowplow out in bad weather from here to the Grille de Champagney; put piles of sand on the sides of the roads, in case of ice.

These idiots like schnapps better than vegetables!  They’ve deferred the transport of the potatoes so that the barrels can be put in place more quickly at the distillery near the school of the Vieille Verrière.  Drink the schnapps, messieurs les boches, drink!  The Americans will only get here more quickly.

Sunday, October 29

It’s ten o’clock.  I’m stretched out on the sofa, resting my knee.  There’s a nice fire.  Next to me, Aline, her head bandaged, Philippe;  Suzette comes and goes, Mama is making soup.  You could almost forget that it’s wartime, until you hear, outside, rough voices, the pounding of boots on the pavement, the sound of the German guns being taken away, the crashing of the American arrivals … You get used to everything… “Rest, much rest,” the Franco-Boche doctor Rauch-Deville has ordered.

Philippe says, “That’s Lucie’s gun.  That’s the Americans.”  And he’s only six!

This afternoon, Suzette and Aline went to Chenebier, where they were told more details of the drama.  They talked of the mayor, marching courageously at the head of the line, followed by René and eight others.  At that moment the thugs didn’t yet know where to conduct the killings.  They looked around, and finally decided on the church.  Manu says he saw, in the second group, Kuntz embracing Jacques, then getting into a car while a boche pushed Jacques, very pale, into the ranks of the condemned.  That’s what you get for being human and not killing prisoners …

The Germans are constantly interrogating the people of Etobon to try to find out where X is buried.  They often search, here and there, in the fields.  Ah!  If only the infamous Colonel Vonalt had known that it was I who buried him!

Yesterday, one of Morel’s sons, from the sawmill, came home with two Germans.  A shell whistled.  Morel hit the ground.  The Germans laughed.  Not for long.  The shell killed both of them.

I Dreamt of Jacques ...

The continued presence of their childrens' murderers caused unceasing pain to the Etobonais. Jules Perret identifies the guilty ones and their units even as he is forced to put up with them.

Monday, October 30

The chief of the Cossacks came to my house about some business of transporting wood in the forest. It was Blum, the ignoble and cruel captain who brutalized our children before handing them over to their executioners, who were taken from his own unit; this Blum is easy to identify because he’s missing the fingers on one hand.  I can’t walk from my bed to the living room, so Mama and Suzette received him.  A little while later, Suzette started crying, screaming, even, to me, “Papa!  We’ve endured everything!  When he saw some coffee on the table, this thug wanted us to give him a cup.  While he was drinking it, I saw his hand.  It had no fingers.  It was that monster!”  She was so enraged she couldn’t say more.  If she had had a gun, I think she would have killed him. 

The boche Ernst, who’s been staying here, has left.  Without a goodbye!  He can go to hell.  These last few days he spent his time looking for X’s grave.  Karl Lade must have told him that he was killed in a potato field, so that’s where he was looking.  If he only knew that I had hidden a picture of X in a hole in the wall!  Before he left, perhaps with the idea of pulling something out of me, he became revoltingly obsequious.  Monsieur Jules this, Monsieur Jules that:  “Rest yourself … would you like a cushion for your back? Etc., etc.”  The other boche, Henri, also exasperates me with his servility.

On all these abominable idiots, I note as many details as possible so that they can be found and punished:  this Ernst, like Vonalt, is from Regiment 406-75A.  Dr. Rauch is from Ambulance 622-44A.  The Cossacks, with their Blum, their lieutenant Kamerer, their adjutant Kartch and other crooks, are from the 15-201F.

As we await the rout, all the boches are extraordinarily active.  They do the impossible so that everything works as they wish, ceaselessly repairing their rolling stock, shaky, crumbling.  And things work, more or less.

I just had an interesting conversation with one of these boches, little, old, vain, always freshly shaved, holding his little head high, with his hair combed over his receding hairline.  He explained to me that Hitler is a good man, perfect, above all humane; that France was stupid for getting upset over such little details as Danzig, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland; that the armistice of 1940 was a masterpiece of generosity, after which the Germans had the right and the duty to shoot French people by the hundreds for being so ungrateful as not to submit.  Oh!  These French!  What horrors they perpetrated while they occupied Germany!  And the good little boche told me of a revolting beastliness:  In Dusseldorf, in 1920, the youth gave a party, during which an actor talked of those awful Poles. “You know what the French did?  They interrupted the play, and put the one who had spoken against the Poles in prison for 2 weeks.  As for the others, they yelled at them!  Yelled at them!”  In the fact of such cruelty, the orator lost his breath, yells in his turn against the resistance, these terrorists, these thugs, these assassins, then, at the end of his eloquence, stretches out on the sofa, near the stove, and goes to sleep.  What an incredible imbecile!

Last night, I dreamt of Jacques.  I saw him, I embraced him, I asked him if it was true.  He said yes, but it was unimportant and a good thing.  I said to him:  Son, come back often and see us ...

Stealing and Pillaging

If it could be stolen, the occupiers stole it: tools, equipment, food, even the honey from Perret's beehives. Things had gotten so desparate in Etobon that the Red Cross was evacuating the village's children to Switzerland. As Elisabeth Matthieu told me, if they could kill the parents, they could kill the children too.

Wednesday, November 1

Those pigs have stolen my honey!  The hives are lost.  They steal and pillage everywhere.  At the forge, they’ve taken most of my tools, the furnace tiles, the washer.  Not ours, who are, for the most part, very nice, as if they were selected for us.  There’s also a good one at my sister’s house, an adjutant who helps with the cooking and prays before meals. 

At Héricourt, twenty Poles, brought in by Regenbach, deserted and are hiding in the inner room of an old factory.  A German spy was with them.  They tried to send him off with a poison pill, but the dose was too weak.  So, they killed him with a shovel and buried him in a pile of manure.  War!  The real thing!

But that doesn’t stop the boches from thinking of their barrels and power distillery.  For whom?  Willy Imbey has come back on leave with candy for Philippe.  We’ll keep him inside today, at home.  After all the evil these people have done to us, are we too good or too stupid?

Here, now, in front of our house, the truck to take the children to the good country of Switzerland.  But we haven’t decided to send Philippe.  May God watch over them!

Friday, November 3

Karl rebuilt the roof of the shed with superb oak planks.  The roof done, he put several more up in the attic.  “Let me do it, Papa.  Planks good, very good.”

Willy Imbey and his comrades have discovered my hiding place in the woods.  They thought it was “a little house of terrorists.”  I explained to Willy what it was and asked him, with his comrades, to bring back my things.  “Not tell Kamarades.  They say you terrorist.  Me bring back stuff.”  He’d like to be a prisoner with us hiding him when his friends clear out.  “You think they’ll be leaving?”  “You soon free.”  “Why don’t we see more German airplanes?”  “Almost all, cemetery.  The others thirsty.  No more benzene to drink.  Us soon kaput.  Doesn’t matter to me.”

At Albert’s – their imminent defeat is silencing them – we find others, very likeable, the big Pole Evalt Bruce, especially Elmout, like a round-cheeked little girl, with a voice like a doll.  He thinks only of his mama:  “War over, go home to mama.”

The Americans must surely have a scout here.  The chief boche has changed the hours of soup duty for the front, because as soon as the wagons get to the woods, the bombardment begins, the horses bolt and are blown up by the mines.