大象传媒

I am one of four sisters who lived in France during the War 1939-1945. We recently wrote our "memoirs" for the future generations of our family. They are based very mush on our daily lives during that time and this is a sample of what is written in that book.
The war was declared in France at 17.00hrs on 3 September 1939, an event that was made knoewn officially by the tolling of the "tocsin" (alarm bell) Our parents became very concerned about how we were going to live if our father - a solicitor - was called up, not knowing how long this war would last.
Our mother (Maman) decided to return to work and being a pharmacist bought a place in Pontorson only 18 kms from our home village (Bazouges-la- P茅rouse) in Brittany, and 9 kms from the well-known Mont-Saint Michel in Normandy. To start with she only took with her the youngest of the family (H茅l猫ne) who was only 21/2 while the three other sisters remained as boarders in the local primary school (6 boarders in total, 3 of them being us!), our father (Papa) commuting betwenn the two places. We remained at the school till the end of the school year 1940 when the Germans invaded us. They arrived in Bazouges on June 18, the day General de Gaulle appealed from England to Frenchmen everywhere to join him in the fight against the enemy.
One morning, very early, we heard a lot of noise on the road in front of the school. Looking through the shutters we saw German soldiers gathereing the French soldiers still around and taking them as prisoners, breaking their rifles. Very disheartening!. Not long after, we saw with terror two German, fully armed and carrying a powerful torch, standing in the doorway of the dormitory. They were looking for two prisoners who had escaped and a house to house search was being conducted. We were petrified and hid under the bedclothes...
At the end of June we all went to live in Pontorson for the four years of the German Occupation, Papa still commuting first on a small motorbike, then when there was no more petrol available, on a bicycle.
During the Occupation, we experience a very different kind of life. The Germans were the masters. The clocks were put forward 2 hours to be in line with Central Euripean time, the german money was used together with the French francs, no one was allowed out at night after 10pm in Summer and 9.00pm in Winter. And of course no light showing at night. It happened that one day someone had left the light on in the attic where the window was not covered with curtains. Heavy fine to pay!
Restrictions of food: coupons for everything, When available. Things like chocolate, coffee disappeared altogether. Coffe was replace by roasted barley grains, white bread was in fact grey etc... Our youngest sisterasked one day: "Maman, oranges how do they taste?" No or very little tobacco for smokers and no petrol except for some people likes doctors delivery men etc...
Clothes were difficult to get, even with coupons. We has school overalls made out of curtain material. No wool except for mothers with babies. Our white socks came from the cotton thread of an old bedspread, and one of us even had underpants made out of the still usable pieces of Papa's used long johns!
Toys disappeared or were of very poor quality.
Our school became occupied by the Germans so the classrooms would be wherever someone would offer a large spare room, dispersed all around the town.
From 1042, young men who had been too young to be called up in 1939, were sent to GermanY on STO (Service de Travail Obligatoire - Forced Labour) to replace German men gone to war. One of our cousins, Paul, then 21 was sent to Stettin in Poland, that country being then occupied by Germany. Having obtained leave to go to see his mother on her deathbed, he did not go back and remained hidden in a farm till the Liberation. (His mother died more than 20 years later!)
In 1943, Field Marshall Rommel was put in charge of the defences along the coasts of Normandy. Every day, French men were taken by trucks to the nearby forest to cut down trees, the trunks of which would then be planted in the seabed around Mt St Michel. These trunks covering a large area were called "les Asperges de Rommel" since they resembled asparagus.
D-Day - June 6 1944
Early in the morning we heard a strange noise from far away and the windows were rattling. It soon became obvious that something was happening. We soon heard:"They have landed!" Everybody was happy that it had at last happened, but very anxious about the days to come, knowing that we would be in grave danger.
We heard that the next day several trains carrying ammunitions were to pass through our little town and that there might be trouble.
Early afternoon, June 7, the planes (American) were flying very low and we decided it was time to go into the shelter in our garden. Soon the trains were being attcked first from machine guns them with bombs. Several members of a family living near the station, inclding a girl of 9, wer killed when a bomb fell on their shelter.
Our parents decided to return to our home village in less danger of being bombed. We then left, on foot, having put on as many items of clothing we possibly could, not knowing when or if we would come back. We went along small back roads, avoiding the main roads, which made the journey much longer. We had to cross the above mentioned forest wher Papa knew there were stocks of ammunitions, and when planes again were flying above us we would get the parental order: "Lie down!", which we had to do several times, not always in the choiciest spot!
With the help of a local farmer who took us in his horse and cart for the last 4 kms, we eventually reached our destination, thinking that we would have a more peaceful time for a while. Little did we know what was around the corner...
June 17, the local Maire (mayor) having gone into hiding in the forest, the authorities, (French and German)decided that our father would now be the Maire of our village. He tried to refuse, to no avail.
The next day, June 18 - that date again 4 years on - the village was full of German soldiers and we decided to go and spend the day in the next village some way away from the main road, where our uncle, aunt and cousins lived. Having just arrived, Papa was called back, the Germans wanted him to find 20-30 horses to help carry their equipment. The local farmers were not very forthcoming and at the appointed time, only 2 horses had arrived. papa was then taken prisoner and made to walk with the German troops on their way to the Normandy front. A few miles from the village, the troops stopped for a rest and a meal in the grounds of a manor house. It only took a moment when the guard was not looking for papa to jump over a hedge and run for his life, arriving at night at the village where we were waiting for him. He, then, being a wanted man , had to go into hiding in a farm where we joined him a few weeks later when Maman had organised the one and only room for the six of us to live together until we were liberated by the American army on August 2 1944. There were some scary moments: if in the middle of the night he would hear a dog bark, Papa would panic and go and hide in the cornfields...
But from the arrival of the Americans, war for us was over...

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