Wars I Have Seen

  They say that six of the wounded and killed Germans escaped into the mountain and they look for them from time to time but as they have not found them they take it for granted that they are dead and gone. It is wonderful to pass the railroad station and see the block house that the Germans had built to defend themselves already gone the barbed wire already gone and the children playing around where the Boches had so solemnly been standing with their guns all ready to shoot any one. The employees of the railroad are very busy, they are getting everything ready so that the railroad track can be all mended and that trains will be able to go as soon as France is free, well it is free but not completely free, in Lyons and Chambery the two chief towns the maquis are still fighting the Germans, but soon yes soon now we can say soon.

  Everybody is so pleased with the maquis taking Vichy, it is a good joke une bonne blague à la Françhise, no it was not an allied army but the maquis who took Vichy, everybody is so pleased with the joke that they have pretty well forgotten their rancor against the government, the French certainly are sans rancune, they cannot remember their hatreds very long it is at once their weakness and their strength, but it is nice, a good joke like the maquis taking Vichy and all the government running away makes everybody gay. It is hot and dry most awfully hot and dry but as everybody knows it is good for the fighting armies to have dry weather they put up with it contentedly, even if the vegetables are drying up, tant pis they say, what of it, if we are free. And now there is more distribution of wine and butter and cheese, so why worry.

  And now they have just announced on the radio that the Americans are at Grenoble and that is only eighty kilometers away and no opposition in between, oh if they would only come by here. We must see them. There is no way of getting there.

  And now at half past twelve to-day on the radio a voice said attention attention attention and the Frenchman’s voice cracked with excitement and he said Paris is free. Glory hallelujah Paris is free, imagine it less than three months since the landing and Paris is free. All these days I did not dare to mention the prediction of Saint Odile, she said Paris would not be burned the devotion of her people would save Paris and it has vive la France. I cant tell you how excited we all are and now if I can only see the Americans come to Culoz I think all this about war will be finished yes I do.

  To-night it was just like fourth of July in my youth in the San Joaquin valley, it was just as hot and we all went to-day that Paris was freed to put flowers on the soldiers monument, it had already been draped with flags and the maquis marched down the main street of Culoz, and then everybody stood at attention and sang the Marseillaise, it was interesting to see who out of the population of Culoz were members of the fighting maquis, and then there were another lot of affiliated but not fighting maquis. I like to call them maquis, that was what they were, when every moment was a danger, they had to receive arms they had to transport them and they had to hide them and they had to do sabotage and all the time a very considerable part of their countrymen did not at all believe in them, and there they were workmen, station masters, civil servants, tailors, barbers, anything, nobody knew but they naturally, and some of them looked pretty tired but my everybody was happy, everybody had the flag on their shoulders and some of the girls heaven only knows how had achieved a whole dress made of tricolor ribbons sewn together, Paris was taken at noon and by eight o’clock all France was putting wreaths on their soldiers monument because of course every village has that, honneur aux maquis, and they say that Americans are at Aix-les-Bains only twenty-five kilometers away how we want to see them even a little more than the rest of the population which is saying a great deal. We found some American flag ribbon in the local country store, and we gave it to all the little boys, just as we did in the 1914–1918 war when America came into the war, we rather wondered whether it was not some left over of the same ribbon, after all there was no particular reason in this little village that the local country store should otherwise have had it, vive la France vive l’Amerique vive les allies vive Paris, and after this most exciting day. Oh I forgot, I naturally wanted my dog Basket to participate and so I took him down to the local barber and I said wont you shave him and make him elegant, it is not right when the Americans come along and when Paris is free that the only French poodle in Culoz and owned by Americans should not be elegant, so perspiring freely all of us including Basket, he had his paws shaved and his muzzle shaved and he was elegant and as such he took part in the evening’s celebration and all the little children, said Basket Basket come here Basket, they do say it beautifully and then there was a blare of trumpets and naturally he was frightened and tried to run away, so I tied him with a handkerchief and the effort was not so elegant but we were all proud of ourselves just the same.

  We are all exhausted to-day the next day, we were so excited we are so happy we are all exhausted, we just go around shaking hands and being exhausted.

  And that is the way it is after all of us being so happy yesterday, to-day they are once more fighting in the streets of Paris, dear Paris and dear dear Paris, but Saint Odile did say it would be all right and although worried well anyway to distract our minds just now while I was in my bath, bang and the house shook I got out of my bath and another big bang, and the house shook, and there down in the valley were volumes of smoke, they were trying to hit the bridges over the Rhone, the cook was screaming and the people flocking into the grounds, and we could see the railroad bridge and it seemed to be intact, but the maquis who were guarding it, well now everybody says nobody was hurt, and it was the Boches flying home because they could not any longer stay in France in vengeance dropped bombs, we saw two lots of airplanes in the air and now they are gone I was afraid they were Americans dropping bombs but nobody believes anything bad of Americans, and perhaps not, anyway we are not as happy as yesterday but to-day is to-day and that is all there is to say.

  And now to-day that Paris is really free, this is what Saint Odile did say.

  Saint Odile said that the world would go on and there would come the worst war of all and the fire would be thrown down from the heavens and there would be freezing and heating and rivers running with blood and at last there would be winning by the enemy and everybody would say and how can they be so strong, and everybody would say and give us peace and then little by little there would come the battle of the mountain and that was certainly Moscow, because even in the time of Saint Odile because of its many religious houses was called the Holy Mountain and indeed it was there that the enemy received its first check, and then she said, much later there would be fighting in the streets of the eternal city, and Rome taken it was not the end but the beginning of the end (which indeed was so) and that Paris which was in the greatest danger would be saved because of the holiness of its holy women, Sainte Genevieve and now it has been saved owing to the valor of its men and its women and we are all so happy, honneur aux maquis.

  It is wonderful to go down to the village square on Sunday evening and to see it full of maquis in their nice shorts and khaki shirts with the tricolor on their shoulders talking to the girls everybody smiling and only ten days ago everybody was staying in the house and the Germans were in the square, only ten days ago, what a week, and nobody is really used to it, and yet it is hard to believe that it was not always so, we have one hundred and fifty maquis stationed in our town and it is a pleasure.

  Yesterday I was out on the road and there was a tremendous thunderstorm and I went into a roadside café, there were two men sitting at a table with F. F. I. on their breasts and I said how do you do and Basket and I were very wet, and they said how do you do but not quite like Frenchmen, we talked a little more and then I knew from their accent they were Spaniards, I said I was American and we solemnly shook hands and we began to talk, one of them was the typical Barcelona intellectual he reminded me of Picasso’s friend Sabatez, he and his comrade with two hundred and fifty other Spanish refugees have been with the maquis for two years now, since said they we cannot fight for fre
edom in our own country we fight for freedom wherever we can, they have been at it for ten years now, they know about Hemingway and when I told them that I knew Picasso they stood up and solemnly shook hands, all over again. Then I asked where they had come from and they said Annecy and I said you must have seen my compatriots and they said yes and a woman journalist interviewed them and said to them what are you Spaniards doing here, and when they told her she said she was glad to meet them and that they were heroes. They were going to Artemare to see their wives who were refugeed there and then they were going back to Annecy. If said I you see the journalist again tell her that I want to see her, and I told them my name but they wont remember but anyway it was a pleasure to send word. It is very tantalising Americans all over the place sometimes only twenty kilometers away and we do not see them, how we want to see them and send word to America and have news from them. To-night I was all bitten by mosquitoes trying to get more news of them. I went down to the Pont de la Lois which is the only bridge left over the Rhone, it strangely enough was not destroyed in ’40 and now again it has not been destroyed. It was near there that our little battle was fought and it was near there that the bombs were dropped the other day or was it only yesterday. Well anyway I was talking to the maquis that were guarding the bridge, among them a boy I knew in Cezerieu and they told me that a car with American officers had passed over the bridge, when I told Alice Toklas about it tonight she said she would take her typewriting down there and await them but when I told her about mosquitoes she weakened, well anyway, one of the train hands who was also there said that they had received orders to repair the train tracks between Chambery and Culoz and that it had to be done in three days, because he said the Americans want to use it and he promised me that when the first train carrying Americans was signaled, night or day, he would leave all and come up and let me know. Dear Americans how we do want to see them.

  It’s wonderful in the evening hearing the voices of the children playing, for such a long time they played quietly they were afraid to play in the streets or on the sidewalk but now they are let loose and the elders smile indulgently and all of a sudden you hear a childish voice cry pomm pomm pomm, pomm pomm pomm, pomm pomm pomm that’s that, of course that is a mitraillette killing the Boches, everybody calls them Boches now, and everybody is easy very easy in their minds, except of course those who made money off the Germans, and there are some, and naturally they are nervous. The maquis of course do revenge themselves a little the French are not naturally a revengeful people but the Germans did commit such awful atrocities in the mountain regions that when the mountain boys caught the S.S. troops in Annecy naturally enough they made them parade the town with their hands in the air and then took them up into the hills and there nobody knows what did happen to them, and naturally the young ones who had seen farms burned with men women and children inside them as well as the beasts, when they take a German prisoner they cannot help giving him a kick in the behind. But the French are not a vengeful people and they will soon now that they feel their strength they will not feel revengeful.

  Our friend Monsieur Godet came yesterday and said he was going to try to get through to Switzerland, he has business there, and so we are hoping that he will be able to cable to America for us and tell all our friends that we are all right, he left on his bicycle with a permit from the F. F. I. and once he gets to Saint Julien, the way we always used to drive into Switzerland, he thinks he will have no trouble. It will be nice when he comes back and brings us news of the Americans. We have asked him to bring back with him a newspaper man or a newspaper woman, or two of them, if he did that would be nice. There are American cars and officers that pass so they say from time to time but I have not seen them and of course seeing is believing, because with the population, the wish is so much the father of the thought, but they will come, bless them.

  I met to-day Monsieur Burtin whose daughter is at the University of Grenoble and who kept telling him when he worried about her student activities but my dear father you do not understand, this is our war not your war, and now that the F. F. I. have covered themselves with glory she said to her father, you see we were right, to be sure people of your age are less credulous than people of our age, but this time we were right in persisting in our credulity, look at the results, they are magnificent said the father, yes said the daughter you can understand it was no work for veterans.

  A little later I was talking to a young fellow who is now in Culoz but whom I had often seen in Belley where he was in the first battalion of Chasseurs before they were demobilised when the Southern zone no longer existed. I had not seen him since those days. So naturally I asked him if he had been in the movement. He said because of his health, his lungs are not very strong he had not been able to be but actually all his comrades in the battalion were in the movement, not the officers, he said, this was not an officers movement, regular army officers did not in general have the kind of intelligence that makes a maquis. No I said, all the army officers that I know who were patriots, all managed somehow to get to Africa and join the regular army, yes he said they did not have the kind of quality that makes maquis, the non-commissioned officers yes lots of them were in the movement, it was said he marvelously secret, you do not know perhaps he said that one of the leaders of the Paris F. F. I. was hidden for three months in Culoz, no I said did you know at the time, oh no he said, I knew his sister very intimately but she never mentioned it, how old is he, I said, oh about twenty-four and the Germans got on his track two of the crowd were taken by the Germans but the rest of the leaders escaped, and the two who were captured in spite of frightful tortures did not give their comrades away, after three months they heard that the Germans had lost trace of them so they all went back, and continued their work, now that it is all over his sister told me all about it. And where said I did all the arms come from that the Parisians seem to have had, oh he laughed most of those have been hidden since ’40, not possibly I said, yes he said I do assure you. Well honneur aux maquis, one cannot say it too often, it is nice to have two countries to be proud of that belong to you, mine of course are America and France.

  To-day the village is excited terribly excited because they are shaving the heads of the girls who kept company with the Germans during the occupation, it is called the coiffure of 1944, and naturally it is terrible because the shaving is done publicly, it is being done to-day. It is as I have often said, life in the middle ages, it certainly is most interesting and logical it certainly is.

  Speaking of all this there is this about a Jewish woman, a Parisienne, well known in the Paris world. She and her family took refuge in Chambery when the persecutions against the Jews began in Paris. And then later, when there was no southern zone, all the Jews were supposed to have the fact put on their carte d’identité and their food card, she went to the prefecture to do so and the official whom she saw looked at her severely Madame he said, have you any proof with you that you are a Jewess, why no she said, well he said if you have no actual proof that you are a Jewess, why do you come and bother me, why she said I beg your pardon, no he said I am not interested unless you can prove you are a Jewess, good day he said and she left. It was she who told the story. Most of the French officials were like that really like that.

  And now everybody says all the time that American officers are passing through Culoz, you can tell them they all say because of their large hats. Do American officers wear large hats, oh yes they say. Do they, I wonder, or is it only a sort of cowboy idea that the population have. Perhaps the American do wear large hats, we are so eagerly waiting to see.

  What a day what a day of days, I always did say that I would end this book with the first American that came to Culoz, and to-day oh happy day yesterday and to-day, the first of September 1944. There have been six of them in the house, two of them stayed the night and then three were there besides the first three not here at Culoz but at Belley. Oh happy day, that is all that I can say oh happy day.

  This is the
way it happened. We go to Belley about once a month to go shopping and the bank and things like that and yesterday Thursday was the day, so we went over in a taxi, and when we got to Belley as I got out of the taxi several people said to me, Americans are here. I had heard that so often that I had pretty well given up hope and I said oh nonsense but yes they said, and then the son of the watchmaker who had been the most steadfast and violent pro-ally even in the darkest days came up to me and said the Americans are here. Really I said yes he said well I said lead me to them, all right he said they are at the hotel so we went on just as fast as we could and when we got to the hotel they tried to stop me but we said no and went in. I saw the proprietor of the hotel and I said is it true there are Americans, yes he said come on, and I followed and there we were Alice Toklas panting behind and Basket very excited and we went into a room filled with maquis and the mayor of Belley and I said in a loud voice are there any Americans here and three men stood up and they were Americans God bless them and were we pleased. We held each other’s hands and we patted each other and we sat down together and I told them who we were, and they knew, I always take it for granted that people will know who I am and at the same time at the last moment I kind of doubt, but they knew of course they knew, they were lieutenant Walter E. Oleson 120th Engineers and private Edward Landry and Walter Hartze, and they belonged to the Thunder-birds and how we talked and how we patted each other in the good American way, and I had to know where they came from and where they were going and where they were born. In the last war we had come across our first American soldiers and it had been nice but nothing like this, after almost two years of not a word with America, there they were, all three of them. Then we went to look at their car the jeep, and I had expected it to be much smaller but it was quite big and they said did I want a ride and I said you bet I wanted a ride and we all climbed in and there I was riding in an American army car driven by an American soldier. Everybody was so excited.