Heroes and villains in WW II
Friday, July 26, 2024
Dear Valued Customer,
The moisson is in full swing. Last Sunday morning, as dawn light moved through the gaps in the trees in a brightening line, the harvester began its deep, rumbling hum. It was five o’clock. By 7:30, the first wagonload of round bales rumbled by the Chateau.
Like most of our neighbors on the rich plains of the Alençonnais, we are reaping barley and rapeseed. Separated from the grain, stalks are wrapped into bales like giant spools of green and golden thread. We stack them, visible and reassuring sign of an ancient and primitive form of wealth, in the shed behind the Temple. The fertile soil and the farmer’s toil and skill, manifested in a huge bale of straw, will nourish a herd all winter long. And what we can’t use will feed another farmer’s cattle.
Fortunately, I leave the operation of farm equipment and the timing of hay cuts and harvests to more experienced hands and heads than mine. I have 18 members of my family to feed.
We’d had a cook since July 1. But, as the saying has it: She was a good cook as cooks go, and as cooks go, she went. Her car had broken down. She was determined not to have it fixed until the garage that was supposed to have fixed it the first time reopened in August. Perhaps more imperative, her grandchildren were coming to visit. I could only sigh in sympathy and dust off my cookbooks.
Now, for a brief moment before the hustle of the day, I lay in bed listening to the murmuring thrum of machinery in the distant fields. A bird outside the window gave a deep trilling chortle. Another began to call hoarsely from the trees. Other birds began to whistle and chirp. It was tempting to lie back dreamily on my pillow.
Instead, I dressed and tiptoed down the stairs to unload the dishwasher.
In the summer, unless it is pouring with rain, we eat all our meals outside. I set out coffee cups and little plates for breakfast. Soon, I wasn’t the only one awake. Our nieces were ready to set off into the village on the bread run. A nephew proposed to make coffee. There would be just enough time to take a quick walk.
I went along one of the farm roads and into a back field. Hay had been cut, and a few cows were grazing on stubble behind a provisional electric fence. In the distance were pale green cylinders of enrubanné, bales of green hay wrapped up in thin plastic to protect it from spoilage. And on the path ahead of me, a brown and white animal crouched, looking intently toward me. It did not seem alarmed. A little uneasy, I clapped my hands. It stood up on hind legs, turning in profile. It was a very large hare, with long front paws held in front of its chest, long ears, and a long muzzle. It hesitated, and then bounded off across the field.
Back in the kitchen, it was time to put croissants in the oven and open the jam pots. I put out hot milk for coffee and cold milk for cereal eaters. One of our American nephews has discovered the delights of Chocopic. Another still prefers Frosties, fortunately available in French grocery stores. We were all surprised to discover that the chocolate-flavored French breakfast cereal has received an “A” on Nutri-Score, the food rating system developed by the Santé publique, the French public health agency. Meanwhile, Frosties received a “D.”
“That’s what chauvinism is, Joe,” one of the cousins explained to his younger brother. The word is French in origin, from the legendary and probably mythical Nicolas Chauvin, an indefatigably patriotic soldier of the Napoleonic conquest of Europe. To be chauvin in this case means to uphold the virtues of one’s country and its cereals against the pretentions of foreign products.
Outside the life of the farm and château, and the adaptation to new breakfast cereals, our American family is experiencing some deep truths about France and life itself.
On July 14, the Fête national, we went to a ceremony in homage to resistance fighters during the German Occupation of France in World War II. This particular group engaged in blowing up bridges and railway lines to impede the movement of German troops at the end of the war. Eighty years before, on July 14, 1944, they had dared to parade through the little town with a French flag. They had sung the Marseillaise, the French national anthem. A photograph showed them in belted jackets and woolen berets, carrying the drapeaunational.
One of our neighbors told us she had found banderoles from the time stowed in her attic. In big red letters drawn on rough white cotton, these proclaimed “Vive de Gaulle, vive la France!” On a fence bordering the town square, the banners now hung again for the memorial occasion.
The mayor, wearing a blue, white and red sash, delivered an élocution. Several other local dignitaries did the same. Many names of those who had participated in or helped the Résistance were read aloud. Apologies were extended to those who might have been inadvertently overlooked, but who had also helped in the effort.
It was a proud and joyful moment.
This past Sunday, a week later, we arrived at mass in another nearby village to find a different sort of memorial in progress.
Outside the small stone church, a solemn trio of elderly men and one woman held étendards of red and blue wool, trimmed with gold fringe. After our large group and the rest of the small congregation had taken our seats, they filed in, flags aloft. Local mayors, wearing dignified black suits and their tricolor sashes, followed. Martial music played.
Each flag represented a hamlet from which residents had been abducted on July 20, 1944. These 24 people – a young pharmacist and his wife, a grocer, and a local farmer among others -- were locked up overnight in an old mill in the woods.
One of our friends, a young girl during the war, remembers the maquis coming into the courtyard of her family’s château one morning. She and her sisters were rapidly ushered upstairs out of the way and out of sight. Her father went out to meet the men. The maquis left with her grandmother’s car and the contents of the wine cellar.
“Plaie d’argent n’est pas mortelle,” as the dicton has it. The loss of material things is not fatal. But the “Fusillés du Moulin” were not so fortunate.
In the morning, they were told they could leave, but only one by one. Outside, each was shot or stabbed. The victims were buried in the woods. Their whereabouts were only known when an overflowing creek uncovered the bones a year later.
Their deaths had been a form of summary justice, an épuration carried out by a maquis noir, a “dark” résistance of exaction and murder.
The victims had been accused of collaboration with the occupying Germans. They were officially exonerated and declared “Morts pour la France” in the 1950s.
We had stumbled upon the commemoration of the “Fusillés” several years before. At first, we’d mistaken it for a celebration of the Fête national.
The congregation, as in most country churches in the summer in France, was full of vacationing families with young children.
“A generation is here,” the priest began, “for whom the events we commemorate are not even a distant souvenir. Let me try to explain, by beginning with myself.
“I was a child of the War. My childhood was the Occupation and the Libération. The threat of violence, of death hovered over us always. Then came Epuration, a settling of accounts. Les collaborateurs were accused and tried. Some were executed. It was a dark time.
“The future of France was unknown. A French government had led us into an alliance with the Nazis, to terrible things. Who was responsible? Who could now lead France? There was a sense of dread, of uncertainty. I look back at my childhood and I do not remember happy times.”
He paused. Over thick, round spectacles, his gaze settled over the assembly. His expression was sad and even stern.
He looked down at his lectern.
“The reading for today is Jeremiah 23.”
“Quel malheur pour vous, pasteurs !
Vous laissez périr et vous dispersez
les brebis de mon pâturage
– oracle du Seigneur !” began our niece.
As a member of the younger generation, she had been plucked out of our pew to read.
“Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the Lord.”
After the service, there was a procession to the woods and the ruins of the old mill. We had joined the marchers and mourners once before. We left the church and hurried home. It was time to make lunch and plan for supper.
Still, amid the clatter of pots and the clacking of cabinet doors, there was time to reflect on these two events, separated only by ten days in the summer of 1944. There was the proud and ultimately triumphant story of brave Resistance to the evil enemy. And the other, darker tale, born of the moral chaos of wartime. When the restraints of civilized life broke down, when, as Jérémie describes, the pasteur indigne had scattered the flock, and driven it away from the safety of the fold.
Not all the heroes were worthy in those troubled times. Nor perhaps were all the villains deserving of their fate.
But perhaps the most enduring message of the two events was in the priest’s opening words. In rendering homage to the past, we transmit our memories to the generations of the future.
On these halcyon days of high summer, when the hare leaps in the clover and the cattle graze peacefully on rich grass, July 1944 seems far away. The colza is harvested, the hay is baled. If the result is no better than moyen because of the long spring and the late rains, then we look forward to better times ahead.
For even gloomy Jeremiah offered an optimistic vision at the end of last Sunday’s reading:
“Puis, je rassemblerai moi-même le reste de mes brebis
de tous les pays où je les ai chassées.
Je les ramènerai dans leur enclos,
elles seront fécondes et se multiplieront.
Je susciterai pour elles des pasteurs
qui les conduiront ;
elles ne seront plus apeurées ni effrayées,
et aucune ne sera perdue."
“And I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all countries whither I have driven them,
and will bring them again to their folds;
and they shall be fruitful and increase.
And I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them:
and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed,
neither shall they be lacking, saith the Lord.”
A bientôt,
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At Chateau de Courtomer, we are taking bookings for 2025 and 2026. Soon, we will welcome guests in our newly renovated "petite maison," the Gatehouse.
Heather (info@chateaudecourtomer.com and +33 (0) 6 49 12 87 98) will be delighted to help you with your enquiries and dates, and to preview the property on site.
English and French spoken. Concierge services available.