Читать книгу L'Americain - John Launois - Страница 6

I swore allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America on June 11, 1954, at Camp Otsu, headquarters of the U.S. Army’s Southwestern Command near Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan.

The examiner’s only question was, “What is the meaning of democracy?”

I asked, “Do you want the original Greek meaning?”

“Yes” he said.

“Demo means people,” I said, “cracy means government, so essentially it means government of the people, for the people.”

He said, “That’s fine, you are now an American citizen,” and he shook my hand.

Though the test for citizenship took only a few minutes, my American story began many years earlier when I was a boy growing up under the German-Nazi occupation of France in the late spring of 1940.

One morning in our small town, Marly-le-Roi, a few miles west of Paris, panic erupted as huge blankets of smoke spread over the suburbs. We could no longer see the city in the distance. By nine in the morning, all was dark. According to rumors, Paris and the Rouen harbor were burning, and Germans had bombed the oil storage tanks. Others thought the French Army had released smoke screens to prevent German bombers from destroying the city.

For weeks, the streets were filled with refugees in horsedrawn wagons, overloaded cars, trucks, bicycles, and pushcarts. People struggled with heavy suitcases, all going south. Germans were invading from the north and east, and on June 11, Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini declared war on France and sided with the Nazis.

Women and children were advised to go south. The poor at best had only public transportation, and railroad stations were overwhelmed. Wealthy Parisians and suburbanites had already left their homes. Workingmen were ordered to stay on the job, while ministries of the French government burned important documents and packed to leave without warning.

There were rumors of German paratrooper spies dropping over the city, but with so many stories, we knew absolutely nothing. Prime Minister Reynaud spoke on the radio from Tours, telling the French how “heroic the French Army is,” as our northern and eastern fronts collapsed.

John’s parents, Paul and Marguerite Launois.

That night, our neighbor, a lovely woman terrified of the Germans, asked my parents if I could stay the night in her stately house. As I was a child, I had no fear: everything seemed exciting, but adults were afraid with good reason. I was happy to be sleeping in the same bed with la belle Chantal, the most beautiful and elegant woman in our town. Her husband was an officer serving on the northern front and there was no news from him. As darkness fell, she kissed my forehead and we fell asleep.

Next morning at dawn, my father, who, because he was a workingman, had to remain behind, bid us goodbye. He told me I was now the man in charge, at 11 years old, and had to take care of my mother, brothers, and sisters. So without father, my family joined our beautiful neighbor in her car. The roads were overtaken by thousands fleeing on foot. Inching our way on the highway to Orléans, we joined the exodus of the poor.

By nightfall, we had traveled only 70 miles and were out of gas, so our neighbor tried to charm northbound officers for fuel; she begged them but they couldn’t help. People on foot pushed our car to the roadside.

In a thunderstorm, I left the family in the car and walked across a wheat field to a farm in the distance. The farmer and his wife said we could stay in their barn. In the pouring rain, we all kissed our neighbor goodbye and I led my family across the field. In our haste we forgot all our family photos and documents in her car. Mother carried my 14-month-old brother Jacquot in her arms while three-and five-year-old Odette and Paulette clung to her skirt. Nine-year-old André and I carried the family’s luggage and a heavy shopping bag loaded with bottles of boiled milk and a few tin cans of food. Soaking wet, everybody fell asleep on the straw. We never again saw la belle Chantal.

With thousands of others, we walked the next day to the Orléans train station. On the long road to the railroad, two Italian fighter planes swept down. Fascinated, I could almost see the pilots’ faces. An old man violently yanked my ankle and threw me in the ditch as the staccato of machine guns ripped through the air. The old man yelled, “You crazy fool!” Shocked, I asked, “Why?” He said, “Every time you see a low-flying plane, dive into a ditch!” Only as we marched toward the station and saw the dead and wounded on the road, did I realize the old man had saved my life.

After a long struggle at the train yard, we were herded into a World War I freight car designed for “40 Men or 8 Horses.” Sixty old men, women, and children filled our car. There was no food. Threatened by constant bomb alarms, our freight train, pulled by an old steam locomotive, moved so slowly that we could talk to people near stations offering food. We jumped out of the train to gather water, milk, bread, cheese, and sometimes salami. Some people refused my money, while others charged outrageous prices we couldn’t afford.

After two days, we arrived in Vierzon in the early morning. We settled in a very small house with mattresses on the floor. Demoralized French soldiers, believing the fight was over, knocked on the door asking for civilian clothes, hoping to escape German military prison camps.

In the late afternoon my brother and I went out looking for something to eat. We climbed a tree blooming with beautiful, juicy cherries. We were so hungry we ate till we were almost sick. Lying back, high up on branches, we suddenly saw a German motorcycle and sidecar with submachine guns approaching the edge of town. Frightened, we ran back to the little house and told mother who locked the door. After several hours, a man in the street began banging on his drum until he saw doors and windows open. “Paris and Vierzon are now under German control,” he announced. “The High Command has assured us you may come out of your homes. You have nothing to fear.”

We discovered the Germans would not cut off our ears as we had feared. A stranger was kind enough to drive us back to Marly. Again we ran out of gas. To our surprise, we were given fuel by an enlisted man in the German Army.

We returned to our home on June 16 and learned that two days earlier, the Germans had paraded with horses and mechanized forces down the Champs Elysées. The Nazi swastika now waved from the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe.

Father had a wound on his back but he never said what had happened. In his day, parents were supposed to give children a strong sense of morality and a good work ethic, and they never discussed their problems. However, because he had lived through the horrors of World War I and I was the eldest, he decided to try to prepare me for what we might confront.

On June 18, he took me alone to the kitchen, closed the wooden shutters, and turned on the radio. After a lot of static, we heard a voice from the BBC announcing: “I, General de Gaulle, presently in London, invite the officers and the French soldiers on British territory…with or without weapons…to get in contact with me…Whatever happens, the flame of the French Resistance must never go out and will not go out.” Turning to father, I asked, “Who is General de Gaulle?” He said, “I don’t know.”

By that point, Hitler had taken Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, as well as France. England was thought to be next. “If England doesn’t hold,” father said, “I’m not sure you will ever be a free man.”

I returned to primary school. Those of us with high scores were placed near the front, which had certain rewards. Our teacher was gorgeous, and by dropping your ruler, you could bend down and look up her skirt. She must have known what we were doing because only the boys in the front would drop their rulers.

In 1940s France, there was no opportunity for the son of a worker to enter higher schooling. The high school lycées and universities were the preserve of the wealthy ruling class. Even the exceptionally gifted could only further their education to the level of an elementary school teacher.

Because of my high grades, I could graduate immediately, a year early. My teacher came to my home and urged my parents to continue my education so I could become a teacher, saying I’d succeed in anything I chose. While my father was proud and enthusiastic, my mother yelled at him, “You don’t even make enough to feed us and the five children, let alone the one I’m carrying! Jean must work. He has to work!” Father valued education, but mother had worked since she was 12 and couldn’t see why I shouldn’t as well. My teacher was sorry but understood mother’s fears. I walked my teacher to the door and said goodbye, saddened but aware of my duty.

The economy slowed to a crawl. No jobs were listed. In the Paris region, half a million were unemployed. Factories shut down. Posters went up everywhere with curfew hours, restrictions, and rules of occupation. Most of the first harvest was requisitioned and shipped to Germany as were most goods and resources. Everyone had ration cards. Only parents with infants got milk, while coffee and chocolate disappeared completely. Though gasoline was reserved for only the privileged and emergency services, the rich could buy anything on the black market.

Eve, Lido, Folies-Bergère, and famous nude cabarets in the capital played to German armed forces and were packed every night. Some 40 whorehouses were reserved exclusively for the German infantry. Movies, theaters, and operas remained open. Champagne flowed endlessly. For the Germans the spectacle went on as though nothing had happened, but for the French there was an eleven o’clock curfew.

On July 3, after the commander of the French Navy refused to allow the fleet to join England or sail to America to keep ships from falling into German hands, the British Navy, following a six-hour ultimatum, destroyed much of the French fleet anchored in Mers el-Kebir, Algeria. Twelve hundred French sailors lost their lives.

In the wake of the tragedy, many who were sympathetic to the British felt betrayed. Newspapers, advocating collaboration with Germany, used Mers el-Kebir to reignite anti-British sentiment as readers were urged to join Hitler’s European New World Order. My father told me to read between the lines.

In Vichy, where the new government of France had settled, the former World War I hero of Verdun Marshal Philippe Pétain assumed supreme power on July 11, 1940. Five days later, his regime stripped naturalized Jews of their citizenship. Then the Vichy military tribunal of Clermont-Ferrand sentenced General de Gaulle to death in absentia. DeGaulle was still in England and officially recognized by the British government as leader of the Free French.

My father had trusted Marshal Pétain, but on October 24, when Pétain shook hands with Hitler in Montoire-sur-le-Loir, my father’s faith in the old hero was shaken. He wondered if Pétain had lost his senses. Father, prolabor, was shocked again when Vichy’s government on November 9 banned all trade unions. Even so, those momentous and outrageous events did not address our basic fears.

Our main worry was finding enough to eat. With daily long lines for food, ration tickets were useless when supplies ran out. By the spring of 1941, father decided to turn our yard into a vegetable garden, and he began raising chickens and rabbits. My first job was to go to the countryside to buy grain for chickens and gather grass for rabbits.

Because the only groceries always available on the market were rutabagas, a bulbous root normally used to feed livestock, mother bought as much as we could carry. Almost every day she cooked them in a different sauce, but nobody asked for seconds. We’d share them with the rabbits. When we ate rutabagas, we talked about how few potatoes we had.

For a poor family, a potato was more precious than money. Near the outskirts of town at Mr. and Mrs. Jeanret’s house, a long line of women was always waiting to exchange ration tickets for chickens, butter, and potatoes. It was here that I finally got a job: I stacked 120-pound potato sacks, served customers, and plowed the garden. I’d also cut wood blocks into tiny pieces to feed the wood-burning furnace that replaced their truck’s gas tank. An average working day was never less than 12 hours.

It always seemed to me that Mr. Jeanret’s body was short-circuiting. A wiry man, he never made a normal move. Instead, he jumped: When I handed him potatoes, he’d jump to the scale, jump to the customer, and jump to the cash register. The whole morning was a series of jumps. As women in line heard him shouting orders and saw me stacking potatoes, they’d shout, “How can you let a small boy lift such heavy sacks?” The boss could never identify a single voice, so he ignored them.

Whenever the potatoes sold out, Mrs. Jeanret sent me to Paris to pick up 60 pounds of butter to sell in her living room. She was so fat, I thought she needed two chairs to sit on, one for each cheek.

I stayed at this exhausting job only because I was paid in potatoes. It meant, for two days a week, my family didn’t have to eat rutabagas. One afternoon, I was given a raise of two potatoes a day and was told by the boss that I had a great future in the chicken and potato business.

Every night, going home from work, I faced climbing a steep hill. In my imagination, the incline symbolized both my wiry old employer and the prospect of surrendering my life to the potato business. So I got up the hill riding my bicycle, furiously zigzagging: I never let the hill beat me. Had I walked it, Jeanret and that future would have won.

Meanwhile, Vichy crushed workers’ rights. Harsh law and order ruled as France became a police state. The Catholic Church led the moral order as separation of church and state once again blurred.

Sunday was a day off except for church. At mass, I’d confess to cursing at my mother because after working 12 hours, she’d tell me to pick up more grass for the rabbits. For atonement, I recited several “Ave-Maria’s,” but in truth, I didn’t feel guilty.

I was tired of being told what to do six days a week by mother, Jeanret, and the French and German street patrols. By Sunday, I couldn’t listen to any more sermons. I didn’t need or want moral guidance. On the Sunday before my first communion, as I received the wafer, I stood up suddenly before the full congregation and tore up my catechism page by page as I walked backwards to the church exit. I ended up throwing the half-empty book toward the altar and slammed the huge door of the church shut.

The congregation was shocked. After my first act of defiance, I walked home carefree and happy. Later our parish priest knocked on our door—Father had invited him to lunch. Father, who ran a small construction firm, made repairs at the priest’s rectory, and the two of them were drinking buddies. The priest described my shameful act to my parents. Father took a swing to my face with the back of his hand but barely touched me. It was like a movie stunt. Alarmed, the priest said, “Paul, Not so hard!” That calmed my father, and I was sent to my room without my lunch, which wasn’t much anyway.

Father was actually very secular and never trusted the Catholic hierarchy. He suspected the Vatican of collaborating with the Nazis, yet he wanted a Christian education for his children. He was more comfortable with our parish priest who shared his Christian humanistic values. One day in midoccupation, a great storm swept through town, damaging roofs and ripping the cross from our church steeple. The priest called on father in the middle of night. When the winds subsided, father climbed the high steeple and reset the cross. At dawn, they shared a bottle of the priest’s communion wine.

On June 22, 1941, Germany, Italy, and Romania declared war on the USSR. Young Frenchmen were encouraged to join The Legion of French Volunteers to Fight Bolshevism. Thousands joined and were prepared for the Russian front by Germans who trained them and outfitted them in German uniforms.

Propaganda flowed. On July 18, the French Volunteers held a huge rally at the Vélodrome d’Hiver, and Marshal Pétain gave the new legion his blessing. Father was disgusted and wondered, “How could they?”

A year later, from the same site at Vélodrome d’Hiver, French authorities organized the first mass deportation of 13,000 Jews, who were sent to a prison camp at Drancy and then to death camps in the east.

Acts of sabotage and assassination against Germans and high French officials were on the rise. It was heavily publicized that for every German killed in France, 50 French hostages were to be shot. At first, they executed Communist and common-law prisoners, and by late October 1941, more than a hundred had been put to death.

For me, nothing changed. I was stacking potatoes and listening to Jeanret ranting, “Work faster! Quickly! Quickly!” Food was becoming scarcer, but there was no shortage of propaganda about German victories on the Russian front. The siege of Leningrad had begun, then Kiev and Odessa fell. From day to day, there seemed to be no hope.

Then on December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and four days later, Hitler and Mussolini declared war on the U.S. Father was optimistic for the first time, believing that with America involved, the war would be won against the Nazis. From the BBC, we learned that on December 20 the German Army had been forced to retreat from Moscow. We secretly rejoiced every time the Germans lost a battle, but father repeatedly warned me not to tell anyone we were listening to British radio. If German or French authorities discovered we listened to the French Speak to the French daily broadcast, father could have been heavily fined and sent to jail for up to six months. Anonymous denunciations were widespread, often unwarranted, and to be feared. The occupation brought out the worst in people—as their manners were dictated by fear, generosity and principles often fell by the wayside.

Just east of Marly, in March 1942, Britain’s Royal Air Force heavily bombed the Renault factories producing tanks and trucks for the German war effort, but civilian homes were destroyed as well. With 623 people killed, rescue teams were formed to dig out bodies from the rubble, and my friends and I were drafted for civil labor to help survivors. When we arrived at dawn at Boulogne-Billancourt, we saw more than a hundred corpses covered with white sheets.

We were assigned to an old lady who was hysterically screaming, “All my savings are under there!” When she calmed down, she told us that there was a box of gold coins buried under her collapsed house. Crawling on our bellies through debris, we found a metal box and many unbroken bottles of cognac. As we emerged from the wreckage, we held up the box and shook it so she could hear the coins. In tears, she hugged and kissed us over and over. Once she quieted down, we handed her the bottles of cognac. “No, no, no,” she insisted. “You keep them.”

None of us had ever tasted a drop of alcohol, so at the end of the day, we looked at each other and opened a bottle. Covered with dust and plaster, we laughed and passed the bottle back and forth till it was finished, then fell asleep, drunk, in the rubble. Our group leader had a hard time waking us, but we finally managed to walk home, in a daze.

In the occupied zone of France, as in the rest of Hitler’s Europe, the Jews were required to sew a yellow star on their breast pockets after May 28, 1942. The only country that defied the order was Denmark, whose king asked all his loyal subjects to wear the yellow stars, Christians and Jews alike.

In July, rations were again reduced, and prices on the black market shot up. A working man like father made less than 900 francs a week, but a liter of cooking oil cost 1,000 francs on the black market.

The only good news came with the first assault on Hitler’s Atlantic Wall at Dieppe, Normandy, on August 19 by British, Canadian, American, and Free French forces. For a brief time, we were euphoric, but the attack failed, and the French press emphasized the defeat of “the enemy.”

The unoccupied southern half of France was taken over by German and Italian forces on November 11. The French fleet was still anchored in the naval base at Toulon, because French commanders, in 1940, refused to join England or sail for neutral America. As German Panzer tanks approached Toulon, French sailors scuttled their fleet to prevent Germans from taking it.

The grim year of 1943 marked the beginning of Germany’s forced labor conscription. On January 6, one of the first shipments of drafted French workers, ages 21 to 29, filed into trains bound for German factories. At the station in Montluçon, an angry mob formed to protest the draft, and mothers laid themselves across tracks, stopping the trains. Most young workers escaped, and the trains were left almost empty.

On January 30, the British Royal Air Force bombed Berlin, and the following day, the Germans surrendered at Stalingrad. Only the BBC kept us informed of such momentous events—the French press had lost its credibility long ago.

The drive to recruit French forced labor intensified, and a quarter million young Frenchmen were ordered to go to Germany. Touching all professions, the order created national outrage and the end of apathy in France. Risking up to five years in prison or a hundred-thousand-franc fine, many young draftees refused to comply. They escaped into forests and mountains to join scattered groups of the Resistance.

The mood was changing. Any mention of de Gaulle’s Free French could provoke arrest by French and German police, but when another trainload of workers were shipped from Paris’s Gare de l’Est, the young men began to shout, “Long live de Gaulle,” followed by the singing of “La Marseillaise,” our national anthem.

In North Africa and Italy, Allies were scoring victories. The British by night and Americans by day were bombing Germany’s industrial heartland. Our own skies were full of black silhouettes of B-17 bombers tracked by thousands of exploding antiaircraft shells. Wherever we looked at the sky, there were planes—we’d never seen such an awesome display of power, the entire sky filled with “Flying Fortresses.”

One day, an American plane was hit and fell out of formation, twisting out of control. In rapid succession, the crew members bailed out, but one parachute wrapped around itself and a young airman fell straight to the earth. We ran into the forest. The Germans had already removed the corpse. Engraved in the soft grass was the imprint of a body. Suddenly it seemed it was not just an imprint of a body but a man, and we began to wonder why these young Americans had flown so far from home, all the way across the Atlantic.

We ran into town for flowers, telling people about the fallen young American. Although we had never seen him, we gave him a face. It seemed everyone wanted to offer flowers to place in his imprint. We ran back to the soft grass by the lake and gently laid the flowers in the outline of his body. The Germans chased us away, but they didn’t remove the flowers.

Later that evening, my thoughts drifted to a continent unknown to me, across the Atlantic, and the thousands of young Americans who crossed that ocean. We knew they were fighting battles in North Africa and Italy and were training in England for the day they would land on our shores. I wanted to know more but all things American were banned. My knowledge of America was limited to what I learned about France’s participation in the Revolutionary War; the Rochambeau Army’s long march to join Americans on the Hudson; General Lafayette’s alliance and friendship with George Washington; and Britain’s 1781 surrender at Yorktown. Otherwise all I knew were American movies and the big skies of American westerns.

In my mind, I began to create a mythical America. I imagined crossing the continent from coast to coast, completely free, not seeing a single armed patrol checking my identification, and not being bodily searched for 3,000 miles. The hungrier I became, the more I fantasized. To friends, I reported Allied victories heard on the BBC, often exaggerating German losses and American heroism. I tried to convince my closest friends that we should all leave for the USA when the war ended. I told so many tales, real and imaginary, that soon my nickname became L’Américain. Daily, I was asked, “Hey l’Américain! What’s going on?” The name stayed with me long after the war.

In the summer of ‘43, Mr. Jeanret could no longer acquire enough to serve customers as I warned my parents I’d soon lose my job. For months, I watched supplies dwindle and eventually, Jeanret could handle the few potatoes he had by himself. After paying me my last potatoes, we said goodbye.

Out of a job, I was thrilled to play again with friends in the forest of Marly. Our favorite game was Cowboys and Indians. Divided into two camps, we played hide and seek, using ropes to tie our prisoners to tree trunks. The games ended when darkness fell, but one evening, as we roamed large areas of the forest, we forgot one of the kids tied to a tree, only remembering him by the time we reached town. Afraid to go back into the black forest, we found Mr. Depuis, the forest guard. Ashamed, we explained we had left a prisoner tied to a tree, but the worst was that we couldn’t remember exactly where we left him. With a flashlight, we walked and walked, shouting his name—it seemed like an endless search. Finally we heard him screaming, “I’m here, here, here!” We freed our friend to great relief and walked back to town laughing.

In the same forest, we met a man who claimed to be with the Resistance. He told us, “If you find lead anywhere, bring it to me. We can make bullets out of it.” We had never met anyone from the Resistance, so we asked him, “If we find lead, how do we find you?” He answered, “You won’t find me, I’ll find you.”

By mid-1943, acts of resistance were rising. French railroad workers sabotaged locomotives and rail switches, derailing German supply trains. The Resistance blew up bridges, robbed ration tickets, and blank IDs from town halls. The BBC’s French Radio broadcasted coded messages identifying British airdrops of ammunition and supplies, and the German military was short of labor everywhere.

Near Marly, they were recruiting at Fort “Trou d’Enfer,” (Hell’s Hole) where I was hired as a supply clerk to handle nails, screws, bolts, and lead bars. While stacking supplies, I thought of the man who spoke to us in the forest. From the first day, I began stealing pencil-thin lead bars by tying them to both legs, hiding them under my trousers and walking stiffly past the guard who’d check my pockets and lunch pail before waving me on.

For two weeks, I kept this game up and naively thought I was heroic for contributing to the Resistance. Each day I got bolder, tying more lead bars to my legs, until my last day, carrying about four pounds of lead, I limped so badly as I dragged my feet that the old sentry stopped me. He felt my right leg and found four bars of lead. Shouting at me in German, he led me to the guardhouse where I spent the night. When my father came to pick me up the next morning, an interpreter reprimanded us but let me go because I was so young. For some reason, the sentry never searched my left leg, also loaded with lead bars. As father took my hand, I whispered to him, “Not so fast, my left leg is heavy.”

For father, stealing in any form was unforgivable. I told him about the man in the forest but it made no difference to him because stealing was stealing. I knew he understood what he called “my foolish act,” but he knew the Germans were becoming more ruthless and so he locked up all the bars I had collected. In the end I couldn’t help the Resistance. Months later, we learned the man in the forest and several others were shot while picking up a British airdrop.

At the end of summer, my fights with mother about gathering grass for rabbits resumed. Because I no longer had a job, she could again scream to the world that her son was the laziest human being on earth. Daily she’d insult me, and disgusted, I’d slam the door, run to the end of the garden, and to get even with her, ring the bell at the gate till she came out screaming. Waving a stick, she’d charge the gate, and when she got close enough to hit me, I’d run. Angry and frustrated, she’d yell, “Wait till I tell your father!” and I’d reply, “Go ahead. Tell him!” Father would always say the same thing, “You have to respect your mother.” After a while, mother stopped telling father as it was obviously a waste of time.

When I was young, mother would punish us by whipping the backs of our knees with a whip. She gave up on this after I cut all the leather straps from her whips, leaving her with just the handles.

In her strange way, mother believed all her insults were challenging and building my character. When she told me I would “never amount to anything,” I didn’t believe it. But in the end, she did build my character: She and the war created a rebel.

By the late summer of 1943, I was living in rebellion against the ruling Vichy elite, the Catholic Church, the Bourgeoisie’s contempt for the working class, and the overzealous French police, as well as the German occupiers marching down my street. There was very little not to rebel against.

In the fourth year of the occupation, more and more food and supplies were sent to Germany. Day after day, I traveled to the countryside, begging farmers to sell me potatoes, but each day I returned empty handed. At the same time, we were convinced that at any moment, the Americans would land, until finally, on September 8, 1943, Italy signed an armistice with the Allies. Rejoicing, we dared to believe the end of the war was near.

But Italy’s collapse changed nothing. Mother was again cooking the hated rutabagas. Father often returned from his Sunday game of cards with a case of vin triste, or “sad wine.” One evening, I heard father talking to himself in the kitchen, “Where do we get food now? Where?” I never let him know that I heard him crying.

The next day, I suggested to father that my daily trips to the country were useless, and that I should go much further and not return till I actually found food. I convinced him that my best friend Claude and I could survive on the road and sleep in barns.

My bicycle was hardly in shape to make a long trip, so I covered each of my tires with a second one to cover the holes of the inner tire. It worked, and my bike lasted till the end of the war. Claude, on the other hand, had a racing bike with very thin tires, and there was no way to reinforce them, so we simply had to take our chances.

Mother gave me money to buy about a hundred pounds of potatoes. Though it was illegal for us to buy anything directly from farmers, we hoped they’d be generous and overlook the laws. At dawn, Claude and I set off for the outer limits of l’Île de France.

On the first day, we traveled a hundred miles across numerous farms. Each time we were told that acre after acre, the endless fields of potatoes were requisitioned for the Germans. At the end of the day, a boy our age whose parents had just refused to sell us potatoes came to us and said, “Don’t go away, you can sleep here in our barn.” He brought us a large loaf of bread, a big piece of cheese, a pitcher of fresh milk, two glasses, and a knife. We thanked him and ate, then fell asleep, exhausted, on the hay.

Next morning we set off again, thinking that further west, away from main roads, we might find a farmer less afraid to sell us some potatoes, but all we could buy was enough bread and cheese to feed ourselves. By the third day, we began to have serious doubts that anyone would sell us even a small amount.

Day after day, we passed miles and miles of potato fields, and still we had not a single potato in our sacks. By the fifth day, we called upon one last farm, angry and dejected. We explained we had been bicycling for days, but received the same answer: Their harvest was requisitioned. Claude and I looked at each other, resigned. With night falling, we headed home disgusted, surrounded by fields of potatoes.

As the farm house fell out of sight, Claude waved his arm and said, “Look at all these potatoes.” By a small cluster of trees, we stopped to eat our bread and cheese, cursing the farmers. As we sat chewing on our last piece of stale bread a mere three feet away from the green stems of potatoes, it suddenly seemed obvious what we had to do.

“Only take the big ones!” I said as Claude and I pulled at the green stems and dug out the biggest potatoes. Soon our hundred-pound bags were filled and loaded on our bikes. We knew we couldn’t make it home before curfew, so our biggest challenge was to avoid main roads, roadblocks, and German patrols.

Covered by darkness, our bicycle headlights off, we rode dirt roads through the fields. It was a beautiful night, and though we were scared, we were happy. Our immediate need was to find a place to hide; hours later, we discovered at last another cluster of trees where we hid and slept uneasily through the night.

The next morning, we followed the most secluded roads possible. When the path led into a small village, one of us would walk ahead to see if there were any checkpoints or roadblocks. Instinctively, we trusted women more than men. If we saw a face we trusted, we would ask her if the road was clear.

Claude’s racing bicycle was not made to carry a hundred pounds of potatoes. Every few miles his front tire would puncture, forcing us to remove the thin stitching, patch the inner tube, and re-stitch the inner lips of his tire. Slowed down by avoiding checkpoints and needing to constantly fix Claude’s tire, we found ourselves again passing curfew.

Finally, we reached the forest of Marly, which we knew like the back of our hands. In the bright moonlit night, we could just see the trail leading into our town. Suddenly Claude’s wheel hit a dirt hole, catapulting him into the air. Landing on the forest floor, he looked at his wheel, crushed like an accordion, and began to cry.

I said, “Claude, c’mon we’ll figure something out.” After Claude stopped crying, we broke into nervous laughter. Only two miles from home, we couldn’t abandon his bicycle and potatoes. We thought for a while before I said, “My bike can take it. We’ll load your sack on my rear-baggage rack, and you carry your bike on your shoulder.”

After pumping more air into my rear tire, we loaded the potatoes and walked to the edge of the forest. We decided to go to Claude’s house to bypass the center of town. Yet if we walked our bikes to his neighborhood, it would take an hour, and we’d be caught and thrown in jail.

“It’s all downhill from here,” I said. “We’ll chance it.” With a hundred pounds of potatoes in front and a hundred pounds in back, Claude sat side-saddle on the cross bar of my bicycle frame. His one hand on my handlebar, his other holding up his bike, letting the rear wheel roll, Claude balanced between my arms as I steered.

I couldn’t control the speed. The brakes were fully drawn to the handlebars, but there was too much weight. At high speed, out of control, unable to stop, we rode through the dark town not speaking a word. As I tried to slow my rear wheel with my heel, we sped past the silent shuttered houses. Nothing could’ve stopped us, not even a patrol, unless they shot us. At the bottom of the hill, the thought struck me that if the railway-crossing bar was down, we’d be dead. We hit the tracks hard but the front wheel held.

Finally reaching flat road, we slowed to the front of Claude’s house. As we rolled the bikes through his small garden, it dawned on us that we’d have to explain the potatoes. We feared our fathers more than all the obstacles we encountered on our five-day journey. Hearing us arrive, Claude’s parents came to the front door and welcomed us in, exclaiming, “We were so worried!” When they saw the potatoes and Claude’s crushed wheel, they couldn’t believe we had ridden with all that weight.

Four hours after curfew, they realized how lucky we were. Claude’s mother made us chicory coffee with biscuits. Answering their countless questions about our trip, we told them the truth except regarding the day we stole the potatoes. Uncomfortably we said, “On the last day, a farmer took pity on us and sold us two hundred pounds.” I was sure our lies were written across our faces, but they didn’t say anything. Claude’s mother made an extra bed for me, and we slept into the afternoon.

In late 1943, potatoes were a luxury for a poor family. When I arrived home, mother was pleased. Father had been worried we’d been arrested so was happy to see me and hugged me. When I told him the whole story, he thought we were crazy, but I felt terrible having to lie to him about the stolen potatoes.

The potatoes were my third and last theft. When I was seven years old, I stole a toy car from a store in the next town. When my father saw me playing with it, he asked where I got it. As I answered, “A friend gave it to me,” my face turned red, so he knew I was lying. The next morning, he angrily took me by the hand, and in giant steps walked me three miles back to the store, dragging me along—I practically had to run to keep up with him.

Calling the manager of the store, my father said, “Tell the gentleman what you’ve done.” Ashamed, I described how I stole the car while no one was looking. My father said to the manager, “Do you think we should send him to prison?” to which the manager answered very seriously, “Well maybe.” Father said, “Now that you have the thief, you should call the police.” The manager scratched his head and said, “Maybe. But he’s so young.” He turned to me and said, “My little one, if you promise me never, never to steal again, I will let you go this time.” Thanking him, my father said to me, “You’re lucky the manager is a generous man.” I thought I was lucky too as we walked out of the store, and father never said another word about it.

My second theft was trying to be heroic by stealing lead bars for the Resistance. I was arrested and again lucky to be released. My last theft was the only one I got away with.

Yet 37 years later, when my father was an old man of 75, I had the chance to tell him the truth about the potatoes. He sternly looked at me and said, “Son, you lied to me.”

November 23, 1943, was my 15^th birthday. My mother cooked two rabbits, letting them simmer in white wine, and the whole house smelled good. She also saved eggs laid by our four hens and made a soufflé. With a good meal, morale went up. Every time she cooked a rabbit, it would ease my anger about gathering grass for them because it tasted so good.

Even father had his share of gathering grass. Because cigarettes were completely scarce, he’d often collect grass from fields, dry it, roll it in paper, and smoke it like a cigarette. He longed for the war’s end when he could once again buy his good tobacco.

With winter approaching, we gathered as much dead wood as possible to heat the house and wood-burning cooking stove. The only coal we could find for the stove were chunks falling from coal trucks. Running after them, we’d pick up the few pieces that fell.

All the chestnuts had been gathered and stored, and fruits and wild mushrooms were preserved and sealed in glass jars. Since our wooden galoshes were worn out from our summer adventures, father cut strips from old bicycle tires, nailed them to the soles, and hoped they’d last till spring.

In winter, there was no grass to gather and nothing to do except stand in ration lines for mother. Since there were no jobs, my friends and I amused ourselves. On the coldest days, our favorite diversion was to run and jump on ice in the gutter, skating downhill in galoshes.

On warmer days, we built go-carts using old steel ball bearings for wheels. Racing down streets at high speeds, our metal wheels made incredible noise. Daring each other, we steered head on into an old bus that climbed the hill daily. Riding head first underneath the bus, there was plenty of clearance, but it drove the bus driver crazy and eventually our “ball bearing chariots” were banned.

As winter dragged on and we entered the New Year, it was possible to be optimistic. On January 19, 1944, the Soviet Army broke the German siege lines at Leningrad. Three days later, British and American troops stormed ashore at Anzio, 30 miles south of Rome.

Though hopeful, we didn’t know how far we could stretch the food we preserved and what supplies we’d acquire in the future. With nothing to do, hours passed slowly, and hunger and fear tempered our optimism.

Listening to the BBC, father explained how the Americans had tipped the balance of power in World War I and helped save France. Waiting for something for so long, we began to believe the Allies would land any day. I tried to imagine the face of freedom but I couldn’t remember ever being free.

There were already over a million drafted Frenchmen working in German factories, which were under constant attack by Allied bombings. On February 2, 1944, Germany’s forced labor conscription was extended to include all Frenchmen from ages 16 to 60, with exceptions only for heads of families with children. I’d be 16 in November, and father worried that I’d be sent to Germany, so he managed to obtain a new ID card for me: Suddenly I was 13. For weeks, father asked me constantly, “What year were you born?”

Identification checks increased as tensions rose in the German ranks, and raids on public places and cafés by the French police multiplied. Some 45,000 French fascist fanatics volunteered to join vigilante militias to help defend their ideal of law and order, primarily aimed at crushing the Resistance. Armed by Vichy, they terrorized real and imagined enemies in their Basque berets and uniforms. In their twisted ideology, they were determined to “fight bourgeois egoism, capitalism, and Marxism” all at once, and abused their newly acquired power like cowards with special police status.

On April 20 and 21, the Allies heavily bombed an industrial zone in Paris, killing over 600 civilians, giving the Vichy government an opportunity to circulate heavy anti-British and anti-American propaganda.

Allied bombings intensified over German-controlled factories in France. Every night, sirens went off, and entire families spent hours in cellars converted to bomb shelters. Children cried, tempers were short, and old women moaned, “When will it all end?”

On the BBC, we heard strange messages like, “We will force feed the ducks. My wife has a sharp eye. The chimney sweeper has taken a bath. The long sobs of the violin.” In time we realized “sobs of the violin” was code for the Resistance in Brittany and Normandy to blow up railroad lines.

On June 4, Rome fell to Allied forces led by American General Mark Clark. When we heard the news, we thought Paris had to be next, but two days later, the American, British, and Canadian forces—the largest military armada in the history of warfare—landed on the shores of Normandy.

The news sparked incredible euphoria, but it was difficult to be certain of the truth. The collaborative French press, still propagandizing German invincibility, published headlines claiming, “The Invaders Will Be Pushed Back To Sea.” We refused to believe the newspapers and wondered how long it would take the Allies to reach Paris.

With increasing pressure from the landings and the Resistance, German reprisals intensified. As a reaction to the killing of one of their officers, SS troops obliterated the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, 16 miles from Limoges: all the men were executed, women and children were burned alive in their church, and women trying to escape through windows were shot. Only seven survived. After all this senseless murder, a local commander admitted that they had mistakenly punished the wrong village.

In Marly, we didn’t experience such atrocities but could see the Germans were tense. During the first year of occupation, they had shown courtesy to civilians, but by 1944, the policy of good manners eroded into sheer hostility. The Resistance had ambushed and killed too many of the enemy, Germans had shot too many hostages, and the urban population was close to starvation.

Our little garden was not producing enough food for the family, and our winter preserves were long gone. With the Allies advancing in Normandy, I convinced father that the farmers might be willing to sell us some food.

Though father told me not to go too far into Normandy, my secret, naive plan was to reach the battle lines. The British and Americans were my heroes, and I wanted to be among them, to welcome them to France, and to thank them.

Claude replaced his broken bicycle wheel and we set off for Normandy. We traveled westward for hours on back roads, while in the distance, we could see endless columns of German tanks, armored vehicles, and trucks towing artillery to reinforce German lines.

Suddenly squadrons of “double tail” American P-38s dove down one by one, strafing the columns with machine gun fire. Each time one hit an ammunition truck, it would explode in a huge ball of fire. The German convoy, stretching for miles over the main road, was burning, and columns of black smoke rose above the wreckage.

We watched in fascination, and after the explosions quieted, we biked close enough to see charred vehicles and the horror of burnt bodies trapped in their trucks or scattered along the road. From a distance, we admired the grace of American planes with white stars under their wings and the spectacle of the convoy going up in flames, but at close range, we felt sick. As we bicycled away in silence, war had lost its adventurous appeal.

In Normandy, we were close enough to hear shelling but far enough to be safe. Riding on, we saw cows in the fields but all farmers were gone. Finally we found a family of farmers packing to escape the war. When we asked if they could spare some food, they replied, “Anything you can carry, you can have.” In awe, we filled our bags with lard, butter, cheese, and potatoes—we’d never seen people so generous.

With 20 pounds of butter each, we had almost more butter than our ration tickets had provided us over the last three years. The idea of soft lard spread across a slice of bread made my mouth water. With hunger setting in, we spread the soft white fat on our bread for dinner on the side of a small road and forgot about joining the British-American lines—we could hardly go to the front with such a heavy, precious load.

Returning home after dark, my parents were still awake, waiting up for me. As we displayed all the food on the table, they stared in disbelief. Father smelled the cheeses while mother waved flies away from the butter, saying, “To keep this much, I’m going to have to salt it.” Sampling some cheese, father asked what I saw in Normandy. I told him about the burning convoy and how farmers were in such a hurry to escape the war zone, they were giving food away. In the excitement we suddenly realized our bread rations were so small, we’d have little to spread our precious goods on, but at least we could sweeten rutabagas with butter and spread lard over baked potatoes for a great feast.

By late July 1944, German forces with military bands were still parading down the Champs Elysées, while in Normandy, the Americans smashed through German lines in St. Lo, capturing rear artillery positions of the enemy on their way to liberate Brittany. The British and Canadians seized the bombed ruins of Caen and were racing southeast.

In the August heat, German behavior became unpredictable, and increasingly the Germans ransacked and pillaged shops and farmhouses at random. In Marly, SS troops robbed our Café Tobacco store at gunpoint: lining us against the wall, they emptied the cash register and stole what little tobacco there was.

With the Allies so close, my friends and I began to get cocky, often mocking the Germans. In the café where we played billiards, I taunted a German soldier by placing my wrists together as if handcuffed, telling him, “Soon you’ll be a prisoner of the Americans.” With the back of his hand, he angrily hit me and sent me sprawling to the floor, then left, slamming the door behind him. Laughing uneasily, I got up and rubbed my cheek.

In some ways we hated the French police more than the Germans, because they had done the occupiers’ dirty work and behaved like the enemy. In those August days, we could defy them at last. Once as we came out of a movie, they were checking our ID cards as usual when I said to the French plainclothes officer, “Soon the Americans will be checking yours.” He grabbed me, took me to the police station, and booked me for “insulting an officer of the law.” I assured him, “Soon your days of collaboration will be over, and you’ll have to answer for your actions.” He slapped me to the floor, and I repeated, “You’ll have to answer.” He slapped me down again, but I got up and said, “The war is ending! You will have to answer.” He hit me again—this time I went down and stayed down.

The next morning, my father came to pick me up. Seeing me bruised and with black eyes, he glared at the duty officer, demanding, “Who did that to him?” He won’t get away with it!” But with France still a police state, he did get away with it. Meekly, the duty officer replied, “I don’t know anything. I wasn’t on duty.” He read my father the charges held against me and I was released, and we never heard from them again.

On August 15, a massive allied force landed on a hundred-mile coastal strip from Nice to Marseilles. For the first time, the Free French Army was participating in the invasion. While the U.S. Seventh Army was fighting in the streets of Cannes, the Resistance took over several Savoy villages, and in Paris, “La Marseillaise” was sung in the streets.

For the first time, we saw occupying forces in and around Marly retreating eastward in military vehicles, horsedrawn carts, loaded bicycles, and anything with wheels they could steal. From a distance, we watched humiliated Germans falling back through narrow streets of Marly, joining the exodus of August 1944. Seeing a break in their long procession line gave me an idea.

For four years, the Germans had posted road signs in their own language. As the Germans methodically relied on their own signs, it dawned on me that we could easily create confusion for retreating forces.

During occupation, it was not permitted to publicly assemble in groups larger than three, so in three groups of three, we set out to the outskirts of town. Each group had a lookout and a hammer. As signs were placed high up on telephone poles, we quickly climbed our friends’ shoulders, yanked out the signs, turned them around, and hammered them back in so that at each intersection, the retreating Germans would go left instead of straight.

Later, again in groups of three, we stood waiting in the upper part of town to see if the Germans faithfully followed their signs. I said, “If this works, everything will stop.” Within a few hours, the head column met the tail. Nothing moved: as far as the eye could see, roads were jammed with German cars, bicycles, and horsedrawn carts in a fantastic standstill. As the German soldiers craned their necks trying to see what was blocking their retreat, my friends and I, immensely enjoying ourselves, slapped each other on the back, saying, “Not bad.”

Watching the Germans flee, we thought the Americans couldn’t be far. From the BBC, we heard the Allies were advancing fast, and there were reports that some German units were surrendering at the first sight of an Allied plane. When a fighter-bomber came upon a convoy of tanks, some crews fled, leaving behind white flags in their vehicles.

Again Claude and I wanted to join the American and British lines, so Claude’s mother sewed us a huge American flag with 53 stars, not realizing that America had only 48 states at the time.

On our bicycles, we set off westward, with our American flag flying high. Nobody knew where the Allies were, but people told us, “Be careful, there still might be some Germans around.” Seeing the American banner, they said, “It’s a little early for that. You might get shot.”

We weren’t shot. There were no Germans, but after traveling for miles and miles, there were no Allies either. Unable to find a single British or American soldier, we returned home dejected.

On August 22, Allied forces in Italy took Florence and the next day took Marseilles and Grenoble. Since Marly wasn’t on any of the main arteries to the capital, we knew any action would be in Paris.

General George Patton’s American Third Army swept through Orléans, Chartres, and Dreux to link with the British advancing on Rouen, while the Germans pulled back across the Seine. In Paris, street fighting broke out as the police went on strike and seized Ile de la Cité on the Seine. Eisenhower then took action, contacting the Resistance to overtake the Préfecture while sending orders for General Leclerc’s French Second Armored Division to enter Paris.

On August 25, French tanks led the Allies into Paris. While Hitler questioned the German command, “Is Paris burning?” General Von Choltitz surrendered to Leclerc and ordered a ceasefire: he had defied Hitler’s order to destroy Paris before accepting defeat.

Four years of occupation suddenly ended—we had waited so long. The Nazi swastika was torn down from the Eiffel Tower, and the Americans, British, and Canadians began celebrating the liberation of Paris to the cheers of millions.

It seemed as if the whole population of Paris was in the streets. People danced, girls, women, and children kissed, grandmothers hugged the Allies with tears in their eyes, and a tide of joy swept the streets. With our 53-star American flag, we cheered the tanks, half-tracks, and friendly-looking American Jeeps.

Singing and laughing, people climbed on top of Jeeps and trucks parading through Paris. In an endless flow of wine, elated Parisians thanked and welcomed the Allies with filled glasses and embraces. Hidden bottles of vintage cognac and champagne had been saved for that very day. Back on April 26, 1944, Marshal Pétain, the leader and symbol of French collaboration, was cheered by thousands at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris. From that same place, four months later on August 25, General de Gaulle delivered his liberation speech, before the joyful masses.

De Gaulle began his emotional speech:”…Paris standing up to liberate itself, by its own hands…Paris outraged…But Paris liberated by itself, liberated by its people with the participation of the Armies of France, with the support and participation of the whole nation, the fighting France, the only France, the true France, of the eternal France…”

The huge crowds cheered, and so did we, but we felt outraged. De Gaulle, “the man who saved France’s honor,” did not even mention the great sacrifices of the British, Americans, and Canadians who made the liberation possible.

Others noticed the omission too: four days later, in a radio address, the General said, “France renders equal homage to the brave and good Allied Armies and their leaders whose unstoppable offensive made the liberation of Paris possible.”

The French Revolution of 1789 had initiated a sad tradition of anonymous denunciations, which reemerged during German occupation and again at the liberation of France. Though many Resistance groups participated heroically in winning our freedom from Nazi rule, the last days of August produced a new breed of overnight patriots who acted on anonymous accusations to punish the “Collabos” with summary justice. Those unappointed judges persecuted young women suspected of sleeping with Germans by shaving their heads and parading them down our streets to be jeered by crowds. The loud men leading the parades had never encountered the dangers, arrests, tortures, and firing squads endured by the Resistance. They were a long way away from the quiet hero I met in the forest during the dark days of German occupation.

The Germans had marched into my life, goose-stepping in their steel-studded boots, waking us every morning with the din of regimented heels. But when the Americans arrived, we were amazed by the soft-stepping sound of their rubber combat boots. They behaved and moved like free men, not as marching machines.

At last, one morning, Claude and I met our first American in Marly. When we discovered him, kids had already surrounded his Dodge military pickup truck. He didn’t speak French and none of us spoke English, but he gave us “K-Ration” packages containing spam, hard chocolate, instant coffee, milk, and cigarettes. He grimaced at the American K-Rations and puzzled us by making drawings of peaches, apples, and pears. Suddenly we understood that “Bill of Charlotte, North Carolina” was looking for fresh food.

So we jumped in the passenger seat and pointed to the open country where farmers might be generous to our newfound friend. In the orchards, few people had seen our liberators, and they greeted Bill as a one-man army, filling his truck with all the fruits and vegetables of the season. At each orchard, farmers toasted him with champagne and vintage wines, and placed prewar bottles of Eau de Vie, (Water of Life), 25 percent alcohol or 50 proof, into Bill’s crates of vegetables.

After all the kisses from women, girls, children, grandmothers, and all the hugs from old men, “Bill of Carolina” drove back to his camp in the forest of Marly, less than a mile from “Trou d’Enfer.”There he received his second hero’s welcome, cheered by the men and officers in his platoon. We didn’t understand much, but it was obvious that Bill explained we had led him to fresh food. All of them shook our hands and slapped our backs.

We were surprised at the ease of manners between enlisted men and the officers with silver or gold bars, or other signs of rank on their shoulders. American soldiers were different from the French and German soldiers we encountered. The French were more rank conscious and contentious, and the Germans had the discipline of robots, while the Americans seemed less regimented and more egalitarian.

In following days, we brought Bill of Carolina and some of his friends home for dinner. We thought they’d be pleased to eat rabbit cooked in white wine, but when I drew a picture of a rabbit with two long ears, there was an uneasy lull.

It was inconceivable to father that anyone would be reluctant to eat the family’s rabbit, so he brought from the cellar two bottles of Pommard wine saved since the war began and proudly displayed the label, having everyone smell the aroma.

Pouring the wine, we toasted the Americans. I never drank wine—I drank lemonade—but for that day, father gave me half a glass. To soften the taste, I thinned my wine with water as father yelled in despair, “How can you put water in my Pommard?” The soldiers laughed, and I went back to my lemonade.

As the evening went on, father brought out his homemade 50 proof Eau de Vie and plum schnapps, and they drank happily. Mother served her traditional meal, and the soldiers tasted the rabbit reluctantly, but after the first bite, they enjoyed it. Rabbit was our luxury meal, but for our next American guests, we’d say it was chicken.

After enjoying the exuberance of the Americans, their dances, music, and optimism of Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood,” I fell into a kind of post-liberation blues as the euphoria of liberation faded. American forces offered many jobs but to English-speaking French personnel only. Following long, fruitless daily searches for jobs in Paris, my fights with mother resumed as I went on gathering grass for the rabbits. Without a paycheck to bring home, I felt deeply troubled that I wasn’t earning my keep—the fact of which mother continually reminded me.

I began to feel like a parasite, guilty for consuming even the most meager meals at the family table, so I often refused to eat lunch and dinner, claiming I was going to visit Pierre, an older friend, whose family often invited me to their home. Instead I’d escape to my “dear mysterious forest,” to a soft moss-covered hole where I could write poetry until nightfall.

In my poems, I wrote of following the sun to its destination as it set through the birches, oaks, and chestnut trees. On overcast days, I wrote of birds I’d never seen that could fly above the highest clouds and ride the wind. Always I wrote of rebellion and freedom from injustice.

My oldest sister Paulette, who was 10 years old, often came at dusk with a sandwich and instructions from Papa saying I would not be punished if I came home with her, but I never did. I’d ask my sister if she was afraid of the dark forest and she’d answer, “No! You are here.” After escorting her to the road leading home, I’d return to my refuge.

When I slept there, it was cold and damp, but the morning brought visits from squirrels, and I shared with them a few crumbs of bread. One clear night, a wild boar family ran Indian file along a hunter’s trail a few yards away, their feet crunching the dead leaves. Another time I heard the rustling of light footsteps and saw a deer looking at me inquisitively, unafraid.

Though I loved my forest and my town, I knew I could not stay. It was in that hole in the forest I reviewed the last four years of my life and decided to leave France.

France was liberated but not free. The privileged elite of the governing class were in France to stay, blocking my way to a better future, and there was no way I would spend the rest of my life under their control.