Michael at the Invasion of France, 1943 Read online

  “Papa, I am a scout now!”

  “That’s nice,” he said. He greeted Maman and then sat in his chair with the newspaper.

  I tried to tell him about my scout meeting.

  “Not now,” he said. “I’m trying to read the paper.”

  I sat on the edge of the sofa and waited for him to finish. He didn’t look up until the door opened and Georges rushed in.

  Papa folded his newspaper and let it drop to the floor. “Georges, how did the math test go?” he asked.

  Georges sat next to me and talked about his test. Together the two of them laughed and joked as if I wasn’t even there. Unseen, I trudged to my room, ripped off my scout uniform, and stomped on it. Maman came in and held me, but that wasn’t what I wanted then. I wanted Papa.

  Later, they argued and I heard my name. After that, Papa talked to me sometimes and even let me tag along on some of his outings with Georges, but I knew it was only because Maman made him. The only time I ever really drew Papa’s full attention was when I had done something wrong.

  This was a big wrong—the biggest. I should never have pulled Georges’s uniform shirt out of the trash. Later, Maman tried to assure me that the Gestapo would have found Georges even without the shirt. But I knew it was my fault, and Papa would think so too. If we survived the war, if I ever saw Papa again, he would hate me for this forever.

  • • •

  Maman went to every German office she could find to plead for Georges’s release, but it was no use. He was a prisoner and would remain one until the war was over.

  We were trudging home from one such attempt when a man said that Marshal Pétain was on the radio. We crowded into a café to hear him. While Nazi soldiers paraded through the streets taking pictures like tourists, we listened to the marshal tell us that he was the new leader of the French government.

  “I give France the gift of myself to ease her troubles,” he said.

  People seemed to relax. Marshal Pétain had saved France in the last war with Germany in 1918. He was a hero. He’ll drive the Germans out of France, I thought, like he did in the Great War.

  Instead, Pétain told us about his terrible deal with Hitler. He announced that he had asked for an armistice—a truce. France had not been defeated. France had given up.

  In exchange for his surrender, Marshal Pétain got to keep a portion of southern France while the Nazis took over the rest of the country, including Paris. They called the south the Free Zone, but that wasn’t true. Pétain was a German puppet.

  The Nazis took over our radio stations and our newspapers. They wanted to control everything we read and everything we heard, but that didn’t stop Maman and me. The day after Pétain handed France over to the Nazis, Maman and I listened to the English news on the BBC hoping for news of Papa. I fiddled with the dial, trying to find the signal amid the static. To our surprise, we heard a French voice. He said he was General Charles de Gaulle. He was in London and he had not surrendered.

  “France has lost the battle; she has not lost the war,” he said. He spoke of the need to keep fighting and invited all Frenchmen in British territory to join him.

  “Papa must be with him,” I said. “Papa has not given up.” I kept my hand on the dial, turning it when the static got too loud.

  The general continued. “Whatever happens, the flame of resistance must not and will not be extinguished.”

  I whispered the words to myself. “The flame of resistance must not and will not be extinguished.” Perhaps Papa would forgive me a little bit for Georges’s arrest if I helped to keep that flame alive. I was sure that he was doing the same thing in England.

  I looked at Maman. “Vive la France,” I whispered.

  She took my hand. We both had tears in our eyes. “Yes,” she said. “Long live France.”

  • • •

  I slept easier after hearing de Gaulle’s speech. Then, a few mornings later, I woke to pounding on the door. I stumbled out of bed and met Maman and Charlotte in the hall. We held each other, fearing the worst. Was the Gestapo here to arrest me for lying about Georges? Then I heard my name.

  “Michael! Michael!”

  The voice sounded desperate, almost hysterical.

  “It’s Pierre. Please let me in. It’s Pierre.”

  We ran to the door and found my friend Pierre Corbin. He and his family had fled south, along with most of Paris, when it became clear that the Nazis would invade the city. I thought he must have made it to the Free Zone. But he was at our door with torn clothes, dried blood on his cheek, and wild eyes. Tears ran down his face. Maman pulled him into the apartment and into her arms.

  “They’re gone,” he wailed. “I’ve lost them.”

  Maman led him to the sofa. He hobbled like an old man. Maman rocked him in her arms until his sobs slowed enough for him to speak. “The roads were so crowded with refugees that it took a whole day to go just a few miles in the car,” he said. “We ran out of gas. We couldn’t buy any. There was no food to buy, no hotel rooms anywhere. We slept one night on the side of the road and then started walking. There were thousands of us—so many that we could hardly move.”

  Pierre shook his head. “German planes swooped down and fired machine guns at us to clear the roads for their tanks and their soldiers,” he said. “There was panic. I tried to run but I got knocked down. So many people running that I couldn’t get up again. I lost sight of Maman and Papa and my brothers. I looked and I looked, but in the chaos . . .” His voice trailed off. His eyes stared at me, unseeing. I could tell he was watching that moment over and over again in his mind.

  “There were bodies,” he whispered. “After the Germans raced through, I saw them. Facedown. Shot. Trampled. I didn’t turn them over. What if—” He couldn’t bring himself to ask the question. He was silent for a long while.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” he said finally. “I decided to walk back to Paris. I hoped my family would be home, waiting for me.” The tears started to fall again. “They’re not there. No one is there. I don’t know where they are.”

  Even though it was a warm summer morning, Pierre couldn’t stop shivering. Maman wrapped him in a blanket and got him to lie down in my bed. She whispered to him until he finally fell asleep. That night he woke up screaming for his mother. He did that night after night.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Verboten

  July 1940

  We visited Pierre’s apartment every day, hoping to find his family. He trembled whenever he saw a Nazi. I learned to pull him into doorways when I heard them coming. Pierre was not alone in losing his family. The most popular section in the Paris-Soir newspaper was the “Missing Persons” column. Thousands of people had gotten separated from their families in the mad panic. Even little children were found wandering alone.

  It was weeks before Pierre’s whole family was together in Paris again. His two older sisters were the first to arrive. Pierre fell into their arms when they showed up at our door looking for him. They held each other and cried for a long time, but none of them had news of their parents.

  Jacques moved back to the family apartment with his sisters, and I kept up my habit of checking every day to see if the rest of the Corbins had returned. One day his concierge greeted me with a wink and a smile.

  I didn’t stop to talk to her. I raced up the stairs.

  Pierre opened the door and his whole family was inside. Mr. and Mrs. Corbin kept hugging Pierre and his sisters and even me. There was a feast spread out on the table—meats and cheeses and cakes and chocolates—foods I hadn’t seen since the Germans arrived. Everyone was laughing and crying and eating and hugging all at the same time.

  Finally I learned that Mr. Corbin had been put to work by the Nazis. While he was searching for his children, they discovered that he spoke perfect German as well as French. It had taken hi
m this long to convince them to let him and Mrs. Corbin return to Paris, but they had driven him home and rewarded him with the makings of this reunion feast.

  The Nazis were on their best behavior in the early days of the Occupation, but they never let us forget who was in charge. They hung an enormous banner reading GERMANY IS VICTORIOUS ON ALL FRONTS across our parliament building. They goose-stepped down the Champs-Élysées, our finest avenue, singing “We Are Marching on England.” German military music blared from French radio.

  There were posters all over Paris, trying to brainwash us into believing the Nazis were good. One was a picture of a smiling German soldier giving out jam sandwiches to French children while they stared at him like he was Father Christmas. The caption read: “Abandoned citizens, trust in the soldiers of the Third Reich.” Other posters used ugly drawings to blame the English and the Jews for the war, but most of the posters began with the Nazi’s favorite word: verboten. Forbidden.

  It was verboten to walk down the street between nine o’clock at night and five o’clock in the morning. It was verboten to enter cafés and movie houses that the Germans took for themselves. It was verboten to refuse German money. It was verboten to help escaped prisoners, especially English prisoners. There was a warning beneath that poster, written in big bold letters and underlined twice: ON PAIN OF DEATH.

  Even though we were surrounded by enemy soldiers, some things got back to normal—or what we began to think of as normal. They reopened the banks, the post offices, and the métro, our subway train. French policemen went back to work, and in July my school reopened.

  Pierre, Jacques, and I walked to school together that first morning. I told them about General de Gaulle’s speech. I had memorized some of the words and repeated them now. “The flame of resistance must not and will not be extinguished,” I said. “We have to resist. It’s our duty to become soldiers for France.”

  “Let’s be a resisters club,” Jacques said.

  “I already did something,” I told him.

  “What?” Jacques asked.

  “A boche asked me for directions to Napoleon’s Tomb yesterday, and I gave him the wrong ones,” I said proudly. It was the first time I used the word boche out loud. It was a slang word for the Nazis that they especially hated. “I sent him in the exact opposite direction.”

  Jacques laughed. “My papa won’t change our clock,” he said. “We’re still on French time.”

  The Germans had told us to move our clocks to Berlin time—the official time of the Third Reich. “Good idea,” I said. “What else can we do?”

  Jacques looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was within listening distance. “We could tear down their posters.”

  “Yes! Let’s do everything that’s verboten,” I said. “We have to remind people that there are still Frenchmen fighting for France. Not like Marshal Pétain.”

  “We could write messages on walls and leave notes behind on the métro,” Jacques added.

  The two of us were getting more and more excited, but Pierre was quiet. When he finally spoke, his words were like a bucket of cold water poured over our heads.

  “What’s so bad about Pétain?” he asked. “My father supports him. He says it’s best to go along.”

  “Go along?” I gaped at him. Some French people thought fascism was better than democracy and welcomed the Nazis, but I was shocked that someone I had known practically my whole life could say such a thing.

  “England forced us into war, not Germany. Why should we fight for England? Germany is our partner now,” he said.

  “You want the Germans to be in charge of France?” Jacques asked. He seemed just as stunned as I was.

  “Better the Germans than the English,” Pierre said. “Hitler and the marshal will make sure the new French state will be better and stronger than your republic ever was.”

  “The same Hitler whose troops machine-gunned innocent people on the roads of France?” I asked.

  Pierre struggled to find an answer, then he shrugged. “Sometimes civilians get caught up in war. My father says we should have kept our heads and never tried to flee Paris. The Germans did nothing to harm the people who stayed behind.”

  “They arrested Georges,” I said.

  Jacques changed the subject. “America is going to enter the war, and they’ll beat the Nazis.”

  I was considered the expert on America since I was half American. I nodded, expressing a confidence I didn’t really feel. “America always wins,” I said fiercely. “Always.”

  Pierre snorted. “Americans are only interested in their precious dollars.” He didn’t look me in the eye. “Americans are greedy,” he said. “They don’t care about France.”

  I was astounded. Pierre was quoting German lies as if they were truths. Did he really believe them or was he just afraid? I opened my mouth to argue, but Jacques signaled me to be quiet. Already people were being encouraged to turn in their neighbors to the Kommandantur if they did anything against the rules. Would Pierre do such a thing to his best friends? We walked the rest of the way to school in silence.

  When we got to our classroom, our desks were open. Our tutor, Monsieur Declos, sat at the front of the room looking sad and tired.

  Jacques picked up a book. “Someone’s gone through our things,” he said.

  I flipped through my history book. Some pages were torn out. On other pages, new typewritten sections had been pasted in over the original text. I scanned the section on the Great War and I gasped. The book had been changed to read that France and its Allies had won a shameful victory over Germany, one that the glorious Third Reich, under Hitler’s leadership, would set right.

  I wondered how many men and how many hours it had taken to do this. Did all the history books in France now blame us for the last war? Did they all celebrate Hitler?

  I looked my teacher for an explanation. He simply stared straight ahead.

  The Nazis had rewritten history.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

  September 1940

  Monsieur Declos said little about the changes in our textbooks that first morning. He called us to attention and began teaching. We fell into our old school routine, but I noticed in the coming weeks that we had no history lessons. I guessed that Monsieur Declos could not bring himself to teach Nazi lies.

  One morning, we arrived in our schoolroom to see France’s motto—liberté, égalité, fraternité—in big letters on the blackboard. For once Monsieur Declos did not have to tell us to be quiet and take our seats. We knew something was about to happen.

  “France has a new motto,” Monsieur Declos said.

  We stared at him with blank expressions.

  “Marshal Pétain—the great savior of France—has done away with ‘Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.’” He stood and put a big chalk mark through the words. “Now we have ‘Work, Family, Country.’ Do you understand the difference?”

  No hands were raised.

  “There is no place for liberty in the new France,” our teacher said sadly. “Liberty has been replaced by slave labor. Fraternity, with family. Do you know why?”

  Monsieur Declos answered his own question. “In a society in which a man is only loyal to his family and his country, he will readily turn in his neighbor to the Kommandantur.”

  Stefan Duval, a boy who admired the Nazis, got to his feet. “If my neighbor is doing something against the government, then it’s my duty to turn him in,” he said. “The marshal knows what’s best.”

  “Pétain and Hitler want blind obedience. You can only have that in a country in which there is no equality,” our teacher said. “The new job of the French is to produce goods and soldiers for the Third Reich so that Adolf Hitler can go out and conquer more countries.”

  Stefan stormed out o
f the room. Pierre pushed his chair back as if he was going to join him, but he didn’t. Jacques and I exchanged excited looks. Here was someone who was not afraid to speak for France! Monsieur Declos was keeping the flame alive.

  The next day Stefan swaggered into class wearing the dark shirt, beret, and badge of the Young Guards, a fascist club that trained boys to be Nazis. He didn’t openly threaten our teacher, but his meaning was clear.

  Monsieur Declos ignored the threat. He continued to speak out against the Germans and Pétain.

  Until the day he disappeared.

  We arrived at school one morning to find a new teacher sitting at Monsieur Declos’s desk. We filed into the room and stood behind our desks. He stood, raised his right arm in the Nazi salute, and greeted us with a very loud “Heil Hitler.”

  Stefan answered the salute with one of his own. “Sieg Heil,” he yelled. “Hail victory.”

  Their words sent a chill down my spine. Our new teacher locked eyes with one boy and then another, waiting for them to respond as Stefan had. No other class in school had been asked to do such a thing. Were we being punished for Monsieur Declos? I watched the boys in my class surrender one by one and raise their arms in the Hitler salute. Most dropped their eyes to the floor when they did so.

  Pierre raised his arm and muttered Stefan’s words.

  Anger bubbled inside me. It made it even worse that a Frenchman wanted us to salute the enemy. Were the boys around me cowards, or did they feel the same way as Stefan and Pierre?

  The teacher made his way around the room. My anger turned to panic the closer he got to me. Jacques caught my eye and shook his head. He would refuse. Would I?

  I held my breath as the teacher’s eyes landed on Jacques. My friend looked the man right in the eye, but did nothing. The teacher’s eyes bored into Jacques’s, waiting. Slowly, without blinking, my friend brought his right hand to his forehead and saluted in way of the French and the Americans. He said nothing.