“I WAS WRONG ABOUT THE FRENCH”

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 10, 22 May 1944, Page 7

“I WAS WRONG ABOUT THE FRENCH”

By Brigadier James Hargest, in The Listener, England, March 2, 1944 Brigadier Hargest, of the 2 N.Z.E.F., who was captured in Libya in 1941, escaped fom an Italian prison camp to Switzerland and finally reached England.

I came through France not very long ago. It goes without saying that I did so as inconspicuously as possible ; the slightest slip might have meant another spell of prison, and this time probably in Germany itself. Well, if I have to enter Germany again I should like it to be under different auspices. But even in these circumstances I met a lot of French people, people of all types and classes, and all of them were extraordinarily good to me and anxious to help me. I saw a lot of Germans, too, and I learnt a great deal about them. I travelled and ate with them ; I even worked for them during a part of one curious day ; but I took jolly good care for my skin’s sake not to have to talk to them. I did notice that the German soldier was not as smart and fresh as he was two years ago ; in fact, his clothes and his general bearing are showing distinct signs of wear. Not that he does not do himself pretty well. He does, and at the station buffets he always has bread and butter and sausages, while the French civilian can only get bread. One thing amused me when I was there. Every night there were leave trains packed with Germans going on leave from the north of France to the Riviera. They seemed to prefer to spend their leave in the south of France rather than go home to the blitzed Fatherland; you can’t very well blame them for that. I certainly didn’t see any signs of arrogance in them. On the contrary it is almost pathetic to see how they go out of their way to please the French. They give up their seats to women ; you see them taking their turn in queues ; they are careful to say “ Thank you,” rather like well-trained children. Not that these little courtesies make any difference to the French, who, when they do have

to talk to Germans, do it with icy politeness. Believe me, they make them feel their position as only French people, can. I remember one morning I was in a room where several French working-men were sitting about and a German sergeantmajor came in. There was no fuss, but one by one they just turned their backs on him. They didn’t know me, but they did know I wasn’t a German and they made a place for me nearer the fire. But the German sergeant-major was left standing there awkwardly knocking out his pipe, and all he could see in front of him was a row of backs. Those fellows froze him out. No, I don’t really envy the German in the army of occupation. If a Frenchwoman goes out with one, her people have their own way of dealing with her. And if a Frenchman has any dealing with the enemy, well, he may get a warning in the shape of a miniature coffin delivered at his house. If he goes on, it is quite likely that he himself fills a larger coffin. Perhaps in the past I have been an unfair critic of the French. I really believed they were effete ; that they just gave in in 1940 and became apathetic. And while I was in prison in Italy the Italian propagandists went to a lot of trouble to tell me so. That is all wrong, and from my experience I now know that a whole lot of my other preconceived ideas about France were wrong, too. Perhaps you may be as mistaken as I was. A few days after I got back here—l was still wearing a woollen jacket a Frenchman had taken off his own back and given to me to keep me warman Englishwoman said to me : “ These French ! What’s happened to them is their own fault; they won’t fight.”

She was a very loyal British subject ; but she was saying exactly the sort of things the Germans want us all to say and all to believe. And it’s not true. I believe that French men and women to-day are carrying their dreadful burdens with a sublime courage. The French people are not effete ; at least I saw no signs of their being so. They look surprisingly active and virile for a people who have been under the whip of the invader for three and a half years—who have been denied their freedom to an extent completely beyond our imagination. I did see signs of great hardship. Yes, their clothes are shabby, their faces are thin and drawn, but they hold their heads high. I watched them on railway-stations and in the streets, and but for the fact that they rarely smile, and more rarely speak to each other, especially in trains and trams, they carry themselves much as we do here. Shabbily dressed they certainly are. It is next to impossible to get leather, and stockings are even harder to come by. I noticed many women wearing canvas shoes and no stockings at all, even though it was winter-time. Their skirts are darned too, but, typical of the Frenchwoman, they still manage to look neat. And, more typical still, they all seem to be wearing lovely hats. To me those hats were symbols of defiance against adversity, and again and again I was distracted and enchanted by them. I can even describe them in a sort of a waymostly tall, like pointed busbies, with a soft ball like a powder-puff dangling on one side. I was told that as a hat does not require much material, the Germans had not discouraged the trade. How are the French people standing up to the Germans ? Let me tell you one story I heard'. When the Allied Armies landed in North Africa the Germans suffered a momentary panic in France. They asked the French railway management if they could completely evacuate all the German troops from France in twenty-four hours. “ No,” they said, “ we can’t do that, but we shall be delighted to do it in forty-eight hours.”

Fighting the Enemy all the Time They are fighting the enemy all the time. When the men are called up for labour service in Germany most of them refuse to go. Instead they take to the mountains, to the maquis. In one district of High Savoy, out of 4,500 men who were called up only eleven appeared at the police-station—the rest are in the maquis. There they fight and they hunt and they are hunted. Often they have nowhere to live and they have to sleep out in the open, and they depend for their food mostly on what their friends can take them. When I was there the Germans were waiting for the snow to fall so that they could track them down. Now the snow has come, and I read in the paper the other day : “ The men of the maquis have been cut off and surrounded by Joseph Darnand’s police forces in the high mountains, and • their annihilation is now merely a question of time.” Merely a question of time, and when they are caught they are shot. But still they go on, ambushing the Germans day and night, until now they have them reduced to a state of terror. I met men of the resistance movement, too —fine, tough-looking fellows they were who fight and destroy and go on destroying ; only they haven’t enough weapons to fight with. But with what they have they blow up trains and they throw bombs into German billets and cinemas. Of course, they are caught and shot ; or if they are not caught some one else is taken and shot in their place. Not that that stops them. Even while I was there, trains I was on were twice held up by derailments. And one night an express was blown up and forty people were killed, half of them French. It was a pity, they said, this losing of French lives ; but it was inevitable, and what mattered was that twenty Germans had been killed. And the attitude of the French people towards Vichy ? That’s a question I’m always being asked. I talked to all kinds of people, and on this their views were unanimous. They loathe the Government ; they depise Laval, and they will kill the collaborators. For Marshal Petain what they feel is contempt.

To begin with they trusted him ; they respected his old age ; but that feeling has long since changed to anger. Naturally Vichy has its followers, especially among young boys who are more easily seduced into accepting Nazi ideals. They have been enrolled into what is called the Vichy Militia. And now that the Germans are obviously going to get beaten, these young men have become vicious and even more German than the Germans. And they are being used for terror purposes, but when the German Armies are forced to retreat the Vichy Militia will have to go with them ; it certainly won’t be safe for them to stay in their own country. If a Frenchman openly opposes Vichy, he is persecuted, and age does not save him. I remember one elderly man I met one night whose story was typical of many. Once he opposed Petain and his Government ; that was three years ago, but for three years he has been a fugitive, constantly on the run. If he is caught he will be punished ; it does not matter about his age, and it does not matter that he has given a lifetime of service to his country. Waiting for the Allied Armies The French people admire the British —for myself, I feel sure of that. They admire our going on alone after France had fallen. Their hopes are centred on us and our victory. When we bomb French towns they do not blame us; they understand. When the 8.8. C. announcer tells them the news, they believe it, as they certainly don’t the Vichy newspapers and the German radio stories. I was in scarcely one house where they did not tune into the 8.8. C. every time it came on the air in the European Service. They are waiting for the arrival of the Allied Armies, and they hope it will be soon. In my case they sheltered me, and fed me and guided me, and they refused to take anything in return. I knew that food was scarce, and yet, despite my protests, they insisted on feeding me very well, although I felt they would be going without after I

had gone. Once I asked a man whether a certain venture we were up to was safe. “ Yes,” he said. “ You see if we are captured at least you’ll have a trial, though I’ll be shot like a dog.” When it was all over and I would have liked to give him a souvenir he said : No, don’t spoil it. One day your armies will land ; that’s all I want, just that chance to fight again.” I could go on for a long time with stories of the care the French took of my safety ; but I will leave it there. You will understand why I admire and love them, and why a lot of my preconceived ideas about them have altered. France is a sad country to-day—unspeak-ably sad. There’s an awful sense of oppression. It is like a blight over the land, and you feel it everywhere you go — the towns and in the countryside. You rarely see people smile in the street. The houses are unpainted, the fences are down, the leaves lie in the streets. Many people told me it was not shabbiness or hunger that affected them ; it was this awful fear of something impending —a new levy, a new arrest as hostage, or the disappearance of a friend. They are itching for the moment when they can openly join in the fighting again to free France. But in spite of everything they have kept their sense of humour. I saw it often ; it’s a thing the Germans cannot do anything about. I’m no beauty at the best of times, and at that time I was looking even less fetching than usual. But one day walking along a road I got quite a build-up. I passed a mother and her small daughter going in the same direction. I heard the little one say : “ Mummu, is that man a German ? ” “Oh no,” her mother said. “ All Germans carry guns and swords and they are all ugly.” I shall never forget the way the French helped me, a fugitive, nor the inspiration of their courage. And I keep hearing those words they used to say to me so often when I was thanking them or saying good-bye : “It is nothing is for France.”