A holiday in Occupied France

In April I had the good fortune to spend nine days in the south-west of France, in a little town called Castillon-la-Bataille, and in Bordeaux. I needed to scope out scenes for the new book and working out how SOE agents and the Resistance could get around during the day and night unseen to do their sabotage. The town, then called Castillon sur Dordogne, was in Occupied France (the Dordogne was the border).

I stayed with the delightful Janie and Mickey at Chez Castillon, a four-story town house in a side street near the market square.

I knew I'd made the right decision to go there when Janie told me that in WW2 the house had been used as a hospital for German officers. Right, I thought, it's going in the book!! The Germans didn't have the lovely swimming pool, though...

 In the Second World War, Castillon-la-Bataille was called Castillon-sur-Dordogne, as it lies on the lovely Dordogne river.  The name changed on November 27, 1953 to commemorate the Battle of Castillon in 1453, in which the English forces were defeated. It was the last battle of the Hundred Years War.
 



In WW2 the town was on the frontier between Occupied France and Vichy France and there was a checkpoint on the bridge over the Dordogne.  It's now such a pretty bridge, as you can see, but it’s not the bridge that stood there in 1943. That bridge was blown up and it will suffer the same fate in my book.

The demarcation line between Occupied France and Vichy France was very idiosyncratic, especially around Castillon. For a distance it followed the Lidoire river, which flows into the Dordogne near Castillon, then it went along the Dordogne for a short distance, before turning south to Sauveterre-de-Guyenne.

Under the Franco-German Armistice Convention France was divided up on 25 June 1940 into two main zones on either side of an arbitrary line that cut across départements, municipalities, fields and woods. The position of the line changed according to German whims and requirements. 

The German-occupied northern zone covered just over half the country. In the south was a "free zone" with the town of Vichy as its “capital” and a puppet government. The Germans kept the entire Atlantic coast along with the main industrial regions. A whole series of measures that severely restricted movement of people, goods and postal traffic between the two zones was enacted. The Germans put pressure on Vichy France at will by “opening” or “closing” the line when they wanted. Thus they kept a stranglehold on France and its economy.

For a while not even letters could pass between the zones. 
It wasn't until September 1940, that the “interzone card”, or “family card”, could be exchanged by families or friends. It  bore a series of pre-printed formulae and only allowed correspondents to provide very brief and impersonal news. Not a single word could be added to it. 

At almost 1,200km, the demarcation line was too long even for the Germans to guard entirely. Sentry boxes and barriers were set up at crossing points and there were regular patrols along the border. There was a similar system on the Vichy side, although it was a good deal patchier owing to lack of men and resources.

The demarcation line could only be crossed at official crossing points and upon presentation of an identity card and an Ausweis (pass) provided by the Kommandanturen (Offices of the German authorities, responsible for military and civil administration of a given area). 

The Ausweis was only granted if the application was accompanied by a full set of documents including identity photographs, certificate of nationality and reason for crossing, and it was given only in accepted cases of urgent need (births, burials or serious illnesses of close relations). All those wishing to cross were faced with an endless series of procedures and interminable waiting periods. 

 Anyone living within 10km of either side of the demarcation line could request an “Ausweis für den kleinen Grenzverkehr” (pass for local cross-border travel) allowing them to move across, but only for a set period of time.

The Germans took over the richest agricultural and industrial regions: the occupied zone produced 72.5% of wheat, 78% of barley, 80% of oats, 70% of potatoes, 87% of butter, 95% of steel and 76% of coal. With raw materials “confiscated” to supply the German economy,Vichy France's industrial and agricultural sectors severely disabled if not completely paralysed. The situation became particularly difficult in areas bordering the line, with companies cut off from their workforces and farmers from their fields. Difficulties in obtaining provisions led to major food shortages, even the serious risk of starvation. 

Unsurprisingly, smuggling became rife. on foot, by bicycle, by rowing boat, in carts full of manure, in barrels – all possible methods were employed to smuggle black market goods. Also people. From a few smugglers acting on their own initiative, came entire networks smuggling escaped English and French prisoners of war, Alsatians and Lorrainians who refused to enlist in the German army, volunteers eager to serve Free France, and anyone else who felt threatened.

Here is an account of one such incident, when Gilbert Renault (one of the most famous French agents in France, also known as Colonel Remy, Raymond , Jean-Luc , Morin , Watteau, Roulier , Beauce and Remy) was smuggled across the demarcation line near Castillon:

“Everything is ready ... I saw the doctor, we are expected tonight at his place for dinner. Here's the plan: we go by bicycle with the drôle (a south west France expression for a young boy). We stop right next to the line, the French side. About five hundred meters away is the German position. I leave you with Pierrot and the drôle. I continue cycling and will go past the German patrols using my border permit. Pierrot and the drôle will take you through a large meadow along the sunken road on the left. It is visible from the station but tonight, with rain, and no moon, it will be fine. You will reach the Lidoire; is a stream that flows into the Dordogne. They’ve not yet had a lot of rain, so you just have to take off your shoes and roll up your pants to the knees. This stream marks the boundary line between the occupied zone and the free zone. On the other side, immediately in front of you, there is a small meadow and a farm which is just down the road. They won’t betray you. Besides, I'll be waiting for you on the other side of the Lidoire. We will find the doctor’s car a little further on."

Castillon Station, from where they could have been seen...

Those who lived through those years remember the fear, especially as the SS monitored the border until their departure to the Eastern Front.

"There were incessant controls in the vineyards, three or four times a day. But we managed to pass people across the line. My father put their spade on the shoulder so that they had the appearance of farm workers. Once in the vineyards of the free zone, they could run away, "said Joël Baudet (below)

Controls became stricter and more numerous from the spring of 1941, when Wehrmacht soldiers were replaced by customs officers. Patrols and controls became the order of the day, and it was no longer unusual for pursuits to continue and shots to be fired inside the free zone itself.

This is the account of an English woman who was trapped when the Germans invaded, and desperate to return to England. I like to think she tried to cross at my bridge:

World's News (Sydney, NSW), Saturday 14 November 1942, page 7

The Germans occupied the whole of  France on November 1942, and abolished the demarcation line in February 1943. A number of restrictions remained, however, in particular with regard to movement of goods, and conditions in the whole of France were grim until liberation in 1944. 

Finally - My hosts, Janie and Mickey told me that it was on the balcony of this building that the collaborateurs horizontale (women who fraternised with Germans) were exhibited after their heads were shaved. 

According to Janie, the women in Castillon were a lot luckier than those in a nearby village, where they were shot.

Cinema as a compelling mirror, by Carol Drinkwater

A day or so ago I watched, for the first time in many years, Louis Malle's wonderful film,  Lacombe, Lucien. I don't think I have seen it since it was first released in 1974, when I was a young actress living in London. I would have been audience at the Hampstead Everyman or that wonderful Academy 1 and 2 in Oxford Street. I cannot remember whether it was shown in French with English sub-titles or dubbed into English. Either way, I would not have appreciated the nuances of the regional accents particularly that of the young actor, Pierre Blaise, who played the titular role of Lucien, the seventeen-year-old farm boy. Blaise, who was picked from amongst amateurs by Malle, talks with a southern accent so strong that even now after thirty years of living in Provence I had some difficulty following lines of his dialogue. Think Geordie for foreigners.
Aurore Clement plays a young German Jewess hiding out with her father and grandmother in a remote rural corner of southern France. The family escaped from Germany to Paris. When the Germans marched in to the capital, they fled once more to the south where we find them in hiding. This well-trodden path in search of a safe base became the modus vivendi for many Jews who had originally arrived into Paris from Germany or Eastern Europe. Their safer tenures in the south were, for the majority, short-lived.

At my original viewing of the film, I was bowled over by the extraordinary beauty of Aurore Clement whose photograph was then pinned to the wall of my attic bedroom in my rambling old flat in Kentish Town, where it stayed, I think, until I moved on from that address. But I feel sure now that the groundbreaking subject matter of the film was probably almost entirely lost on me.

Aurore Clement as France Horn in Lacombe, Lucien

Aurore Clement is now 71 (still beautiful from the pics I found on the internet). Pierre Blaise who  was both mesmeric and a fine young actor was killed in a car crash in 1975 at the age of 20, the year after the film was released.

In 1973, when Malle was preparing this film, he already had eight successful features to his name. As  well, as a younger filmmaker he had worked as co-director with Jacques Cousteau on the Academy-Award winning documentary,  The Silent World.

The reason I bought the DVD recently was because I wanted to look at the film from a couple of different aspects; no longer from the point of view of an actress but that of the writer, and also for the story's historical content. The film is a fascinating portrait of French collaboration, released at a time when the subject was taboo in France, who collaboration was denied.

De Gaulle himself when he returned home refuted the idea that France had ever been anything but the Republic, an oppressed republic. This later became known as the Gaullist Resistance Myth. It wasn't until the early 70s when writers, historians and artists began to speak out, that the myth started to crumble. Many who were not direct supporters of the collaboration were held to account because they did nothing. Because they did not resist. Historians began to claim that collaboration was not forced upon France; many chose it and others turned a blind eye. Apathy, if not downright collaboration, allowed the regime to flourish.
This is an important issue and one that is becoming relevant again today when one considers that almost fifty per cent of the United States voters did not go to the polls during this recent election.

Both Malle and his co-writer, Patrick Modiano, were haunted by the years of Nazi occupation in France. For different reasons. Malle, born in 1932, was a child during the war and always felt himself implicated in the moral issues that growing up in occupied France would have thrown up for any sensitive child. His later film, another masterpiece, Au Revoir Les Enfants, (1987), recounts the story of pupil, Julien Quentin, and how his life is changed when three Jewish boys are given refuge at his Catholic boarding school. Friendships are bonded and broken when the three boys and the priest who has accepted to hide the Jewish pupils are arrested and taken away by the Nazis. All die in camps. The film is autobiographical.

                                                                           Louis Malle

Along with Louis Malle, Patrick Modiano is co-credited for the (terrific) screenplay of Lacombe, Lucien. Modiano, thirteen years Malle's junior, was born in the Paris suburbs in 1945 to a Jewish-Italian father and an actress mother. They met in occupied Paris and carried out a clandestine relationship. Soon after Patrick was born, they separated and Patrick was brought up by various people including his maternal grandparents. His father, Albert, refused to wear the obligatory Yellow Star. Nor did he declare himself to the authorities when they were rounding up the Jews.  Albert was arrested in 1942 but managed, through the help of a friend, to avoid deportation. He worked as a black marketeer and with the French Gestapo during the war years. Albert Modiano never owned up to his son about his nefarious doings during those years. 

The novels of Patrick Modiano, Nobel Laureate for Literature 2014, are frequently peopled by shady characters and collaborators, or those on the run. This is partly what makes Modiano's work so extraordinary.  Conscience, the outsider, he who works by night, guilt, memory ... all haunt his work.

                                                                      Patrick Modiano

Malle and Modiano were the perfect fit for the groundbreaking subject of Lacombe, Lucien.

The action of the film is set in 1944 in south-west France close to the Spanish border during the German Occupation. It tells the tale of a seventeen-year-old peasant boy, Lucien, an anti-hero, whose father is an imprisoned member of the Resistance. Lucien, who seems to delight in killing and hunting small creatures, wants to get away from home - his mother is having an affair with a local farmer - to follow in his father's footsteps, but he is not taken seriously. He is rejected by the local schoolmaster, also a member of the Resistance, because he is too young.
Quite by chance Lucien finds himself falling in with a nest of collaborators, French agents working for the Gestapo, whose headquarters are at a hotel, La Grotto. They take in the lad and give him a job with the 'Police Allemande' after he has proved himself by betraying the school teacher who refused him a place amongst the partisans.

One of the French collaborators, along with his actress girlfriend, befriends Lucien. He takes the boy to a tailor to have a suit made. The tailor, Horn, is a Jew who has fled Germany and then Paris. It is when Lucien sets eyes on Horn's daughter, France, that the complexities of the narrative really set in. Naive, uncouth, barely more than a virgin, Lucien becomes besotted with the young woman and by the end of the film he helps her and her grandmother - the tailor, Horn, has been arrested - escape. However, the stolen car gives up before they have crossed the border into Spain and they are forced to take refuge - a most unlikely threesome - in a remote, abandoned farmhouse.

Throughout the film, the question of Lucien's complicity is, laid out before the spectator. Malle has chosen a very attractive and rather charming young actor for the role so our sympathies are easily given to the character. Is he a cruel, unfeeling boy or is he misguided? If he had been offered a role within the Resistance would his life have turned out differently? Can he be held responsible?
The last frame sees him sleeping in a field while France bathes naked in a nearby stream. Lucien seems so perfectly relaxed, at peace for the first time, that for one fleeting moment, you ask yourself whether the three might find a way to survive, yet you know, because a lurking danger is gnawing at your spectator's guts, that for different reasons they cannot survive; they are all hunted. Lucien, for his blatant betrayal of his own people and France along with her grandmother because they are Jews. Superimposed over the last image of the film are the bald sentences:

                                      Lucien Lacombe was arrested on October 12, 1944.
                 Tried by a military court of the Resistance, he was sentenced to death and executed. 

When the film was over, I felt saddened for the boy, for his loss of life, for his stupidity and all that was not to be. Still, he chose that path. He was complicit. There are two very moving scenes when Lucien's mother comes looking for him and finds him at the Horns' apartment. She has brought with her a small black coffin with Lucien's name engraved on it. It has been left at her door. A warning to Lucien to give up his treachery. His mother's eyes beg him to come home, to quit the shaming role he has taken. He refuses, saying that he is fine where he is. She steps away, and you feel swamped by the depth of a mother's conflict and heartbreak.

The film has been restored and is available in Blu Ray.  It is a masterpiece as relevant today as when it was first shot. Stunning photography, long close-ups on faces that take you to the characters' souls. If you haven't seen it, I urge you to find a copy.

Since I watched it, I have been asking myself over and over about where our world is going given the recent election results in the United States. We are witnessing the rise of Nationalism, white supremacy, racism, closed borders, Islamophobia, misogyny, anti-Semitism. Nazism.
Our world is in danger of regression. Values and liberties our parents, grandparents, previous generations fought or voted for, put their lives at risk for, might soon be lost. There is no place for apathy. We stand up and are counted, or we become a silent vote that condones these very real dangers.

Works of art have the possibility of reminding us; they can nudge our collective memories and help us learn from the past. Lest we forget.

www.caroldrinkwater.com