I Dreamt of Jacques ...

The continued presence of their childrens' murderers caused unceasing pain to the Etobonais. Jules Perret identifies the guilty ones and their units even as he is forced to put up with them.

Monday, October 30

The chief of the Cossacks came to my house about some business of transporting wood in the forest. It was Blum, the ignoble and cruel captain who brutalized our children before handing them over to their executioners, who were taken from his own unit; this Blum is easy to identify because he’s missing the fingers on one hand.  I can’t walk from my bed to the living room, so Mama and Suzette received him.  A little while later, Suzette started crying, screaming, even, to me, “Papa!  We’ve endured everything!  When he saw some coffee on the table, this thug wanted us to give him a cup.  While he was drinking it, I saw his hand.  It had no fingers.  It was that monster!”  She was so enraged she couldn’t say more.  If she had had a gun, I think she would have killed him. 

The boche Ernst, who’s been staying here, has left.  Without a goodbye!  He can go to hell.  These last few days he spent his time looking for X’s grave.  Karl Lade must have told him that he was killed in a potato field, so that’s where he was looking.  If he only knew that I had hidden a picture of X in a hole in the wall!  Before he left, perhaps with the idea of pulling something out of me, he became revoltingly obsequious.  Monsieur Jules this, Monsieur Jules that:  “Rest yourself … would you like a cushion for your back? Etc., etc.”  The other boche, Henri, also exasperates me with his servility.

On all these abominable idiots, I note as many details as possible so that they can be found and punished:  this Ernst, like Vonalt, is from Regiment 406-75A.  Dr. Rauch is from Ambulance 622-44A.  The Cossacks, with their Blum, their lieutenant Kamerer, their adjutant Kartch and other crooks, are from the 15-201F.

As we await the rout, all the boches are extraordinarily active.  They do the impossible so that everything works as they wish, ceaselessly repairing their rolling stock, shaky, crumbling.  And things work, more or less.

I just had an interesting conversation with one of these boches, little, old, vain, always freshly shaved, holding his little head high, with his hair combed over his receding hairline.  He explained to me that Hitler is a good man, perfect, above all humane; that France was stupid for getting upset over such little details as Danzig, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland; that the armistice of 1940 was a masterpiece of generosity, after which the Germans had the right and the duty to shoot French people by the hundreds for being so ungrateful as not to submit.  Oh!  These French!  What horrors they perpetrated while they occupied Germany!  And the good little boche told me of a revolting beastliness:  In Dusseldorf, in 1920, the youth gave a party, during which an actor talked of those awful Poles. “You know what the French did?  They interrupted the play, and put the one who had spoken against the Poles in prison for 2 weeks.  As for the others, they yelled at them!  Yelled at them!”  In the fact of such cruelty, the orator lost his breath, yells in his turn against the resistance, these terrorists, these thugs, these assassins, then, at the end of his eloquence, stretches out on the sofa, near the stove, and goes to sleep.  What an incredible imbecile!

Last night, I dreamt of Jacques.  I saw him, I embraced him, I asked him if it was true.  He said yes, but it was unimportant and a good thing.  I said to him:  Son, come back often and see us ...

No One from Etobon Dared to Complain ...

German and Cossack troops were preparing to retreat from Etobon towards the Rhine River. Insubordination and desertions were becoming even more of a problem, putting the Etobonais at continued risk.

Saturday, November 4

The Cossacks are leaving the village.  Thinking of the future, they ask me for a certificate of good conduct!  It was pretty delicate to edit.  Finally, “During the period October 24 to November 4, 1944, no one from Etobon dared to complain to me about the Cossacks of the 15.201F stationed in this village.  Etobon, November 4, 1944.  For the executed mayor, J. Perret.”

I did not seal it.  I told them the mayor had the seal in his pocket when they killed him.  Mama roasted two chickens, one for us, one for Jarko, the hermit of the pines, who is finding the time really long.  Coming back from taking him his chicken, I met Mario, from Frahier, who had just repaired the electric line.  He says the Germans had evacuated Frahier all of a sudden to go as reinforcements in the Vosges, and that we’ll soon be liberated.  (Mario was killed a few days later by a shell.) 

Here, our boches act like they’ll be staying forever.  They’re building an oven to cook lice in the cellar of the girls school, and to get bricks for it, they demolished the scale house.  An Austrian adjutant, a good guy, is doing the work.  He’s strong as an ox.  He says to me, “Can’t do any good.  Don’t know if the stove is good, it’s for the Americans.  He works with one hand, because the other one’s in a sling, after he gave it a good hammer blow.

Monday, November 6

Saturday, the big boche George brought a cow, picked up who knows where, into our stable.  A while later I heard him shout, “Papa, Papa, cow!”  She was calving!  Ten minutes later, “Papa, Papa, oh, cow! Oh, cow!”  She calved again.  I didn’t want to get involved.  Let him deal with it.  He dealt with it very well.  Without hesitating, he put the two calves to suckle.

Tuesday, November 7

The rain just won’t stop.  Georges, soaked to the skin, comes back from the front, which he’s supplying, with a second cow!

Life has changed since we’ve gotten electricity back.  The Doktor just burst into our kitchen without giving an explanation.  Maybe to see if we were listening to the radio.  None of our boches got up to salute him.  He grabbed one by the nose, saying, “Is this what you do when an officer enters?”

This evening, a terrible storm, the wind so violent that we couldn’t hear 18 shells exploding.  For two days now, the Germans have not responded.  Karl is writing, Willy is playing with Philippe, Georges speaks his joy at having bought a wagon for 6000 francs, Suzette reads, Mama knits and I note the happenings of the day.

Wednesday, November 8

Rain, rain … At the forge, two boches demand tin solder.  I’ve hidden it.  They search everywhere.  I get mad.  So, one of the two, who speaks French more or less:  “Ah!  You’re getting angry!  Look what I found.  Enough to put you in prison!”  And he showed me some machine gun sights, abandoned by the Polish in 1940, that they then take to the Tyrolian adjutant at the louse oven.  I went to see this adjutant.  “Do not worry at all.”

Willy told us today that a shell had killed ten of their men in a shelter.

We Remember ...

There were more signs that the Germans were disengaging ... the Etobonais were able to ring the church bells on November 11 without permission and without complaint from the occupiers. Convoys continued to bring the dead and wounded from the front by the main road.

Thursday, November 9

The Germans have been waiting impatiently for November 7,  presidential election day in the U.S.  And it’s Roosevelt again.  They are not happy.

Emile Bonhotal, on a work detail to dig trenches at the front, hid the rifle of one of the guards.  (The rifle was found two months later, intact.)

Saturday, November 11

The eleventh of November!  We remember … We had two pastors today, M. Lugbull, who went on to lead worship at Belverne, and M. Nétillard, who led worship at 3:00.  Without asking anyone’s permission, we rang the two church bells.  No reaction at all.

Ernest was the only German in church.

Sunday, November 12

Rain and snow.  I took Jarko a piece of  sheet metal, a leather apron, and a calf skin to cover his hut.  He’s also received a sack of carrots, a sack of apples, an alcohol lamp, a cooking pot.  With that, he can hold on even in a big snow.  He has good sheep’s wool socks and René Bauer’s sabots, which were found in the school after the departure of our 67 men.

In front of the school, in a lake of mud, incessant comings and goings of trucks, cars.  Those that return from the front in the evening are usually loaded with wood.  Behind them, the dead.  On top, the wounded … The boches who’ve been stationed in this village won’t do us any violence when they leave us.  We know them.  We know if they’re Catholics or Protestants.  But those at the front!  We can expect anything.

Monday, November 13

A supposedly new invention is building up the morale of our occupiers.  It’s a winged torpedo, the V2, that goes up to 100 kilometers (they say!)  We’ll see.

Willy Imbey comes back muddy, his feet swimming in his flooded shoes.  We offer to dry them for him.  “Not worth the trouble.  Tomorrow, impossible to put them on.  Always in water.  Soon kaput.  Same to me to end like that.”