Some more tidbits from my grandmotherās WWII diaries which did not fit in the last post:
she got a secretary job for the railway service because she had heard that was a good place to help the Resistance, and indeed she was soon contacted to leak train schedules (so Resistants could sabotage freight & ammunition trains going to Germany) and administrative info to help people escape deportation. She writes that she hopes itās āa little bit of helpā and that it will sound āmore formidable when I talk about it laterāin reality it is almost mundane, not at all like what you read about in booksā, and she often feels like she is āplaying pretendā
This sentiment comes back a lot at the beginning of her war journal, a kind of surreal feeling, almost impostorās syndrome, like she canāt take herself seriously as a person living through a war. In 1940 she tries to enter the āforbidden zoneā where her former house is, to salvage some items before the house is looted, and a German soldier offers her a lift so she wonāt have trouble with the sentries. She refuses, and he sighs and says in bad FrenchĀ āMalheur, la guerre.ā (āWarāwhat grief.ā) She writes that she had this impression again, that they were all āplaying warā, playing a role, and everyone felt weird about it
her fiancĆ© (my grandfather) was among the young men planting bombs on railway tracks to derail freight trains, and he would occasionally steal from a wagon (having no compunction about it as it was stuff the Nazis had stolen) and she & her sister would find an excuse to go out so they could all open the āsurprise barrelā together. They thought it was a lot of fun as they never knew what the contents would beāsometimes food, sometimes a barrel full of wine, and once they found items from the looting of a church: crucifixes, rosaries, prayer books and the relic of a saint. She mentions it several times in her diary afterwards, always quite wryly, āWeāve had 52 alerts in 3 days, itās exhausting having to run to the basement so many times every night, but I know weāre safe, for we have my bone of Saint Whatās-His-Nameā
1941 is the first time she writes that she feels like she isĀ āliving through a chapter of historyā, and itās because she started using old bicycle tyres to make new soles for her shoes, and unravelling wool jumpers to mix the yarn colours and knitĀ ānewā jumpers, which āare things youād read about in books about war.ā She gives a jumper to each of her sisters, who are happy about it and say it feels like they are really getting new clothes, and she comments āNous voilĆ devenues des hĆ©roĆÆnes de Victor Hugoā (āWeāve now become Victor Hugo charactersā)
I love the amount of times she compares her life to booksāwhen her fiancĆ©, who was about to be deported for forced labour in Germany, changes his identity and tries to escape to the unoccupied zone (the South of France) and then to Morocco, hoping she can join him later in Casablanca, she is very anxious but also notes how strange it feels to even write these words, which seem right out of a novel.
she was nearly 20 (in 1940) the first time her mother allowed her fiancĆ© to visit her at home (they had to stay in the kitchen, with a chaperone) after he came saying he brought his stamp book to trade stamps with her. They have fun calling each other Monsieur and Mademoiselle again, as was proper (they had long switched to using first names when their parents werenāt around); her fiancĆ© confesses to her that he spent weeks taking stamps off of any envelop he could get his hands on, to improvise a stamp collection so he had a wholesome excuse to visit her at home. She finds the idea brilliant. They do not end up trading stamps, seeing as the āchaperoneā is her older sister GeneviĆØve who kindly spends the whole hour āvery busy looking for something in the pantryā
at one point she writes bitterly that she queued up nearly the entire day at a grocery shop that was supposed to still have some chocolate and coffee, as she & her sisters were desperate for either. Instead the only things she was given in exchange for her ration tickets were one fourth of a loaf of bread, a small packet of washing soda and aĀ āhat so shapeless you can hardly tell it is a bĆ©retā. She writes that her little sister Simone didnāt even fight her for the bĆ©ret, āvoilĆ Ć quel point il est laidā (āthatās how ugly it is.ā)
she is interrogated by the Nazis again in 1942 and starts to fear that she is about to get caught leaking all this info about transits to Germany, so she goes to the regional director of the train service (who lives in her street) for help. He tells her that trusting him was very dangerous,Ā āWhat makes you think Iām not an informer?ā and she says āSir you only have one arm. You are a disabled WWI veteran so I assumed you werenāt too fond of Germans.ā She then writes: āJe tremblais en entrant dans la piĆØce. Jāaimerais ĆŖtre de ces filles hardiesā¦!ā (āI was shaking as I entered the room. I wish I were one of these daring girlsā¦!ā)
(One of the very few pictures taken of her during the war)
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