Nell and the Girls

by Jeanne Gask

  Rieux in 1944 was still an agricultural village, its main crops being wheat and sugar beet. Life had gone on unchanged for centuries. Nell would stand at the window and watch as two large, patient cream-coloured oxen lumbered up the hill every morning out towards the fields. They were yoked together, and lumbered down again in the evening, pulling a heavily laden flat cart. All of the farm horses had been requisitioned by the Germans.

  ‘Oh look!’ she would say, predating the Flowerpot Men by twenty years. ‘There go Bill and Ben!’

  Nell and the girls took to attending the tiny Protestant church just over the road from them. If the church in Cambrai had been small, this one was minute. It only held a congregation of fifteen or so.

  Their ample landlady, Julienne, stood in the family pew next to her thin, puny husband, Jules, and their two small children. She gave praise to the Lord in a loud, strong voice that nearly raised the roof and drowned out everyone else’s efforts.

  Soon after their arrival in Rieux, Nell and the girls witnessed a procession coming through the village. A statue of the Virgin Mary, ‘Our Lady of the Bombs’, was being carried from village to village, resting in the village churches overnight. The villagers followed the procession to the next village, praying that they might be protected from the bombs.

  The brightly-painted statue was carried on a plinth by six men and followed by the whole village, arms outstretched, barefoot, with their eyes raised heavenward in supplication, singing, ‘Ave, Ave, Ave Maria. Ave, Ave, Ave Mari-ia’. The Protestants decided that they should hedge their bets and join the procession, though they nudged and winked at each other.

  Halfway to the next village, Jeanne, walking barefoot somewhere towards the back of the procession, noticed that something was wrong up in front. People were jumping in the air, stepping sideways and crying out. A non-believing joker had sprinkled tintacks on the road with a view to disrupting the procession. The faithful, still singing, were hopping about painfully, trying to avoid the offending nails. For a few minutes, chaos reigned but calm was eventually restored, and the procession went on its decorous way towards the next village.

  Jeanne stood looking in the mirror, smiling to herself. Today was the tenth of May, her twelfth birthday. She was wearing a stripy, pale-blue dress, and liked what she saw. She felt on the edge of something . . . a beginning.

  The girls soon made friends in the village. Irene had a friend from school living near the church, and Marie always had a string of two or three admirers in tow.

  Jeanne was hardly ever home. Her particular best friend was Claudette. She was a weaver’s daughter. This part of northern France was traditionally a weaving area. On rainy days Jeanne and Claudette danced among the now-silent looms, la-la-ing tunes, making up dances and pretending to be beautiful ballet dancers.

  Otherwise they spent much of their time in the fields on the edge of the village. The villagers grew large mauve poppies as big as saucers, the seeds of which were crushed and made into oil. It was not as good as olive oil but it was oil nevertheless. Jeanne and Claudette helped themselves to the seeds rattling inside the dried heads. They tasted nutty and were delicious crushed between one’s teeth. However, they caused Jeanne to be violently constipated and she had to stop eating them.

  Josette was Claudette’s cousin. When the very first new potatoes were picked, Josette’s mother called Claudette and Jeanne over to the house. The three girls sat on the doorstep and dipped small, warm potatoes, still with their skins on, into a bowl of vinaigrette. They popped them in their mouths and the juice trickled down their chins. Delicious! Jeanne hadn’t had French dressing for a very long time. What a treat it was!

  In the early evenings she helped Claudette get rid of the dorifores (Colorado beetles) on her father’s potato patch. They were pretty looking bugs, like ladybirds, but four times as large and with black and gold stripes. They climbed up the potato plants in the evening, ate the leaves, and the plants died. It was Jeanne and Claudette’s job to pick the beetles climbing up the plants and put them into an old tin. When the tin was full, they took it to the path and either emptied it and stamped on them, or else set fire to the tin and watched as the beetles wriggled and writhed in the flames. As Jeanne looked up, she could see people all around, busy on their own potato patch, clearing it of pests. The French called the Germans dorifores because they helped themselves to French potatoes and took them back to Germany!

  There were planes everywhere from one edge of the sky to another. The noise was such that Jeanne thought her head would burst. Where were they all coming from? Could there really be so many planes in the whole world?

  The grown-ups were laughing and nudging each other. ‘They’ve started daylight raids, they’re not wary any more. They know very well they’ve as good as won the war!’

  Jeanne thought the big planes, the flying fortresses, looked like whales and the fighters, hovering protectively around their sides, like small fishes, swimming about in the bright blue sea of the sky. The continuous thud-thud from the anti-aircraft guns sent puffs of smoke among the whales and fishes.

  Then, there was a massive explosion right there above their heads. One of the whales had been hit and, in exploding, had hit the two whales on the other side. The air was full of smoke and falling debris clouding out the sun.

  Now all the villagers were pointing and exclaiming. Out of the smoke and confusion two parachutes appeared. To everyone’s horror, the first one didn’t open and plummeted to earth. The people watching below gasped. ‘Oh, le pauvre!’ Old women crossed themselves, praying for the poor unfortunate airman.

  The other parachute opened and gaily, unhurriedly, swayed down, looking for all the world like the opalescent jelly-fishes on the beach back at Calais. It came down, gradually getting larger and larger, until it finally disappeared behind a clump of trees at the edge of the village.

  When a German army lorry arrived ten minutes later to collect their prisoner, the airman and his parachute had gone. Mysteriously vanished, spirited away . . .

  Three men had gone to work in the fields that morning and four returned to the village that evening.

  Two days later, when they were walking through the village, Marie and Jeanne were stopped by Monsieur Paul, the village policeman. He drew Marie to one side and held a hurried, whispered conversation with her.

  ‘Go home, Jeannot,’ Marie said. ‘I’ll be home later.’ Jeanne skipped home, wondering what it was all about this time. The adult world never failed to mystify her. It was full of unspoken, secretive, unfathomable things.

  Marie burst in late for tea in a state of high excitement. ‘I’ve seen him! I’ve been talking to him!’ It didn’t take them long to work out that she was talking about the missing parachutist.

  ‘He’s at a farm near here,’ she went on. ‘A safe house. I’m not allowed to say where. He was so pleased to speak English. His name’s Edward Torres, his family’s from Mexico. He’s petrified. You know Denain was bombed last night? Well, he was scared stiff. He had no idea what it was like to be bombed and he’s been bombing people for two years. Isn’t that a scream? I told him, “This is nothing, Denain’s ten miles away. Wait till they bomb Cambrai again then you’ll know about it!” But I don’t think he believed me!’

  Marie visited him every day while he was in the village. It was difficult to keep him in one place. In such a small community everyone right down to the smallest child knew exactly where he was, and he had to be moved every few days for safety’s sake.

  The Resistance were extremely well organised by 1944 and the villagers breathed a collective sign of relief when Edward, accompanied by a Frenchman, left the village on an old bike dressed as a farm worker. At a pre-arranged meeting place they met a car with two other stranded Allied airmen in it. They would be driven to a place where, at dead of night, they would be picked up by a plane and taken to England, back to their airfields to resume their bombing duties.

  The last they heard of Edward, he had deserted from
the US air force. Had the bombings of Denain proved too much for him?

  It was at about this time that Marie let it be known that she wished to be called by her English name: she wanted to be known as Betty. She felt it was more suited to the times they were living in. But Jeanne kept forgetting and calling her Marie. It was so difficult to remember to change someone’s name after all these years!

  Each time Jeanne offended, Marie/Betty got hold of one of her arms and twisted it behind her back. ‘What’s my name?’ she asked menacingly.

  ‘Ouch, ouch . . . You’re hurting me! Leggo, leggo . . . Ouch, ouch!’

  ‘What’s my name?’ Betty sadistically twisted Jeanne’s arm a little higher, enjoying her power over her younger sister.

  Jeanne was almost speechless and tears were beginning to spurt down her cheeks. ‘Argh! B-B-Betty!’

  ‘Right,’ said Betty and let her go abruptly. ‘Let that teach you a lesson, and don’t forget! Next time, I’ll really hurt you.’

  Jeanne, nursing her wounded arm, retreated into a corner of the room, thinking, Just you wait! One day I’ll be as big as you, and then we’ll see!

  On the evening of the fifth of June they listened as usual to the news from London but the coded messages went on and on – for twenty minutes or more. Nell’s eyes sparkled. ‘Something’s up! We’ve never had so many messages. I’m telling you, something’s up.’

  That night, as they fell asleep in the large old country bed, they wondered just what was up, and where, and when?

  ‘They’ve landed! They’ve landed!’ Francois, the big farm lad from over the way, shouted excitedly through their open window. It was early on the morning of the sixth of June: D-Day.

  They sprang out of bed, jumping up and down with joy and excitement. ‘Where? Where?’

  ‘I dunno yet, but they say Normandy, or maybe Brittany.’

  ‘But that’s just down the road! They’ll be here in no time . . .’

  They got dressed hastily and ran out into the road. It was already full of laughing, chattering people, reporting all sorts of rumours to each other and swearing they were true.

  A single plane flew overhead, the RAF red, white and blue clearly visible on its wings. The girls waved and cheered at it. Surely they were going to be freed that day, or maybe tomorrow at the very latest.

  When they tuned to Radio Londres that evening, they realised that it wasn’t going to be that easy after all. The Allies had landed in Normandy but there was heavy fighting over a broad front, and it was going to be a hard fought battle. They now understood they weren’t going to be freed that week, or even that month. They would have to sit it out and wait patiently.

  Betty found a map of northern France and pinned it to the wall. She and Irene spent a whole day making and colouring little flags which they glued to pins: the Stars and Stripes, the Union Jack, the Tricolour, the Swastika. Every evening, as news of the Allied forces’ progress was broadcast, they moved the little flags, sometimes imperceptibly, at other times a good half-inch or so, and eventually a dirty finger mark appeared in the area on the map around Cambrai as they measured and pointed in turn to see just how far away they were from the battle zone.

  So started the long wait while the life of the village went on within the rhythm of the seasons as it had always done. Irene went potato picking, riding home on the long cart behind Bill and Ben the oxen, lolling among the heavy sacks with a group of laughing teenagers. Betty hung around with a gang of older teenagers, as she had done in Cambrai. Jeanne and Claudette gleaned. They picked up the stray ears of corn after the horse-drawn reaper had passed, more out of fun than necessity. Jeanne rode home, thrilled, on one of Yves Wallez’s strong horses. Yves was sixteen, one of four sons who lived in the large house behind a high wall opposite the church. He had dark, curly hair and talked laughingly to Jeanne as though she were an adult.

  Nell and the girls also played card and board games by the hour, just to pass the time. The table was placed by the open window, so they could wave and chat to acquaintances as they passed by. People stopped, leaning on their spades, or putting down their shopping bag for a minute or two. Everyone seemed to be killing time. There was much to talk about, notes to compare, rumours to argue over.

  ‘How long do you think it’ll be?’

  ‘D’you think they’ll want to free Paris first, before they come north?’

  And there were tales of gun-toting, parachuting nuns, or a single US tank spotted down Avesnes way. It was difficult to know what to believe. The villagers referred to Nell, hoping she knew more than they did because she was English. But she only knew what she heard each evening, listening to the BBC just as they did.

  So Nell and her girls played games, whiling the time away. Whist was their favourite; they became experts. Or they played Nain Jaune (Yellow Dwarf ), a boardgame similar to Ludo. They used haricot beans as counters and, as the afternoon wore on, chewed them like sweets as they played, and at the end nobody knew who had won because the evidence had been eaten!

  It was one such afternoon that Jeanne, looking up from her cards, said, ‘Oh look, there’s a German!’

  Germans were a rarity in village areas, especially solitary Germans.

  Nell stood up and put her hand at her throat. Her cards scattered on the floor. ‘Oh my God, it’s Emil!’

  Emil walked slowly past the house, looking neither right nor left, and carried on up the hill as if he was on a Sunday afternoon stroll.

  Nell waited a good half an hour. Then she put on her hat and coat, picked up her handbag, and followed him up the hill.

  It was August. The Allies had reached the outskirts of Paris, and Emil had been ordered home. There, among the flat wheat fields of northern France, they said goodbye.

  16. Joy and Sorrow Days

  As August drew on, the noise of the fighting grew louder. They only had to open the windows to hear the distant boom-boom of the battling guns, slowly but surely getting nearer every day. Listening to Radio Londres was more important than ever now, though the flags pinned on their map showed them what they already knew.

  In mid-August, there was an almighty battle to regain Paris. The Germans were not going to let go of the French capital, symbol of their success, that easily. The Parisian population joined the Free French forces under General Leclerc and Eisenhower’s American troops, and fought street by street, building by building, until the Germans were ousted. It was a proud, emotional day when General de Gaulle, leader of the Free French, walked up the Champs Elysees and stood at the tomb of the unknown soldier, under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

  Back in Rieux, Nell felt slightly disappointed. The flags on the map creeping ever nearer Cambrai were the Stars and Stripes, and not the Union Jack. She would have loved to have been freed by ‘Our Boys’!

  At the end of August, the sound of gunfire was really loud.

  Day after day, bedraggled Germans passed through the village. The wounded and sick were carried on any kind of available vehicle, horse-drawn mostly. The rest were walking, dragging their feet, tired out and holding on to the tails of the horses. They were a sorry sight compared to the proud conquerors they had once been. The villagers kept out of sight as they passed by. There was no telling what a cornered, desperate man could do.

  A lone German hid in a pigsty in the village. For him, the war was over. He had had enough. Sick to death of it all, frightened and shivering, he just wanted to go home. The farmer threw him some straw, a blanket, some food and left him there. ‘It’s the best place for a German pig,’ he said.

  One of the German soldiers walking through the village had left behind his spare pair of uniform trousers. He dropped them right there in the middle of the main square. No doubt, he couldn’t be bothered to carry them all the way back to Munich, Frankfurt or wherever. Betty and her gang were sure the trousers were booby-trapped! If anyone went anywhere near them, the gang shouted, ‘No, no, don’t . . . they’ll blow up in your face!’

  Betty’s boyfr
iend at the time was Jean Wallez, Yves’ older brother. While all the others hid behind a wall, he walked up to the trousers and ever so gently tied the end of a piece of string to one of the trouser buttons. He walked back to join the others with a slow, measured step, holding the string in his hand. ‘One . . . two . . . three!’

  They all pulled together, and . . . nothing happened. They all collapsed on top of each other, laughing hysterically.

  When they woke up on the morning of September 2nd Nell said, ‘This is it . . . I can feel it . . . I know it is! Today’s the day we’re freed!’

  Later that morning, standing outside the house, Jeanne saw a Citroën just like her Dad’s pull up a little way down the road. Two men sprang out of it. They wore berets and scarves tied round their necks cowboy style, with the point at the front. They were the men of the local Resistance. With pistols, they gestured dramatically to the villagers to get back into their houses and then jumped on the running boards of the car and sped off with a screech of tyres.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to be there when they meet up with a fully-armed German patrol,’ Francois said, laughing. They did look ridiculous, like bit players in a bad gangster film.

  Then, a group of village lads called at the house, freshfaced and smiling. They were going to meet the Americans, they said. Would Madame and the girls like to join them? It would be easier with them there to translate.

  Irene had got up on the wrong side of the bed. She was in a foul mood, and she was quite adamant, she didn’t want to go. ‘I don’t want to go,’ she said, in a sulk.

  Nell turned towards the boys. ‘You carry on, we’ll catch up with you later. We’ll be right behind you.’ They went off, laughing and jostling as teenage boys do.

  A quarter of an hour later, Nell and the girls set off with Irene dragging her feet. It was a misty morning. As they reached the top of the hill where the village ended and the fields started it was quite foggy. They couldn’t see a thing. The boys were nowhere; they had vanished into the fog.