Escape from Paris

by Stephen Harding

  But there were also those French men and women—as well as foreigners living in France by choice or chance—who simply could not stand idly by as the Nazis and their accomplices brutalized and exploited the nation. Even before the armistice was signed, individuals and small groups of friends or coworkers throughout the country had begun harassing and impeding the invader in any way they could—tearing down phone lines and street signs, helping stranded French and British soldiers return to their retreating units, pouring sugar in the gas tanks of temporarily unattended Wehrmacht vehicles, and carrying out dozens of other acts of defiance both passive and active. These initial actions were unorganized, largely spontaneous, and rarely amounted to more than an irritating nuisance to the Germans, who nonetheless responded by putting captured perpetrators in front of firing squads.

  Not surprisingly, the Nazis’ penchant for responding in the most draconian manner to even relatively harmless and ineffective acts of resistance helped fuel the spread of the very sort of defiance the punishments were intended to deter. The swing toward resistance was exacerbated in the months following the armistice by the increasingly invasive and repressive nature of German rule in the Zone Occupée (mirrored, not coincidentally, by Vichy in the so-called Zone Libre). Random identity checks and arbitrary arrests quickly became a fact of everyday life, as did the harassment of veterans’ associations, trade unions, political organizations, and social and religious groups deemed to be “anti-German.” The latter obviously included France’s Jews, who by the autumn of 1940 were being subjected to increasing persecution—their property and financial assets confiscated, their movements and civil rights severely restricted, their physical safety at risk.

  The undeniably onerous political restrictions placed on the people of France over the year following the German conquest were further aggravated by the occupiers’ insistence on stripping the vanquished nation of its valuable resources. Stocks of gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil, and coal were appropriated for “official” use, making private cars a rare sight on the roads and ensuring that the winter of 1940–1941 was especially harsh for those without easy access to firewood. The Germans also shipped the bulk of France’s agricultural output off to the Fatherland, causing increasingly strict food rationing in their new vassal state, especially in the cities. Cases of malnutrition surged, and starvation took an ever-larger toll of the very young and very old alike. Nor was much solace from hunger or despair to be found in France’s traditional refuge—alcohol in all its myriad forms was expropriated and sent east. Indeed, the Germans’ thirst for French wine and spirits was so intense that the occupation authorities established a rationing system—for non-Germans, every other day was a jour sans, a “day without” alcohol. To be caught drinking on other than a jour avec—a “day with”—was a serious offense.9

  The increasingly difficult political and domestic conditions in Occupied France helped spawn dozens, even scores, of nascent resistance groups in the cities and countryside. Some were established by former soldiers or intelligence officers with the skills required to undertake covert military action against the occupiers. Others consisted of public servants—policemen, firefighters, railway workers, civil servants—whose knowledge of the nation’s infrastructure or bureaucracy gave them special insight into the most effective ways to hinder, obstruct, and generally bedevil the Germans and their collaborators. But the majority of those who chose to take part in the progressively more dangerous shadow struggle against the hated Boche were “average” people—farmers, artists, intellectuals, trade unionists, shopkeepers—willing to offer whatever help they could.

  And in Paris—the “capital” of the occupation and the headquarters of those whose task it was to eliminate opposition to it—among the most willing to aid the growing resistance were the Morins of Invalides.

  HATRED FOR ALL THINGS GERMAN HAD BEEN A DEFINING PART OF GEORGES Julien Morin’s character long before Bock’s troops marched down the Champs-Élysées on that summer morning in 1940.

  A native Parisian, Georges was born August 14, 1898, in the city’s 14th arrondissement. The second of four children, he grew up believing that the truly valuable things in life were family, church, and nation. The importance of the former was sadly emphasized when he was still a young teenager—his father’s sudden death left Georges and his older brother to help their mother care for their younger brother and sister. Though not destitute, the family led something of a hardscrabble life, with the older boys and their “maman” working at a variety of jobs to pay the rent and keep food on the table. Georges understandably came to see responsibility for one’s family as the foundation of a man’s life, and regular attendance at the local Roman Catholic parish church imbued him with a firm conviction that the care and concern one showed for relatives should also be bestowed on those in the larger society who were in need of aid or less fortunate than oneself.

  While the need to work on his family’s behalf meant Georges’s formal education ended relatively early, he was an avid reader with an abiding interest in the world around him—traits encouraged by his mother and the older brother whom he idolized. Georges’s tastes in books were wide-ranging, and though he appreciated everything from the French literary classics to adventure stories to the wildly divergent views presented by Paris’s leading daily newspapers, he most enjoyed reading about his country’s long, proud, and often tumultuous history. He was especially fascinated by France’s military heroes, and the martial exploits of Turenne, Louis XIV, and Napoléon Bonaparte helped instill within him both an ardent patriotism and an elemental understanding of the human costs of war.10 The latter insight was not only the result of Georges’s extensive reading, however. Growing up, the young man had often heard the story of his own grandfather’s death while manning a barricade during the Paris Commune of 1871—a family history that ensured Georges viewed French history through a decidedly egalitarian lens.11

  Unfortunately, the outbreak of World War I meant that Georges’s study of French military history quickly became all too personal. His older brother had been called up for service in the initial mobilization, and his unit was among those that took part in what is now widely considered to be the first important Allied victory of the conflict—the First Battle of the Marne. Fought from September 6 through 10, 1914, the campaign resulted in French and British armies halting the German advance on Paris and then forcing the invaders to retreat some fifty miles. The outcome of the battle was to have a profound effect on the subsequent nature of the war—it was largely responsible for the shift to the static trench warfare that thereafter characterized combat on the Western Front—but the immediate impact on France in human terms was appalling. Most estimates put the number of French troops injured in the lead-up to the battle and during its conduct at just over 200,000, with between 75,000 and 85,000 others being killed outright or later dying of wounds. The Morins, like many other French families, were directly and tragically touched by the battle. Georges’s beloved older brother died during the first few days of fighting, and when the news reached the family a few weeks later it devastated his mother and surviving siblings.12

  But in addition to his tremendous feelings of loss, Georges was gripped by a burning desire for revenge against those who had killed his brother. It was not an impulse he could act on immediately, however, because as the family’s oldest surviving male he felt duty-bound to remain at home to support his mother and younger siblings. He did so until February 1917, at which time—and with his mother’s reluctant blessing—Georges enlisted in the infantry.13 Georges had his first opportunity to exact his revenge against the Boche in May, during the latter stages of the Second Battle of the Aisne. He distinguished himself during fierce hand-to-hand combat but also suffered the first of an eventual three near-fatal encounters with poison gas fired into the French lines by German artillery. Each gassing resulted in a scant few weeks of rear-area convalescence, after which he returned to his unit.

  By the fall of 1918 Georg
es was a seasoned combat veteran who had been awarded both the Médaille militaire and Croix de Guerre for his actions in some of the fiercest battles on the Western Front. He and his comrades would undoubtedly have been cheered by the fact that the Germans’ defeat at the Second Battle of the Marne in July and August had led to a widespread Allied advance that promised a swift end to the war, and Georges would likely have been thanking God that he had managed to survive with “only” gas-scarred lungs and a permanent limp caused by the loss of several toes to frostbite. His optimism was sadly premature, however, for on November 9—just two days before the armistice went into effect—a German artillery shell slammed into the top of the sandbag-and-timber bunker sheltering Georges’s platoon. The resultant explosion killed most of the men outright and buried the few survivors under several feet of dirt and debris. Georges was eventually pulled alive from the rubble, but he had suffered a grievous head injury and severe damage to his left eye.

  While undergoing treatment in an army hospital over the following weeks he must have often pondered the bitter irony of having nearly been killed by a German artillery shell. Eight months earlier, on March 21, his beloved mother had died when a shell fired from a German super-long-range cannon hit the Paris church of Saint-Gervais-et-Saint-Protais. More than eighty people attending a Good Friday service perished and scores of others were injured by the blast, one of many that occurred throughout the city that day. The death of Georges’s mother had initially left his sister homeless—his younger brother having entered the army some months before—though she had ultimately been taken in by nuns of Georges’s home parish.14

  With the end of the war the French government sought to shift wounded soldiers from hospitals in the former combat areas to recuperation centers nearer the patients’ homes of record. But when Georges was told he would be sent to a facility in Paris he protested that he no longer had a home there—his mother was dead, his still-serving younger brother was taking part in the occupation of Germany, and his sister was being cared for by nuns. Georges seemed destined to spend the balance of his recuperation in whatever facility the army chose for him, until Gaston Bourinet came up with a better idea. A member of Georges’s unit and the injured man’s best friend, Bourinet suggested that Georges agree to be transferred to the Château-des-Eaux-Claires, a stately home-turned–convalescent center in the Charente region of southwestern France. Bourinet’s family lived nearby—in Voeuil et Giget, a village of some five hundred people a few miles south of Angoulême—and he said he would write to them to ask that they visit Georges. Time spent near Gaston’s family seemed a pleasant alternative to remaining in the army hospital, so Georges agreed to undergo his recuperation at Château-des-Eaux-Claires.

  True to Gaston’s prediction, the Bourinets embraced Georges as though he were an adopted son. The family patriarch, Gaston’s father Charles, took an immediate liking to the wounded young soldier and visited him frequently during the first difficult weeks of Georges’s convalescence. More importantly, as it turned out, the elder Bourinet was often accompanied by his daughter. A vivacious, charming, and confident young woman, Denise Laure Marie Bourinet was just four months younger than Georges, and despite their different backgrounds the two young people quickly developed a deep and abiding affection for one another. By the time Georges was released from Château-des-Eaux-Claires in the spring of 1919 he and Denise had gained her parents’ permission to marry, though the ceremony was delayed by a seemingly inexplicable decision on the part of the French military.

  Despite the fact that Georges was nearly blind in his left eye, had severe and persistent bronchitis because of poison gas, and walked with a permanent limp, he was still considered to be on active duty. Upon the completion of his convalescence he was therefore ordered to rejoin his unit, which by that time had been sent east for occupation duty. After an emotional send-off by Denise and her family, Georges dutifully rejoined the ranks, but after his arrival in Germany it quickly became apparent that he was physically incapable of remaining in the military and he was sent back to France. Following a thorough medical examination he was rated as 45 percent disabled and honorably discharged, and in early 1920 he and Denise were married. Among those attending the ceremony was Georges’s sister, who at the suggestion of Denise’s father had left what was by all accounts a hard life with the nuns in Paris and traveled to Charente to become part of the extended Bourinet clan.

  Georges had never really known any other profession than soldiering, and he was understandably concerned that his disabilities would prevent him from securing a decent civilian job to supplement his small pension and support himself and his new bride. As it turned out, however, it was his disabilities themselves that won him the position he was to hold for the rest of his life. Before the wedding Georges had applied for employment with l’Office nationale des mutilés et réformés (National Office for the Wounded and Discharged),15 the governmental agency responsible for validating military veterans’ pension claims and providing eligible former service members with the identity cards that gave them access to free medical care and other benefits. As a disabled veteran himself, Georges knew how important ONMR’s work was and was overjoyed when in January 1921 he was offered a position as an editor in the organization’s Paris headquarters—at the Hôtel des Invalides.

  While the job paid a decent wage it was nowhere near enough to allow the young couple to live in the well-to-do 7th arrondissement that was home to Invalides. Georges and Denise instead found a small apartment in Vitry-sur-Seine, a Paris suburb six miles to the southeast. While affordable, the area at that time had only limited public transportation and in order to save money Georges declined to use even that. Instead, he bought a second-hand bicycle and rode to and from work each day. Denise had intended to find what odd jobs she could, but soon after the couple arrived in Paris she became pregnant and Georges insisted that for the good of their unborn child she should remain at home.

  The young couple’s daughter—and, as it turned out, their only child—was born on Friday, October 21, 1921. From the instant she first drew breath, Yvette Edmée Eugénie Morin was the undisputed center of her parents’ universe. From infancy onward she showed a delighted interest in the world around her, and as soon as she could walk she set about exploring as much of it as she could—under close maternal supervision, of course. Her doting father was unable to spend as much time with her as he would have liked, however, because his job—and the daily twelve-mile round-trip bicycle commute it necessitated—meant the dedicated family man had all too few hours at home with his wife and child.

  Denise and Yvette’s loss was ONMR’s gain, for Georges’s position as an editor was an ideal use of his talents. His lifelong interest in reading had given him both a broad knowledge of history and politics and helped him hone his already significant skills as a writer. These traits were quickly recognized within the organization, and less than a year after arriving at ONMR Georges had become the agency’s chief editor. Much of his work consisted of shaping the writings of senior leaders, for whom he also wrote speeches and policy papers. Georges was also responsible for monitoring the way ONMR was portrayed in the press, which required him to read several newspapers each day and then write concise summaries for his superiors. In addition, Georges’s intelligence, maturity, work ethic, and obvious dedication to ONMR’s mission of aiding veterans like himself soon resulted in his being trusted with increasingly important administrative duties outside the editorial office.

  Despite his routinely heavy workload, Georges enjoyed his job and found it both professionally fulfilling and personally rewarding. Indeed, only two things kept it from being the perfect situation. The first, of course, was that he had too little time with Denise and Yvette, but the second was potentially far more damaging—Georges’s twelve-mile bicycle commute was seriously worsening his already precarious health. The ride strained his legs and frostbite-damaged feet, and more importantly, the air pollution and often damp weather that were normal
facets of his daily journey to Invalides were beginning to wreak havoc on his gas-weakened lungs. By early 1925 Georges was near physical exhaustion and considering leaving his position with ONMR simply in order to preserve both his family and his health. At that point the organization’s director made a suggestion that would not only allow Georges to remain at Invalides, it would also have consequences that would only become apparent when German troops once more walked the streets of Paris.

  LIKE MANY PEOPLE WITH WHOM GEORGES WORKED AT ONMR, MONSIEUR Lucien Possoz—the director—was aware of the young veteran’s physical handicaps and of his dismay at having so little time with his wife and child. And, again like many of Georges’s colleagues, Possoz was loath to see the hardworking and personable chief editor leave Invalides. It was therefore with a great deal of pleasure that the director realized he was in a position to offer Georges a solution.

  Though the sprawling Invalides complex was home to a variety of governmental and cultural organizations, the Office of the Architect bore overall responsibility for the care and preservation of all buildings and infrastructure. Engineers constantly monitored the structural integrity of the centuries-old edifices, and made repairs and modifications when necessary. Carpenters, electricians, and plumbers handled the less historic but no less important challenges that arose, while a small army of horticulturists and greenskeepers maintained the ornamental gardens and other vegetation. In addition, a specialized subsection of the Office of the Architect was responsible for the preservation of many of the objets d’art that graced Invalides’ eight miles of hallways and fifteen courtyards. A small team of art conservators oversaw the ongoing maintenance of, and repairs to, hundreds of paintings, sculptures, tapestries, and statues—as well as Napoléon’s sarcophagus and the other tombs and memorials within the Dôme. And it was within this Fine Arts Office that Monsieur Possoz saw a solution to Georges Morin’s two problems.