GENY HEYWOOD

Growing up during the Second World War

It was a bright and sunny afternoon in Chantonnay that July day of 1940. The church bells had already been ringing announcing what the grown-ups knew to be the advance of the invading German army. Children all over the northern part of France had already anticipated, dreaded, then seen, what now it was my turn to witness. I could not help but wonder if the other children had felt the terror that filled my soul at this very moment.

My parents and we two children, lived in La Chataigneraie, a small town East of where I was staying at that memorable moment. In a spirit of survival, they had found it wise to keep my teen-aged brother Michel with them and take me to stay with my maternal grand-parents. They did not tell me of course why they believed me to be safer hidden between two old country folk who looked like they just stepped out of the previous century with their antiquated clothing that smelled of naphthalene. Nobody explained to me why we had rehearsed several times a game of hide and seek. Actually it was a game of hide, not of seek. My family had hoisted me in a dark place under a staircase. A small ledge could be reached from the other staircase below, the one coming up from the cellar. It was a dark corner and there I was to remain very still, as quiet as a mouse. I was not to respond to any calls of my name. This was an order. At nine years of age, having heard the whispers of war for many months, needless to say I was a very confused and scared child. I did not like the hiding place under the stairs, it was too dark and I was afraid of the dark. Every time I was hoisted up on that ledge I would scream, just like I had done when my parents had tried to hide me under the cellar stairs at our home in La Chataigneraie the week before. I had no idea why my family so wanted to make me disappear and although I did not really understand why everybody was so scared, including myself, I kept thinking “what are we afraid of and why?“

I certainly did not fully understand why people talked of the Huns and other invaders. Why did people speak of Attila and Alexander the Great? And why should they tell about Indian mothers warning their children that if they did not behave Iskander would get them. No, I did not know why I should be scared but I was petrified because something was about to happen, something very scary. That I knew. Three years before in our home town, right in front of my own kindergarten, we had welcomed a Spanish family in our home town. They were refugees running from Franco’s soldiers. They had crossed the Pyrenees; they had endured atrocious pains and found their way all the way to our Vendee in Western France. Although I was then only going on six years of age, I can still, today, see that young couple standing right there on our street with their little boy, Louis was his name. They told horror stories of a civil war and our people took them in with open heart.

But on that sunny day of July 1940, the people of Chantonnay had been told already the morning before that they were not to lock their doors and that they were to stay inside their houses and wait for the arrival of the new “occupants”.

When suddenly we heard the rolling noise of trucks and motors, something told me that I was witnessing history. The vehicles, many trucks, motorcycles with sidecars attached to most of them, crossed the town of 3800 souls spreading fear from one end to the other. Then they reversed the route and at the fair grounds up the road, the vehicles spewed out their contents of what appeared to be thousands of great big soldiers in green uniforms. Most of them had blond hair and all of them wore big noisy black leather boots.

In a blink of an eye the strangers were in formations and suddenly a huge army was coming down our street doing the goose step and chanting their conquerors’ song: “ Ailli-Aillo-Ailla…Ailli-Aillo-Ailla…Ailli-Aillo-Ailla…Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! This was the first line that I shall never forget. The rest was in German verse that I did not understand. The singing was loudly powerful and it was obvious that the warning we had received that 60 French people would be shot for every German soldier who might be hurt, was not an idle threat.

My Grandpa Theodule and my Grandma Augustine, retirees in their early sixties were silent and the three of us huddled behind the lace curtains of a window in the front bedroom to watch the horrifying procession. There was not a French soul to be seen outside and dog owners had been warned to keep their pooches off the streets.

It appeared to me to be a very long marching army. At times the soldiers would sing and do the goose steps, they would then fall silent and keep on marching stomping the pavement with fury. Suddenly the voices would explode in that loud conquerors song and make us tremble with fear.

After a while, I suppose they felt confident enough that they had made their presence known and forcibly accepted. The army disbanded and soldiers in pairs started to spread about and enter our homes to “occupy” our town.

My Grandpa directed us to stand in the hallway, facing the front door where he anticipated the soldiers would enter. He and my Grandma stood a couple of feet apart from each other, he a little more at front as though to protect us, I, hiding, crouching and peeking from behind my Grandma’s big black skirt. When ever my mind re-lives for me that picture of yesteryears, I think of our little group as being like a cat trying to make itself bigger when facing danger. What a picture we must have presented to the occupants? My grand-parents’ instinct had told them that we should be presentable and we wore our best clothing. I remember my Grandma having checked that my knee-high socks were straight. Funny how little things like that stay in our mind.

I also remember that, earlier, I had been told to empty my bladder since I had a tendency to make a paddle when finding myself in a stressful situation. I had, yes, and the situation proved to be more stressful then anticipated...but nobody mentioned the paddle on the hallway floor.

It was not long before a kick in the front door opened it and announced the arrival of our new guests. They carried rifles and bayonets and had handguns at their belts. Neither spoke a word of French. I suppose at that moment, my Grandpa was not all that anxious to show off his knowledge of German with the few sentences he had learnt in the trenches twenty years earlier.

We all heard about the “friendship” that had developed between the two armies facing each other at the front. If the future had been left to the simple soldiers right there to decide, both German and French armies could have saved millions of lives after an exchange of Christmas treats, but it was not to be because the big shots at the head of both governments had decided that the butchering should continue.

So, here we were just a short 26 years later, facing each other again, but this time, not in the trenches, but in our own homes. “Bonjour Messieurs” my Grandpa said to the arriving occupants, and my Grandma repeated the greeting. I mumbled a salutation also but I was so terribly shy and worried that I doubt the guests neither heard nor understood what I muttered.

My Grandpa pointed out to them that we were the only occupants of the house, that there was nobody else and he made it clear that all doors were wide open to every room. There were four doors in that hallway, one to the bedroom where the three of us slept, one to that guest room from which we had watched the procession, one to a dining room that was hardly ever used and the last one to the kitchen. That’s where we truly lived as a family while suffering drafts in all seasons. It was necessary to keep the chimney fire going and if we closed the door to the cellar, it smoked. My Grandma cooked in the open fire in a very primitive manner and I can imagine the picture of pioneering we presented to our “guests”.

The soldiers visited the entire house, from the cellar to the attic, passing right by that ledge where I could have been hidden had I been brave. They selected the small attic room where long ago may be a maid slept separated from a family. It was a sort of cubicle in the middle of the attic with a dormer window giving a view of the neighbor’s lower tiled roof. At the bottom of the stairs that came down to the kitchen there was a door with a huge key in its lock. In my days every door had a huge key that could be used from either side of the door. But this door also had a bolt inside it. The soldiers selected the safety of the attic room but on that day, the subtlety escaped me. Perhaps my Grandpa, an old soldier himself, wanted to give them that feeling of security that the two young men must have so desperately wanted. I understood in much later years why those two soldiers had chosen to share a three quarter bed in that room under the roof. I bet they did not sleep very well that first night wondering what we might do to them. None of us did.