It is funny why do the Germans wear camouflaged rain-coats but not camouflaged uniforms now why do they. The first I saw was the other day, they went by on bicycles, and they reminded me of the chorus of the Tivoli Opera House in San Francisco, it used to cost twenty-five cents and the men in mediaeval costume looked so like these camouflaged coats, with sort of keys and crosses on them in contrasted colors. Oh dear. It would all be so funny if it were not so terrifying and so sad, this in January forty-four.
Ma foi it’s long is what they say. Everybody in the country in France says ma foi, a nice mediaeval expression, you say anything to them and they say ma foi, that can mean yes or oh hell, or no, or just nothing. At present any of them can say, it’s long, and the answer is ma foi, which also means to be sure. In this particular part of the world they have another thing, they say taisez-vous, or shut up, or shut it, and they say it as they are talking, they are talking along about something and they say, oh shut it, and it is not to themselves, nor to you, it is of the facts of which they are speaking, sometimes they say taisez-vous, taisez-vous, and the sentence goes on, it is rather delightful, I do not quite know why, they may say and the war is long and the Germans might be coming this way again oh shut up oh shut up and do you think it is possible that they will. This is a kind of a sentence it makes, and it is enjoyable. Ma foi.
And now once more the telephone is working and we can see people and the roads are open and the Germans are gone from the village and everybody is breathing a little more freely not entirely so but a little so, although some few unpleasant things did happen, oh dear me. Everybody looks at their neighbors and says oh dear me or ma foi, and anyway everybody is relieved. Nobody knows what it is all about excepting that it is to find out who is supplying the mountain boys with food. So many strange things the curfew at seven o’clock instead of ten o’clock, two young fellows who had sling shots and had themselves taken away, one young fellow who tried to run away was shot, and one old man who was drunk and out at ten o’clock was killed, and as it was very bad weather, snow and sleet and wind the rest of them stayed at home, it is so difficult to make a French population realise that it is dangerous not to do as they are told, they like to do what they like, and they do. As one Frenchman said to me in France a civilian is always more important than a policeman unless he happens to be a criminal, but just any civilian is always more important than just any policeman. This is ingrained in every Frenchman and so it is almost impossible to make them do what they are told. Such strange things happen, a funny little man who was known as being a collaborator and had even gotten a coffin, the kind they send to them, had all his things taken by the Germans, it seems that his father in days long gone was a receiver of stolen goods, naturally enough as this town has always been an important railroad junction a small town but an important railroad junction, and his son, well perhaps he did not receive stolen goods, but he had stores of forbidden provisions here there and anywhere, and among them some very ancient fire-arms from the revolution, or Napoleon collected by his father and somebody mentioned them and the Germans went to look for them and they found them and so naturally they took away all the soap and iron and wine and spirits that were there too naturally enough, and he the little man was away and they have given him three days to give himself up, but where is he and does he know, and how can he or anybody else know why they went to him. There are also an elderly man and his sister, here, and it has just been told us that their father who had been a railroad worker, once stole precious jewels and tried to sell them in Geneva and was given five years prison and the son and daughter now quite old were never married and they live together, and the son for all that was employed by the railroad, he still is as a night guard, and she after a long life of domestic service has stomach ulcers, and anyway these stories did distract our minds from anxiety and the distresses of one of our neighbors whose son was finally killed in trying to run away. To-day now that it is all over everybody went to the funerals of every one who had been killed, and now to-day it was Sunday and the sun shone and the snow was on the ground and the whole population were out skiing and sledding and the mayor was tired and so was his wife, and with reason, it is no fun being a mayor these days. The mayor finally persuaded the Germans that there were no mountain boys in the mountain back of us because as he explained there is no water there. In the days when he used to go hunting we always had to carry a flask of water to refresh the dogs with because the dog could not find any water there so how could men stay there. No it is not possible, and finally the Germans were convinced and they left. They left. And the telephone goes again, and the people can move around the streets again, and I can let the dog out again the dog Basket and we can go walking again and the snow is beginning to melt, and to-day is Monday in February nineteen forty-four.
Tired of winter tired of war but anyway they do hope and pray that it will end some day.
I was talking to Madame Gallais, she keeps a little shop, she was born in this country, but spent most of her life in Paris, and she is Parisian and it is a pleasure. Landscape is all very well but you do long to see a street any street. Once in Belley I went in to see Madame Chaboux and she was not home and I was tired and I lay down on her couch, and she lives in a street, and opposite was a wall just a wall with windows, it was a relief from trees and fields, I remember Janet Sayne, she was a friend before the 1914 war, and she always used to say that she could never understand why trees which look so pretty in a city look so ugly in the country, and in a way she was right, in a way she certainly was. Well Madame Gallais, manages to get anything you want in a small way, they all come and they all go the people of the country and they bring one thing and they are given another thing and we are given something and we give something and everybody has a fair amount of something and life goes on. We do suffer from a lack of dental floss, seems a funny thing to suffer from but we do and we decided whenever the Americans coming up from Italy pass in front of the door we will go out and stop the first dental ambulance and ask them for some dental floss, and Alice Toklas says that they will not have any and besides will they come and I say yes they will have some and they might come. All of which is pleasant enough this cold February day.
Well as I was saying I was talking to Monsieur Gallais, he had fought the last war the 1914 war, of course everybody of that age in France did, and we were telling each other stories as veterans do about how sweet everybody had been then, ah yes he said the French in those days were a united people, and he told about how every one shared everything with their comrades, and one poor man, who had very few packages and was always joking said when he went on leave that they would be surprised by what he would bring them back, and the others paid no attention but sure enough when he came back he brought with him an enormous turkey that his wife had been fattening up for them and they all ate it and said Monsieur Gallais everybody was like that then, the French were a united people. And his wife said but after all the young ones are just as much comrades, look at the mountain boys look at the forced labor ones in Germany, they help each other, yes said Monsieur Gallais but think of those at home who denounce them. Well after all, of course there is disunion, there are the scared middle classes afraid of communism, there are the military people angry that the army has been taken away from them there are the religious old maids and widows who are afraid that in the future there will be no religion but as Madame Gallais says the young generation are just as united as the poilus in ’14–’18 and she is right they are. Just to-day I met a woman who was on the train to Lyon the other day and there were two hospital coaches on the train with wounded men from the police who were supposed to have been in upper Savoy fighting the mountain boys. They said, and that we had already known because only about half came back through here that had gone there, they said that a good half of the special police had joined the mountain boys and the rest of them the mountain boys had very carefully wounded in the legs, they wanted to put them out of business given an excuse to go on dr
awing their pay and yet not have a wound that might later stop them from earning a living, only one was wounded in the arm and that was a mistake, they were very careful to wound them in the leg. Of course they were harder on the militia, they hate them, and they kill any of them, well no not exactly and not any of them were hurt, no not exactly, it’s all right, they said and laughed. So after all the French are a united people, of course there are the Germans, and of course that is completely another matter.
I said the Germans were here and all along here, and here in Culoz, two young ones were killed who tried to run away and one man an elderly man who drank and who was shot by the Germans because he was out on the road after the curfew hour, and what hurt everybody was that he had been left there by the Germans all night, and everybody went to his funeral, but what excited everybody the most was that a woman was found not far from here on an island in the Rhone, and when she was taken out they found that she had a bullet in her head. They then found out that she was a schoolteacher from the town of Seysell where there was the most shooting by the Germans because there the mountain boys were always being fed, and this woman was a schoolteacher there, and it seems that when the Germans came she was badly frightened and wanted to go away and the head teacher said no, he said a teacher was like a soldier a doctor a nurse or a mayor, his or her business was to remain at her post whatever happened but she said she must go to her people and she tried to take the train and they would not give her a ticket at the station and she got more frightened and she put on the trousers of her skiing costume and she walked away to go to another town to take the train and the next thing that happened was that she was dead on an island in the Rhone where drowned people are always found with a bullet in her head.
Just at present we are all quiet in very wintery weather here toward the end of February, and if or where or when or if the Americans will be coming soon, well will they.
Of course these days when there is no way of getting new books I have to read the old ones and fortunately I have great quantities of detective stories and adventure stories and each one of them now has a different meaning, it is one of the real most important things about war, the making geography come alive, and lots of places in the story books are real now which is a pleasure. Of course getting frightened again and again is not always a pleasure, is not at all a pleasure, when I heard last evening that the primate of Poland had been taken away from the abbey of Hautcombe it was frightening, one is always a little frightened just a little and this evening the maid said that there were some people in the kitchen would Alice Toklas come down to see them, who are they, we asked, and she answered passing strangers, well actually they were American citizens a brother and a sister who had been here for some time, in the village, American born of French parents who had come back to Marseilles and the boy had already been rescued by the Swiss consul and now once again they were taking him, so we told the sister, to take the train to-morrow to Lyon and to see the Swiss consul, which she will do, and as I say everything is a little frightening, and then there are stories well they are a little frightening, enough said, they are a little frightening, especially if the dog stays with them, well it is a little frightening. The Swiss are very comforting, they really are, they have just given us a passport of protection, and the mayor’s wife is very comforting, she is Swiss, and she and I sit and talk together, and she tells me, that she does not care for the higher clergy she thinks they think more of palaces than of humanity and that the lower clergy think more of eating and drinking than anything, to be sure she said the poor dears are very poor as they have to give so much to the bishops, well anyway that is the way she feels about it and she is a little frightened too but she is very comforting. Last night the local baker was bringing us some beans and some flour, and he came late and banged at the door of the kitchen which was closed and the cook came up frightened and said it is Germans, no I said I guess it is Bonaz which is the name of the baker and to be sure I was brave because I knew he had intended coming, so the two servants went down and opened the door, and Jeanne the maid said that they were neither very brave their legs shook inside their skirts, and the baker laughed, he likes a joke and he knew that he had scared them. To-day the end of February things look as if things might be going faster, and the birds have come, they all say here they have never seen so many spring birds, including quail, and they suppose that the fighting has scared the birds out of Italy and out of Germany and that is the reason there are so many of them.
Rabbits have no habits that is the reason that we prefer hens. Besides hens lay eggs, which is a pleasant habit.
To-day a man said to me the hunting dogs are all going crazy because they cannot hunt, because we cannot hunt, the time will come I said and he said yes this autumn.
Spring is here, it is the first of March nineteen forty-four and spring is here, well not quite here but pretty well here, and everybody feels a little more hopeful, they are all wishing that it would be over without France being invaded, and I guess we all feel like that, it is all right to be liberated but it would be so nice if it could be done without bombs and fighting on the soil of France. Madame Gallais says we are all selfish we cannot help feeling that way about it, but anyway it is not for us to decide so why worry, all you want to do is to buy as much as you can so when it does come every one will have enough to eat in their cupboard, so that even the poor dog can have a bone. Everybody is coming back from Paris, that is to say everybody has been there and everybody has come back and they all say life has gotten pretty normal there and they all also say that you can have all the vegetables you want, there are lots to buy and not dear. Well in the country you can have meat and fish and eggs and butter but no vegetables, vegetables do not come until June, so in every way the French people defend themselves that is they lead their normal life. I remember once Virgil Thomson saying that the only thing the French respect is longevity, the power to go on, indeed it is the only criticism French people ever make, if they think you have talent they say continue like the nice story of the nigger, in all the schools that is all any master ever says is continue, keep on, and once in a military school, the master came along and one of the students was a Negro and the teacher said in surprise, why you are a Negro, yes said the Negro, well then said the teacher, continue, in other words go on being it. And so the French continue their normal life. The Topses the other day told us that the German authorities were complaining of the aspect of Paris, nobody would know that there was a war, and it discouraged the German soldiers who were there on leave. The prefect of the Seine said but what can I do, French people will lead their normal lives whatever happens, and they do lead them, what can I do, whatever you do they will lead their normal lives it is their way, and that is why the French can always rise from the ashes, they rather like it to be like that, it makes the leading their normal lives just that much more exciting.
It is very funny the way everybody and anybody can feel about anything. Take the mountain boys, did I meet two of them when I came back from my walk up a part of the mountain this afternoon, they both looked rather tired and then we said how do you do in passing, everybody carries heavy sacks on their backs these days, nothing means anything, and some say, that they are back in the region and some say no, and some say the Germans are back in the region and some say no, and anyway it is evening and nearly midnight and I will be listening to the last news just before going to bed, again. It is funny the different nations begin their broadcasting I wish I knew more languages so that I could know how each one of them does it. The English always begin with here is London, or the B. B. C. home service, or the over seas service, always part of a pleasant home life, of supreme importance to any Englishman or any Englishwoman. The Americans say with poetry and fire, this is the voice of America, and then with modesty and good neighborliness, one of the United Nations, it is the voice of America speaking to you across the Atlantic. Then the Frenchman, say Frenchmen speaking to Frenchmen, they always begin like that, and the B
elgians are simple and direct, they just announce, radio Belge, and the national anthem, and the Frenchman also say, Honor and Country, and the Swiss so politely say, the studio of Geneva, at the instant of the broadcasting station of Berne will give you the latest news, and Italy says live Mussolini live Italy, and they make a bird noise and then they start, and Germany starts like this, Germany calling, Germany calling, in the last war, I said that the camouflage was the distinctive characteristic of each country, each nation stamped itself upon its camouflage, but in this war it is the heading of the broadcast that makes national life so complete and determined. It is that a nation is even stronger than the personality of any one, it certainly is so nations must go on, they certainly must.
Spring seems to find it impossible to come, we are all getting sad, this is the middle of March, neither spring nor the end of the war can come, but boulders cropping up in meadows is always romantic and makes it look like a park, even if it is on the side of a mountain, and the fact that it is romantic is consoling, I do not know quite why it is consoling but it is consoling, boulders great big ones with ivy on them or tiny trees are always consoling when they are scattered about in a meadow, they are. The wind blows and the wind is icy cold and the spring does not come, they say that the seasons cannot come as they should, because cannon changes the clouds about, first they change the birds about and then the clouds, there is no doubt that they the bombardments do change things about. The days follow one after the other and the time passes so very quickly, it is hardly possible to get accustomed to one day before it is over and then it is the next day and then it is Friday and we listen to the resumé of the week by the Swiss commentator and then the week is over, just like that. Then Chinamen did invent gun powder, there seems to be no doubt about that, and the French and the Americans automobiles and flying, and the Italians wireless and there does not seem to be any doubt about that, why not, there does not seem to be any doubt about that. Just now nobody thinks about what century it is, they just wonder when it will be over, they just wonder. There is no doubt about that.
Wars I Have Seen Page 17