In the beginning, vineyard workers were granted exemptions from STO, but as Germany’s need for workers grew and more and more people fled to the Resistance, the exemptions were eliminated.
That was when Bernard de Nonancourt, his brother Maurice and several cousins were urgently summoned by their uncle to his office at Lanson Champagne in Reims.
“We believe the government is about to call everyone up for STO,” he said. “I am going to fiddle with your birth dates so I can make you all apprentices, too young to be called up.”
Twenty other workers at Lanson, too old to be turned into apprentices, were ordered to report for STO. Bernard’s brother Maurice, who was already involved with the Resistance, was determined to help them. Through his contacts, he learned of a train being sent to the south to collect meat. The cheminots, or railway workers, had agreed to turn off the refrigeration in some of the cars until the train had crossed the Demarcation Line.
Shortly before daybreak on the appointed day, Maurice shuttled the champagne workers to the railway station, where the train cars were waiting. There beside the track, he gathered them together and quietly reassured them that everything was organized and that they were in good hands. “The Resistance will be there and open the doors,” he said. “They have already arranged for hiding places.”
The men quickly mounted the steps into the still chilly cars, but just as the train was about to depart, one of the workers panicked. “No, I can’t do it,” he told Maurice. “What will happen to my family?” Maurice pleaded with him to reconsider, but soon the entire group had become unnerved. “We have our orders for STO, we have to go,” they said. One by one, they jumped off the train, some stopping to apologize to Maurice, others so scared they ran for home.
Maurice was shaken. Word of the aborted mission was sure to leak out, and his entire family would be in danger. The only way to spare them and to save himself, he decided, was to make a run for it, go underground and hopefully escape to Spain. But the Gestapo was quicker. It picked up his trail almost immediately and arrested him.
“We never heard from my brother again,” Bernard said. “All we know is that he was taken to a concentration camp in Germany where he fell ill and was sent to the gas chamber. I could never bring myself to tell our mother how he died, just that he died in the war.”
It was a decisive moment for Bernard; he knew then that he had to get into the fight against the Germans.
“Le Grand Charles already had inspired me,” he said. “Maurice and I both heard de Gaulle’s radio appeal from London,” the call telling the people of France in 1940 that the war had not been lost and that they should resist. “But now I knew that I could not wait any longer. I had to avenge my brother.”
Bernard’s goal was to get to London and join de Gaulle’s Free French Forces. His mother, however, was distraught. Her husband had died as a result of World War I, then Maurice had been captured. The thought of losing a second son was more than she could bear.
“She begged me not to go, but after a while she realized that it was useless,” Bernard said. “She gave me the address of some distant cousins, two very elderly maiden ladies, who lived just south of the Demarcation Line. She knew they would take me in and help me.” Once he got there, his plan was to proceed to Grenoble, from where, he was told, the Resistance could get him to London.
It was winter when he set off, first hidden in a truck carrying empty champagne bottles, and later traveling by foot, avoiding main roads whenever possible.
When Bernard finally neared the Demarcation Line, he heard a German patrol approaching. He plunged into the Creuse River to hide, but the current was stronger than he had realized. Grabbing a branch protruding from the bank, he struggled to hold on until the Germans had passed. Finally, when they were out of sight, he let go and cautiously made his way to the other side of the river. His pants and shoes, however, did not make it; they had been completely swept away. “I was frozen and absolutely filthy,” Bernard said, “but I had one thing left: the flask of cognac my uncle Victor Lanson had given me. I thought, ‘There’ll never be a time when I need this more.’ ”
Once fortified, he trudged on.
It was the middle of the night when Bernard reached the small town where his elderly cousins lived. “The only person I saw was the village idiot, who was roaming the streets. Looking as I did, that was probably fortunate. I asked him, ‘Where is the home of the St. Julien sisters?’ ” With some effort, Bernard got the information he needed and made his way to the house on the edge of town. It was three o’clock in the morning when he began pounding on the door. “The two old women came to the door, clinging together and trembling like leaves, they were so scared,” Bernard recalled. “They thought I was the creature from the Black Lagoon.”
After letting him in and drawing him a bath, the women went to the attic to find something for Bernard to wear. All they came back with was a pair of their grandmother’s bloomers. “‘So this is the price of liberty,’ I thought, and I pulled them on.”
By dawn, the six-foot-six Nonancourt was on his cousin’s bicycle pedaling toward Grenoble, still garbed in bloomers.
For Georges and Johnny Hugel, joining the Resistance was never an option. With Alsace annexed by Germany, there was no way for the two brothers to escape the fate awaiting all Alsatian boys: induction into the German army. Those who tried to escape were caught and executed. The few who slipped through German hands saw their families arrested and deported to concentration camps.
“Neither of us wanted to be German soldiers, but our family was already in trouble with the Gestapo,” Georges said. “We would never have done something that might put them in a worse position.”
The Hugels’ troubles had begun in 1936, when the Summer Olympics were held in Berlin. Madame Hugel’s brother, André Zoll, whose company had sent him to work in Germany, marked the occasion by raising the French and German flags outside his home. No friend of the Nazis, he deliberately put the French flag on top. Within an hour, the Gestapo arrived, warning that unless the flags were reversed, they would take him to headquarters. André complied, saying no insult had been intended and that his actions were merely a gesture of welcome for Olympic guests. The Gestapo did not arrest André but noted in their files that this family of Alsatians was “too French” and should be watched carefully.
Three years later, the Hugels came under greater scrutiny. This time, it was during a ceremony in front of the Monument aux Morts in Riquewihr, honoring those killed in World War I. The date was July 14, 1939, Bastille Day. France and Germany were not yet at war, but Hitler was already flexing his muscles, having overrun Austria and now threatening the rest of Europe. Some in Riquewihr had openly expressed their admiration for the Führer, complaining that the French Third Republic was weak and that France could use a strong leader. Such comments angered Grandfather Hugel, who was mayor of Riquewihr. When it came time to give his speech, he lashed out. Glaring at the crowd in front of the war memorial, he pointed toward the Rhine River and declared, “For those of you who don’t like France, the bridge is open!”
No longer were the Hugels merely seen as being “too French”; now they were also considered anti-Nazi.
Even the weather seemed to be looking askance at them. That October, when picking began, it was apparent to the Hugels and nearly everyone else that the 1939 vintage would be disastrous. It had rained most of the summer, and the grapes, while abundant, had never ripened. Hauling them in for pressing was not easy because the Hugels had only one horse and no vehicles left. Their other horses and all of their trucks had been requisitioned by the French army, which was mobilizing to face the Germans.
Over the next two months, Jean Hugel watched his wine closely, recording its progress as it underwent fermentation in wooden casks. On December 21, he went into the cellar again to check on his wine. He was horrified. It was worse than he feared: the best cask had only 8.4 percent of alcohol, much less than the minimum standard of 11 percent a
nd far below the desired level of 12.5 or 13. “The wine was awful,” Johnny said. “It was thin, diluted, the worst we ever made.”
When Alsace was annexed the following year, German authorities made life even more difficult for the Hugels by “blocking” their wine, prohibiting them from selling it even to German wine merchants. With the exception of a tiny amount they were allowed to sell to friends and local restaurants, all of the wine had to be held for the German army and navy or certain leaders of the Third Reich. Nazi officials, however, made no promises about when or even how much they would buy. “If they told us to send a few cases to the Russian front, we had to send it,” Johnny said. “But that’s how we unloaded that awful 1939 vintage. The Germans were careless when they filled out their orders and did not always specify what vintage they wanted, so we always shipped the ’39.”
That was the only wine they tried to sell. With other outlets closed and prices fixed so low that it was hard to break even, the Hugels decided to make an effort to hold on to their wine. “We began making up excuses whenever we got an order from the Germans,” Johnny said. “We’d say, ‘We have no corks,’ or ‘We’ve run out of bottles,’ or ‘We have no transportation.’ ” Most of the time, the excuses worked.
The Germans, however, were not finished with the Hugels. When authorities dispatched Polish prisoners of war to Alsace to alleviate a labor shortage in the vineyards, the Hugels were left out. That left Johnny and his father to do most of the work. “I was spending all my time in the vineyard working behind a horse and plow. On those hot summer days when the horse didn’t want to move and the flies were all around, it was a nightmare.”
An even worse nightmare occurred when the Germans forced the Hugels to close their 300-year-old family wine firm. No reason was given but it was no secret either: Jean Hugel had never joined the Nazi Party. The Nazis had sent letter after letter, but Jean kept putting them off, hoping he could keep the family wine business running without joining the Party. He also wanted to preserve the firm for his sons. Now, however, two of them had been drafted into the German army.
Johnny tried to delay being called up by enrolling in medical school, but he was assigned to a medical unit in northern Italy.
Georges, who had been sent to officers’ training school after his induction, was targeted for a more frightening destination, a place no German soldier wanted to go: the Russian front.
More than a million Germans had already perished there and another three million were now bogged down in a costly war of attrition. Some who survived had warned Georges what to expect. “My training was good, so I felt prepared,” Georges said. “I was not afraid.”
His family, however, was terrified. On the eve of his departure, Georges’s mother sobbed uncontrollably; his father was barely able to speak. Finally, Georges’s grandfather rose from his chair. Moving slowly across the room to his desk, he opened the drawer and withdrew the tricolored sash he had worn as mayor of Riquewihr when he had delivered his denunciation of pro-German Alsatians. “I have something I want to give you,” he said. Taking a pair of scissors, he cut off a portion of the sash with the blue, white and red colors of the French flag and said, “This is the most important thing I have. Always carry it with you. In case of trouble, tell them you are French, not German.” The elder Hugel also gave Georges two gold coins. “That is all I can do for you,” he said sadly.
Georges arrived in the Ukraine on July 15, 1943. Unlike the war in the West where conventional military rules applied, this was something completely different. Hitler had called it a “war of annihilation.” Conquering Russia, he declared, would be easier than France. But he had underestimated the resolve of the Red Army.
“Hitler was crazy,” Georges said. “There were a few fanatics in our group who believed in what he was talking about but most of us thought he was crazy. We weren’t fighting for Hitler. We were just hoping to stay alive.”
From the day they arrived, Georges and his unit found themselves on the defensive, almost always retreating. Nothing was motorized and everything, including food and ammunition, had to be hauled by horses. Day after day they walked, much of the time in drenching rain which turned the vast plains of the Ukraine into an endless sea of mud. “It was two feet deep, up to our knees,” Georges said. “We could barely walk. Our horses and carts were always getting stuck.”
And all around them, nearly everywhere, lay the stench of death. Atrocities and scorched-earth tactics carried out by both armies had turned the landscape into a wasteland of decaying corpses. The worst atrocities were committed by the Einsatzgruppe, German commandos who followed in the wake of the German army’s advance, methodically rounding up Slavs, Jews, Gypsies and Communists, and killing them. “It was worse than you can imagine,” Georges said, “the people, the animals lying there . . .
“You had to have something to hang on to or you would go mad.” For Georges, it was a motorbike his father bought him as a graduation gift when he finished high school in 1939. “I tried not to think about home, my family, the vineyards; that was much too painful. Instead I concentrated on the motorbike and a trip I made with it in the Alps. I relived every kilometer, pictured everything I saw. The mountains, the forests, that was what I tried to think about.”
But nothing could block out the horrors that confronted him as he and his men slogged westward: the burned-out and abandoned villages, the bodies of victims dangling from trees or scaffolds where they had been hung by the SS. Those were the worst moments. If the bodies were not too high, Georges would order his men to cut them down.
“We didn’t feel anything,” Georges said. “We were numb, incapable of feeling any emotion. We had walked so far, more than a thousand miles, and we were beyond exhaustion.”
But conscious enough to hear the haunting cries of Russian partisans armed with loudspeakers calling them murderers and arsonists for burning their villages.
When possible, Georges and his men followed behind tanks, keeping to the paths that the armored vehicles cut through the mud. Georges cautioned his men not to follow too closely because the tanks were often targets of Russian guns. Despite Georges’s warning, some soldiers were careless and paid with their lives.
September came and the warmth of summer fled. But not the rain. Never the rain. If anything, it became heavier and the mud deeper. Only one thing kept Georges and his men moving: the knowledge of what would happen if they fell into Russian hands. “Surrender was never an option. We knew what they did to Germans they captured,” Georges said.
One afternoon, Georges felt a burning sensation in his boots. He tried to ignore it but when the pain persisted, he was forced to stop. Removing his boots, Georges discovered they were full of blood. His feet had been pierced by pieces of shrapnel and become infected, and blood poisoning, caused by weeks of marching through water and mud, had also set in. Unable to walk, Georges was left by the roadside. His unit moved on.
“That was my most frightening moment. A wounded soldier was of no use to the Russians and I knew if they found me I was dead.”
It turned out to be the best piece of luck Georges ever had. A Red Cross truck came by and stopped. The driver was lost and asked if he knew where a certain town was, explaining that he had a load of wounded soldiers he was taking to a field hospital. Georges said he knew where the town was and would show the way if he could hitch a ride. The driver agreed and lifted Georges into the already jammed ambulance.
After a few weeks in a field hospital, Georges was shipped back to Germany, where he spent his last months as a German soldier recuperating. He never returned to Russia.
Bernard de Nonancourt was excited; his role as a soldier in de Gaulle’s Free French Forces was about to begin. At least, that was what he hoped. After two months on the road, the young champagne maker from Reims had finally reached Grenoble.
Bernard looked around, trying to get his bearings. Before leaving Champagne, some of his brother’s friends had given him the name and address of a priest
who was a liaison person for the Resistance.
Not surprisingly, the priest had only one thing to say to Bernard. “Go to confession, young man, but go to the Cathedral of Nôtre Dame and make sure you go to the confessional of Abbé Pierre Goundry.” The priest then gave Bernard a password to slip into the litany of confession.
When he arrived at Nôtre Dame, Bernard made a quick tour of the Gothic cathedral, confirmed he had found the right confessional and got into line behind several other people waiting to confess. How many of them, he wondered, are here for the same reason I am? Bernard repeated his password over and over in his mind, his excitement growing as he moved closer to the confessional. “This is where it really begins,” he thought. “In just a few days, I will be in England with de Gaulle.”
Finally his turn came and he slipped quickly into the tiny booth. “Father, I have sinned,” he recited by rote, “it has been six days since my last confession. . . .” And then the moment came and he slipped his password into the litany: “We’ll meet again.”
Abbé Pierre leaned closer to the screen and whispered to Bernard to meet him at his home that evening. He then surprised Bernard by continuing with the confession, leaving the young champagne maker groping for the right words and growing impatient for the ritual to end.
Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure Page 15