The General's Niece

by Paige Bowers

  “It was because of Geneviève that I understood why having a mother was so important,” Roger said.

  For the next two years, the family ate their meals around a portrait of Germaine that Xavier placed at the dining room table where she used to sit. For Geneviève the photo evoked bittersweet memories of her mother’s perfume and her favorite ecru evening dress. The girl pined for Germaine’s gentle sweetness but never felt like she could talk to her grief-stricken father about her pain. His was all encompassing, and Geneviève followed him around like a puppy in a youthful display of support. Although she may have been small, she believed she was necessary to him.

  “As the oldest, I felt like I needed to be at his side, even if he never said a word,” she said. She took long walks with him in the forest, accompanied him to concerts in her best dress, and preoccupied herself with ways she could lift her father’s spirits.

  In 1927 Xavier’s mood lightened somewhat when he learned that his brother Charles would be moving to the French military base in nearby Trier with his pregnant wife, Yvonne, their six-year-old son, Philippe, and their three-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Élisabeth. Although Charles, who had recently been promoted to major, would be busy supervising the infantry battalion that was stationed there, both brothers committed to frequent visits. With regional tensions increasing it was good to have family one hour away. Street brawls between German and French residents were on the increase, along with anti-French propaganda. When German troops picked a fight with some of Major de Gaulle’s men, Yvonne de Gaulle witnessed the scene and was so traumatized by it that she was concerned that her distress would impact the health of her yet-to-be-born child.

  Xavier’s and Charles’s families drew strength and support from each other in this climate. Geneviève spent Christmas 1927 with her uncle’s family and was astonished to see how modestly they lived. Where Geneviève’s family had staff who maintained the daily operations of her home, at her uncle’s house she saw her aunt Yvonne get down on her knees to scrub the floors. Yvonne also went to great pains to decorate a tree for the entire regiment.

  “That year, I don’t believe that my cousins received any Christmas gifts,” she said.

  Overall Geneviève had fond memories of the holiday because she got along so well with her cousin Philippe, who was one year younger than she was. Jacqueline remained in the Saarland, jealous of all the fun her sister was having, and Élisabeth was miserable because she felt left out by the two older children. On December 31 Geneviève learned that her father and uncle had a “charming rivalry” over who could be the first to wish the other a happy new year.

  “Uncle Charles always wanted to be the first one to do it because he was the youngest,” Geneviève said. “But my father had an enormous amount of respect and affection for his younger brother: he was determined to keep score.”

  Major de Gaulle and his wife began 1928 by welcoming their daughter Anne into the world. Yvonne had had a difficult labor, and when the child was delivered, it was clear that something was wrong. Doctors diagnosed the girl with Down syndrome and told the de Gaulles there was no cure. At the time it was common to institutionalize patients with this genetic condition to ensure they got the care and attention they needed. Charles and Yvonne would have none of that, insisting that Anne would live with them and never be made to feel different from anyone else. She would be surrounded by her family’s love.

  As Charles and Yvonne adjusted to the challenges of raising a child with Down syndrome, Xavier began to emerge from his dense fog of sadness. By 1930 family members urged him to marry again. His children needed a mother, they said. It had been five years since Germaine’s death, after all. They introduced him to his late wife’s younger cousin Armelle Chevallier-Chantepie, the twenty-seven-year-old daughter of a cavalry captain. Armelle bore a striking physical resemblance to Germaine, but Geneviève, who was ten years old at the time, did not view her as a substitute. She was very unhappy with Armelle’s presence and even unhappier when Xavier married her in Rennes, France, on December 22, 1930.

  “Just like that, it was very hard for me because the little girl who felt that she was so indispensable to her papa had been replaced,” Geneviève recalled. “Naturally, I told myself that no one must know how I really felt, because at the same time I believed my father deserved a bit of happiness.”

  It was not so easy for Armelle to find her place in the household, which bore traces of Germaine throughout: her presence lingered in family photographs and in evening prayers. Armelle knew she could never replace Germaine, but she did her best to be accepted by her three stepchildren. Roger and Jacqueline adjusted better than did Geneviève, who concealed her discontent under a polite, smiling facade.

  Geneviève did not have to hide her feelings for long. Shortly after Xavier remarried, he sent his daughters to a Catholic boarding school just over the border in France. Although it is difficult to know why he decided to send his daughters an hour away for their education, one can assume that he felt it would be the safest place for his preteen daughters, given the anti-French sentiment in Germany and the uncertainties of the time. Xavier likely believed it to be a better place for a young girl, where she could be looked after, nurtured, and turned into a woman of great promise. Geneviève and Jacqueline became roommates, which they enjoyed, although their temperaments were dissimilar; Geneviève was reserved, where Jacqueline was carefree.

  “[Jacqueline] loved life,” Geneviève said of her younger sister. “She was flirty and had begun to go out in the evenings . . . but me, I preferred to stay in and read, or talk to my father, who was always interesting.”

  By all accounts Geneviève was a competitive student who was preoccupied with earning the best grades in her class. When she fell short of her academic goals, she would become angry with herself and everyone else around her.

  As Geneviève and her siblings headed into their teen years, the world they knew had begun to change. Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party became increasingly popular with struggling Germans who wanted the garrulous leader to make good on his promises to return Germany to greatness. After the Reichstag building mysteriously burned down in February 1933, Hitler, who by then had been named chancellor of the Third Reich, suspended constitutional protections. Nazis tortured political opponents, persecuted Jews, held rallies, and pilfered official documents that helped them strengthen their grip on the populace. In the quiet, comfortable confines of the de Gaulle family’s living room, Xavier introduced Geneviève to the führer’s manifesto, Mein Kampf, as a way of explaining it all. The twelve-year-old girl, who was home visiting her new baby half sister, Marie-Louise, was shocked by the book’s violence and anti-Semitism.

  “My father had taught me that each human being had value . . . and in this book, I learned that if you didn’t belong to the Germanic people, or the Aryan race, you were nothing,” she said.

  Xavier explained that not all Germans believed as Hitler did, but his ideas needed to be taken seriously, especially in France, where memories of the Great War’s losses were still fresh. Few Frenchmen wanted to fight as they had from 1914 to 1918, but in Mein Kampf it was clear that the führer sought revenge against his neighbors.

  Xavier wanted his children to understand and be able to discuss history and current events such as the ones that were unfolding around them. Although Xavier lived a country away, he followed the example of his father, Henri, by driving his youngsters across the border for long, rambling rides through the vast French countryside so they could gain an appreciation of their homeland’s beauty. He showed them the battlefields on which he had fought, explaining to them what had happened there and extolling the virtues of his brave compatriots. Like his father he hoped that his children would grow up to love and defend France as he had. However, he quietly worried that the nation he described to them was no longer anywhere near as valiant or prepared for battle as it had been in another time.

  His brother Charles, who was now a lieutenant colonel, sha
red his views. In 1934 Charles wrote Toward a Professional Army. In it he criticized the French army’s reliance on infantry and border defense and offered a modern vision of warfare, which involved lightning-fast mechanized attacks that cleared the way for a smaller number of highly trained troops. His superiors rejected his ideas, but the German military believed they were worth exploring.

  At the end of 1934, foreign armies came into the Saarland to police the territory before a planned vote about its future governance. Locals had three choices on January 13, 1935: they could be absorbed by the Third Reich, managed by France, or remain under League of Nations control. Officials who oversaw the plebiscite predicted a fair election, stressing the neutrality of poll monitors and ballot counters to the media covering the event.

  Xavier de Gaulle was skeptical about that forecast. Before the vote he tried to convince his German mine workers that it would be a grave mistake to vote pro-Reich. They felt otherwise. Xavier then turned to local priests, hoping they could convince their parishioners that it would be dangerous to be ruled by Hitler. To make his pitch Xavier invited them to his house for dinner. Armelle spent the day preparing a sumptuous feast that concluded with a Saint-Cyr—a large cake that resembled a chocolate truffle. However, the guests were not swayed by the meal, and Geneviève understood that the Sarrois were already “in the wolf’s jaws.”

  On the day of the vote, Max Braun, leader of the anti-Nazi United Front, called it “the worst pseudo-democratic election ever held outside of Germany’s farces.” He alleged that Red Cross nurses helped invalids vote pro-Reich, while local police appointed members of three different Nazi organizations to run the election. Voters who had hoped to cast their ballot for continued League of Nations rule were threatened with death, and Jews were advised by Nazi officers to leave for Germany because the Nazis would not be able to guarantee their safety if they stayed.

  Geneviève was playing games at home with her brothers and sisters when Xavier returned from work in a somber mood. She could tell from the look on his face that the situation was serious. When the votes were tallied, 98 percent of the populace opted for German control. The Nazi salute became mandatory in the streets, and German interior minister Wilhelm Frick announced that the country would have no trouble coming up with the $59 million required to buy back its mines from France.

  On March 1, 1935, Xavier de Gaulle and his kin were among the eighty-five French families to return to France after the Saarland officially returned to German control. Geneviève, then age fourteen, had felt for some time that the French were viewed as intruders in this part of Germany but knew that her father loved his work and that it might be difficult for him to start over in France. The family settled in Rennes, where Xavier found work supervising the construction of a local army barracks.

  Back in Germany Adolf Hitler celebrated the French exit in Saarland’s capital, Saarbrücken, amid cheering throngs of people. He told them: “By this act of equality and justice, the way finally has been cleared for improving our relations with France. Just as we desire peace, so it is hoped our neighbor is willing to cooperate in common work for averting the difficulty that threatens to engulf Europe. . . . This day should also be a lesson for all who disregard the historic truth that through error or might, no people can be divested of its innermost self. You cannot tear out one section of a nation and attempt to steal its very soul. Blood is stronger than paper documents. By your vote, you greatly eased my task, which has no other aim save making Germany strong and happy.”

  He asked for their help building a new Reich, beginning the very next day.

  2

  The Call

  Back in France Xavier de Gaulle was preoccupied with earning a living. Armelle announced she was pregnant shortly after they moved to Rennes, and he knew that once construction was completed on the barracks project he was supervising, he would need to find another job. Armelle gave birth to a son, Henry, on December 7, 1935. Ever practical, Xavier looked at his living situation—a newborn, a toddler, and three teenagers in boarding school—and realized he needed to give up engineering to pursue a job as a tax collector. It was steady work, and Xavier began studying for his licensure test, which he passed and which led to employment in a whole new profession.

  Meanwhile Geneviève and Jacqueline were rooming together at a school in Metz, some six hours to the east. The girls were not part of their half siblings’ lives at this time. It is unknown whether that was by choice or due to their geography, but all three of Xavier de Gaulle’s older children used their vacation time to visit their grandparents and cousins. Occasionally Xavier, Armelle, and their children were present. Even when they weren’t, the get-togethers were joyous, boisterous occasions in part because Geneviève, Jacqueline, and Roger could bond with family members their age.

  In the summer of 1937, Geneviève and Jacqueline learned that their uncle Charles and his family would be stationed in Metz. With their uncle nearby, the girls were often invited to his house to play with their cousins or attend military parades. Although Charles was preoccupied with work, he spent a lot of time with his two nieces, who were sixteen and seventeen years old at the time. Geneviève peppered her uncle with endless questions about history, his writing projects, and current events. He told her of his dreams and fears for the country, which had become ill prepared for the conflicts he believed it would face. He was a smart man who had written two provocative books about the country’s military. But Geneviève and her sister learned that he also loved to joke around.

  “He told us about a really hot day when a little boy came up to him, raised his head to meet his gaze and asked, ‘How’s the weather up there?’” Geneviève recalled.

  Although he had a reputation as a difficult firebrand in the military, at home he was a devoted family man. Geneviève adored him, and he cherished his firstborn niece in return because he saw a bit of himself in her. Like him she worked hard, loved history, and had developed a seriousness of purpose that far belied her age. For Geneviève her uncle Charles became a much-needed listener. She could tell him things that she could not tell her deeply sensitive father and trust that he would keep her confidences. She loved her father but had spent years making her emotional needs secondary to his own, and she reveled in having an adult who could give her the support and guidance she craved.

  Her joy would be interrupted by more tragedy. In early October 1938 Jacqueline grew ill after eating salmonella-contaminated ice cream. When she could not shake a persistent, high fever, doctors diagnosed her with typhoid. Her condition was so grave that they could not save her life. She died on October 11, 1938, nine days before Geneviève’s eighteenth birthday.

  For Geneviève it was a devastating loss. Jacqueline had been her sidekick and confidante, and it didn’t seem fair to her that the lively young woman was taken so young.

  “I asked myself why she had to die and not me,” she recalled. “It always remained a mystery.”

  Her death brought back memories of Germaine’s tragic passing some thirteen years before. As sad as Geneviève was, her father was doubly affected, and her thoughts turned to helping him through his grief.

  “For my poor father this was terrible,” she recalled. “It was like he had lost his wife all over again.”

  They buried Jacqueline near Germaine, and Xavier’s brothers, Charles, Jacques, and Pierre, came for the mass. Despite the sad occasion, and the fact that Charles had to return immediately to Metz, Geneviève recalled that her father and uncles spent their time discussing a recent agreement that allowed Nazi Germany to annex parts of German-speaking Czechoslovakia. France was among the five nations that had signed the pact in an effort to avoid war. Czechoslovakia viewed France’s signature on the document as a betrayal since the Czech government was not allowed to take part in the proceedings. The de Gaulle brothers did not approve of their country’s action and believed that appeasing Hitler would lead to war.

  “They spoke about [the Munich Agreement] that day,” Genevi�
�ve said. “And Papa told me how much it comforted him in his grief to know that Uncle Charles, Uncle Jacques and Uncle Pierre [were antiappeasement too].”

  One month after her sister’s death, Geneviève moved in with her father and his family and enrolled at the University of Rennes to study history. She went from sharing a room with her sister to longing for Jacqueline’s bubbly presence. She put on a brave, smiling face in her grief and poured herself into her studies. By the following September she saw that her father and uncles were correct about the dangers of appeasing Hitler. Hitler, after signing a nonaggression pact with Poland in 1934, entered an alliance with the Soviet Union that enabled Germany to invade Poland on September 1, 1939. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany.

  One month later, Xavier was called up to serve as a reservist at Camp Coëtquidan, forty minutes southwest of Rennes. He rented a three-room home for the family seven and a half miles south of the barracks in the town of Paimpont and spent the next eight months wondering when he’d be called to fight. This period was called the “phony war” because no major land operations occurred in western front countries. But the phony war ushered in a real battle on May 10, 1940, and a month and a half later, France was shocked into seeming defeat.

  If there was to be a last stand in France against the German forces that had laid waste to the country, some military men believed that it should take place in windswept Brittany. Xavier waited for his marching orders that June in a home that teemed with family members. Armelle, her two small children, Geneviève, and Roger awaited the arrival of Xavier’s frail, eighty-year-old mother, Jeanne, who was fleeing German attacks on the port of Le Havre, not far from where she lived with her daughter, Marie-Agnès; son-in-law, Alfred Cailliau; and their children. Jeanne had been a widow since May 3, 1932, when her husband, Henri, died at age eighty-two. In the years after Henri’s passing, Jeanne’s health had begun to decline too, and she became consumed with seeing her sons before war separated them again.