The General's Niece

by Paige Bowers

  It was not an easy feat, given the situation on the ground. The German Luftwaffe had begun bombing Le Havre on May 19, 1940, and continued their attacks for the next two evenings. British troops fired antiaircraft guns as Nazi planes dropped bombs on warehouses, factories, shipyards, and Le Havre itself. When large numbers of Dutch and Belgian refugees began arriving in the town by train, locals panicked and thought that the Germans were winning. A dark mood descended over the public as air-raid sirens became commonplace.

  The bombing continued in June when the British began evacuating at Dunkirk. Not all troops could be rescued, so they escaped to other ports along the country’s northern coast, striving to find a way back to England. Nazi planes tried to prevent their return by bombing Le Havre ten more times. Bedlam ensued as local officials tried to evacuate residents. Many wanted to flee incoming Nazis by heading for Brittany, but trains could no longer travel in that direction because they had to go through the train station in Rouen, which was almost sixty miles to the east. That station was closed, but Jeanne was so determined to see her boys that she traveled 475 miles south to Grenoble to see her son Jacques before getting one of her grandsons to drive her 571 miles north to see Xavier.

  After Jeanne’s arrival in Paimpont, nineteen-year-old Geneviève comforted the delicate old woman, whose anxiety gave way to vivid memories from her girlhood of France’s humiliation by the Prussians at Sedan in 1870. She felt like she was reliving those dark days, and her weakened heart couldn’t bear it. Her granddaughter reassured her that it wouldn’t happen like that, not again. Charles would come to visit his mother and Xavier’s family en route to London to meet with British prime minister Winston Churchill on June 15. After that visit Geneviève assured her grandmother that France would fight back—yes, right there in Brittany.

  Brittany. The very shape of the peninsula on which the French army hung their dwindling hopes jutted out toward the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean like the hand of a drowning man begging for help. Two weeks before Pétain’s radio address, the military devised a plan that would gather forces along Brittany’s Rance and Vilaine Rivers to fend off an enemy assault. As French troops kept up a stiff resistance along those rivers, allies from Great Britain could stream through the ports west of that line of defense to come to the country’s aid. A prolonged fight under this strategy would allow France to keep its lines of communication open with its allies and, in case of trouble, make it easier to relocate the state’s armed forces and government ministers to London or North Africa.

  Two days before Pétain addressed the nation, Charles de Gaulle, who had been recently appointed undersecretary for war and national defense, held secret meetings with commanders about the feasibility of this scheme. The overwhelming consensus: Such resistance was futile. There were simply not enough troops to hold off a German advance. General de Gaulle bid farewell to his wife and children. He was headed to London, he told them, because things were very bad.

  “Perhaps we are going to carry on the fight in Africa,” de Gaulle told his wife, Yvonne. “But I think it more likely that everything is about to collapse. I am warning you so that you will be ready to leave at the first sign.”

  The signs were everywhere. After securing passports Yvonne and the children left on June 18 to join Charles in England.

  On the morning of June 18, Xavier de Gaulle and several other reservists were ordered to march west in an effort to regroup against the enemy. His family joined him on the crowded streets in a procession riddled with anger, shame, and fear. All around them there was a growing feeling that whatever came next would be in vain. Geneviève lingered close to her grandmother, “this little old lady, dressed in black, so tiny and easy to miss,” so she didn’t fall behind and get lost in the crowd. Throughout the day the young woman reassured the matriarch, as she worked through her own tormented emotions about this turn of events.

  By evening they had walked forty miles to the town of Locminé and faced their first Nazi soldiers. They looked like war gods, Geneviève thought; their smart black uniforms and chiseled features exuded strength and pride as they breezed past on their motorcycles and tanks. Some reservists cried because it was clear that there was no hope left and no will to fight this aggressor. As the crowd grew numb with dismay, a priest ran toward them from the other side of the town square. He was excited because he had just heard a French general speak on BBC radio.

  “He said we may have lost a battle,” the priest cried, “but not the war. The general’s name was de Gaulle.”

  Thrilled by the news, Jeanne de Gaulle broke from the crowd and ran to the priest.

  “Monsieur le Curé, that’s my son!” she cried as she tugged on the sleeve of his cassock. “That’s my son! He’s done what he ought to have done!”

  A country away, Charles de Gaulle couldn’t have known how his mother reacted to his decision to offer France another way, but Geneviève remembered the moment as one of her grandmother’s last great joys. For Charles it was a lonely affair, because as he heard himself speak into the BBC microphone, he realized his life would never be the same. Up until then he had been devoted to both the army and nation he served. And yet he was not the sort of man to capitulate, which was why he had broken with his superiors and headed to London, to exile, to condemnation. At forty-nine years old, fate had lured him away from all his predictable patterns and responsibilities. He was obligated to the France he once knew, and he summoned his countrymen, uncertain of who might hear or put their trust in him.

  Few people caught the general’s broadcast, but the ones who did began risking their lives to spread his word.

  “All of his family, his sister, his son, his brothers, his nephews, and his cousins were persuaded by his mission that he set out to accomplish and they were honored to be more or less associated with it,” Geneviève later recalled. “All who were old enough to fight or carry arms engaged with the Free French forces or became resisters.”

  But they all came to the cause in their own way and in their own time. Geneviève was no exception. As Geneviève stood in a crowded street with her grandmother and throngs of other French citizens that June 18, Germans arrested her father and his regiment right in front of their faces. Jeanne de Gaulle was traumatized to see her oldest son taken away; his destination was a prisoner-of-war camp in Nuremburg. Geneviève consoled her grandmother, and the family headed back down the road to their home in Paimpont, where they would bide their time.

  Geneviève wondered what to do next. She never saw herself as a gun-toting warrior. As smart as she was, it was difficult for her to know how to channel her exasperation about the war into something useful. She considered her next steps as she ambled around Paimpont’s quiet streets, wearing demure white blouses and well-tailored skirts that billowed gently in the warm summer breeze. Nazi soldiers who patrolled the town during the summer of 1940 saw her as an innocent-looking young woman, a little slip of a thing who was lost in thought and, perhaps, on the way to run a simple errand for her mother. If they had looked more closely, past the head of soft ringlets that framed her face, they would have seen that she bore an unmistakable resemblance to her now-notorious uncle: the deep-set eyes, the long and prominent nose, the taciturn mouth that spread into a slow, shy smile that concealed a slow-gathering sense of purpose about the unwelcome young men at the end of her gaze.

  By the end of that summer, Geneviève grew so tired of seeing German soldiers that when they passed her on the street, she turned her back on them without saying a word. For someone who did not know where to begin and who typically did what was expected of her, it was a small step. But all small steps lead somewhere, no matter how timid they might seem at first. For those who refused to accept the terms of the June 22 armistice and the division of the country into a northern occupied zone and so-called southern free zone, these myriad little rebellions connected like-minded people and emboldened the fearful to enter the fray. It was like raindrops falling on a windowpane; each drop hit the glas
s, joining another and then another, before building into a larger stream of water with momentum.

  In the occupied zone there was much to wash away. German soldiers were omnipresent in their drab, gray-green uniforms; they were in the streets, the shops, the cafés, and the museums in Paris. They marched down the Champs-Élysées, singing Nazi songs. They hung swastikas and placards in Gothic script on all public buildings. They commandeered private homes and luxury hotels for their own use. They changed the clocks to German time. Gone were the tricolors that once snapped in the breeze. There were curfews and food rations and other restrictions that grew with each passing day. It was difficult to know how to respond to this, in part because it was hard to know how long these conditions would last. The journalist Jean Texcier circulated a tract called “Tips for the Occupied” shortly after Nazi troops first arrived in the capital. Among Texcier’s recommendations: be polite to the Germans but not too helpful, as they won’t reciprocate; show confusion if Nazis address you in their native tongue; and politely let German troops know that what they say does not interest you. “Have no illusions,” Texcier added. “These men are not tourists.”

  The German presence became so overwhelming that for many of the French it made sense to support Marshal Philippe Pétain’s government, which was now headquartered in the spa town of Vichy. Pétain had saved the country once, they felt, and protected it from the worst. Surely he would do the same again. On July 10, 1940, France’s parliament voted to give the marshal full powers so that he could begin a new French state with Pierre Laval as his second in command. Laval had been instrumental in getting the government to remain in the country and accept an armistice. He was convinced that the Germans would emerge as ultimate victors in the war and because of that France would be best served to collaborate with them. He pushed those views on Pétain, who for many embodied the country’s sovereign power. Meanwhile the marshal called for a national revolution centered on work, family, and country. Reconnecting with these humble traits would restore France’s strength and security, he said. The nation had liberty, equality, and fraternity to thank for its swift decline.

  Charles de Gaulle stood in London and offered himself as a viable alternative to Pétain and capitulation, asking all Frenchmen who wanted to remain free to listen to his broadcasts or join his side. On June 28, 1940, the British government recognized Charles de Gaulle as the leader of the Free France movement and furnished him with the loans, grants, office space, and broadcasting facilities that he needed to build support for his cause. For those who hungered to unite with him, it was no small feat. It required leaving France and facing exile, criminal charges, and even physical danger. Some viewed leaving for England as shameful, especially when the nation was faced with such hardship. Ever mindful of the historic enmity between the two countries, Nazi propagandists began whispering that de Gaulle was nothing more than a British puppet who would make France part of England.

  Not everyone bought the lies. “Your voice is the only one to speak out firmly and clearly,” one school headmistress wrote General de Gaulle. Others wrote that he had “awakened France” and restored “the morale of Frenchmen.” They pinned their hopes on him, awaiting him as if he were the Messiah. But their savior was a country away, separated from his family and without considerable forces at his disposal.

  Geneviève strolled in the lush, green forests around her home in search of answers. This was how her father and uncle cleared their heads, so she ventured into the woods, which were believed by many to be the fictional Brocéliande of Arthurian legend, where, among other things, fairies frolicked, mystical springs sparked violent storms, and young warriors battled mighty giants and fierce knights. Geneviève found calm amid the canopy of beeches and babbling brooks, but the answers she sought about the giant she wished to conquer were slow to unfold. So she read in preparation for the coming school year and wondered whether she would ever see her father and uncle again.

  Her most pressing concern was her grandmother. The events of that summer had left Jeanne emotionally drained, and she became increasingly fragile. “I have confidence he will succeed,” she said repeatedly of her middle son. “He succeeds at everything he does. He is a good Frenchman.” Although Charles de Gaulle may have been a good Frenchman in his mother’s eyes, he was a rebel to his superiors. On July 4, 1940, Jeanne de Gaulle switched on the radio to hear the day’s Radio London broadcast, only to learn that Charles de Gaulle had been sentenced to four years in prison for refusing to obey Pétain’s orders to stop fighting. The news filled her with even more distress. She died in Geneviève’s arms on July 16, 1940. Before Jeanne passed away she looked up at her granddaughter and said, “I suffer for my son.”

  “She had three other sons and a daughter, and she had no idea what had become of any of them,” Geneviève recalled. “But Charles, whose mission it was to take up the sword and hold it high, was always in the forefront of her thoughts.”

  When the family attempted to place Jeanne’s funeral notice in the local newspaper, the Germans would not allow the publication of the name “de Gaulle” because they were concerned that it would disrupt local order. Instead a few printed lines announced the death of a Jeanne Maillot. Enough Bretons knew the family to know that Maillot was the maiden name of General de Gaulle’s mother.

  On the day Jeanne was buried, Geneviève thought she and her brother, Roger, would be the only ones at the church bidding her farewell. But a great crowd showed up to pay their respects. A group of local police officers gave the woman an impromptu, military-style funeral at the cemetery. Geneviève was overwhelmed by their gesture and thanked them warmly. The chief replied: “We are officers of the French army. We had to honor the mother of General de Gaulle.” Overcome with emotion, Geneviève placed a handful of small stones on her grandmother’s grave to acknowledge the eternal place she would occupy in her heart. When she returned to the cemetery the following day, the stones were gone. Mourners had continued to pay their respects after the funeral and had covered Jeanne’s grave with bouquets. Weeks later a young Breton man successfully reached London and brought General de Gaulle a picture that Geneviève had given him of her grandmother’s grave, which was still covered in flowers.

  That was how Charles de Gaulle learned that his mother had passed away.

  Back in France his niece Geneviève returned to the University of Rennes only to face the scrutiny that came with having a last name that some viewed as dangerous in her country. On August 2, 1940, Vichy had condemned her uncle Charles to death for treason. Classmates engaged her in heated discussions about the occupation. No one could agree on whether it was worth it to resist or back Pétain. As chief of state, Pétain met with Hitler in the small town of Montoire-sur-le-Loir on October 24. The two were photographed shaking hands, and a week later Pétain told the French, “I enter today on the path of collaboration.” He invited the nation to join him, but no one knew what that would entail just yet. Laval continued to advance his pro-German agenda and arouse the suspicions and dislike of those around him. Pétain dismissed him on December 13, 1940.

  Those who were concerned about the occupation and Vichy could not agree on whether Geneviève’s uncle would be any better, but they would all share their opinions with her, for better or for worse. Charles de Gaulle had spoken on the BBC at least twenty times in the few months since France had become occupied, and her fellow students were divided on whether he was a bad and dangerous man or a beacon of hope.

  “Poor Geneviève,” wrote a nun who had taught her in primary school. “I moan about the mark this leaves on your family name.” Such confidences only strengthened her resolve to come to her uncle’s aid. Like other students she began tearing down Nazi posters and cutting out small Crosses of Lorraine, which had become the symbol of resistance. Geneviève and her friends printed and distributed anti-Nazi and anti-Vichy leaflets, but they always had the sense that there was more to do. They were young, single, and had little to lose. Late one night they crept t
o a bridge that spanned the Vilaine River so they could tear down the Nazi flag that hung from it. It was after curfew, and Geneviève tore down the crimson flag, proudly scurrying back home with it in her arms. It was her first spoil of war.

  But pilfered flags wouldn’t topple a regime. “The first things [I did] were similar to what most of the French were doing,” she later wrote. “They were symbolic, almost ridiculous, and I hesitate to mention them.” She and her peers began wondering where they should go to best serve the nascent underground movement. Some felt they’d see the most action if they joined General de Gaulle in London. But Geneviève believed she’d be most valuable in France, and she decided to move to Paris to continue her history studies at the Sorbonne. As she traveled west on a train toward the capital, Geneviève de Gaulle knew her real fight had just begun.

  3

  Kindling the Flame

  Germaine de Gaulle’s eleven-year-old cousin Madeleine had been devoted to her pursuit of Xavier de Gaulle’s youngest brother, Pierre, ever since her late cousin’s wedding day in 1919. Seven years after they first met, they were married. Madeleine’s raucous laughter had often scandalized her upright mother-in-law, Jeanne, and Pierre, ever mindful of his mother’s sensibilities, was said to have spent a lot of time teaching his young wife manners. Madeleine learned tennis, a sport Pierre adored, and settled into her new existence, maintaining her independent, anticonformist ways under a cultivated veneer.

  Perhaps she needed his steadying influence. Madeleine’s father was a bon vivant whose painterly aspirations raised his parents’ eyebrows, and they threatened to cut him off if he didn’t settle down. He was not a man to be pressured, so he began to roam and found his way into the arms of a pretty girl in a neighboring village. They married, he became increasingly absent, and his spurned wife soon gave birth to their only child: Madeleine. The girl grew up feeling like a wayward colt, between her father’s absences and her mother’s related discontent. Then along came Pierre, and Madeleine began to show the depth of her character with each passing year.