La Resistance

By Charles E. Miller

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456898885

Charles E. Miller

Charles E. Miller graduated from Stanford University with a degree in English, studying at the late Wallace Stegner’s Creative Writing Center. He believes that literature is the most comprehensive, profound, and mysterious voice of people living their lives. Great creative literature presents multifaceted human problems, failures, and victories.

Book preview

I

She was sitting on the sidewalk at a table, ourtside the Cafe De La Pais with her friend of two wleeks, Amiel, The avenue was busy with cabbies rolling unconcerned patrons over the gray cobblestones to the muted clopping of their horses. A black high-topped tonneaued vehicle echugged toward the Tulleries and a dog ran across the traffic. In cane chairs, seated at small whitclothed tables aside from the main sidewalk, working men and the well-dessed were imbibing the evenng air with their aperitif and ersatz coffee, the sunset was still an ambienglow that lighted the newspapers lin Parisian hands. The fine print read: After well over one hundred emergency edicts by the President that effectiely eliminated the Reichstag, and after riots by SA thugs in the Streets of Munich, Berlin and other German Cities; and after the elderly von Hindenbourg had conceded the Presidency to Hilter, the marching Nazis fmally struck… . The Paris Soir imparted this news to he drinkers and diners at the Cafe De La Pais while within there came an alarm as a paper-boy ran up to the tables to exclaim that Hitler and his Nazi panzer tanks and occupation troops had invaded the Sudetanland. A waiter dropped a tray of glasses on the pavement tiles and a customer tipped over his chai, while laughter rang from within the cafe-bistro as the solemn tones of a church tolling in the distance flooded the shady avenue at twilight. Amiel is the owner and proprietor of this particulr cafe. He is stunned and stands amid the diners, reflectilng on the implications, for him, of the terrible news. He comes from a French Quarter family. His father is a clocksmith. The youth’s thoughts are of recruiter-posters that have suddenly awakened ancient Frenchmen to modem dangers of the German state, and quieted the violent orgies of early night life for a a troubling few moments. Hitler was far away and silent. However, Amiel reckoned the international sitation with the shrewdness of a French citizen who had heard of concrete pylons being poured along the French-German border, beforeis Cafe venture, a student who a student who knew of Gustav Flaubert’s work and had studied; Emile Zola and had apprised German science as… exquisitely refined but unfathomable.

Hitler invades Austria and Sudetanland! the newboy repeatedly cried as he walked back and forth in front of the bistro-cafe guests. He then retreated down the Champs des Elysees. The grungy little snob with a gift for oratory, who had sold his ideology to the Reichstag, was now the dictator of a Weimar republican people, who by their assent, ater the failure of the Weimar republic, had allowed the feeble-minded to raise their hand to salute his triumph and the sane conjure the madness of this new world. Yet the German people were too smart to let him control their destiny. So thought the youth and ageilng politicians of yesteday’s France. The Night of the Long Knives had removed muc of the olitical SA resistance to Hitler’s dream to conquer Western Europe.

The Crystalnacht, undertaken by Der Fuhrer’s bully brownshirts, had destroyed hundreds of synagoguesd by fire, broken thousands of shop windows in everys major city in Germany and destroyed Jew-owned businesses without conscience or hesitation, again, by the brown-shirted thugs of Hitler’s beerhall days, grown from a handfulI to hundreds of thousands and as much representative of the people as the Reichstag had once been spokessmen for popular sentiment and civil government. But things had changed. The Nazis, once a small party of less han 20% of the Democrat Socialist Party, had become a majority party, ;approved of by a majority of Germans who had found Hitler to be trustworthy, some even avowing that he was a Christian. Certain passages in his public speeches would appear to indicate that he was a berliever. The wanton murder of SA leaders during the Night of the Long Knives, a group who became the German national police, and the destruction leveled upon Jews generally in Germany plead the opposite case. Hitler was a ruthlessbarbarian bent upon politico-military control of the lives of all Europeans. He had also acquired a competent mouthpiece to wage a propaganda war against anti-INazi resistance. And to persuade the world that Hitler was an acceptable leader in a world that was facing the consequences of world-wide communism spawned in Soviet Russia.

I see a paper tiger pacing before the compound of Senators, Amiel remarked aloud, to no one in particular, a reflexive response to the news.

Not paper, I fear, Amiel, but the actual ferocious beast. The Nazi tiger is already more than a cub. Hitler claims the land because most of its citizens speak German.

Hitler is an Austrian.

Power knows no loyalty or allegiance, my friend. The words came from an old and familir customer. It is like a chamelion. Power takes on the color of its surroundings. First, the Sudetanland. Who will be next?

I think that some small nation, said Ginny, the petite, pretty and energetic wife of the proprietor who approached from the rear of the cafe when she heard her husband voice, thinking there might be rouble afoot.

Iron and blood are… hard to defend against, she commeted. The German army he is building. said an old and familiar customer. Oh, it will all happen so quickly.

We will all have to fight or surrender, came Amiel’s reply. I I cannot imagine Field Mashall Petain surrendering to a cursed beer-hall ra and his gang. Amiel poured an aperitif for himself. He finally overthrew the governmnt… why he went to prison, non? There came no answer. Bien. I will find myself in the service of the French Republic." He straigtened up at a table. Arniel was a short youth, with a Roman nose, keen blue eys and wild blonde hair. He walked like a trapper across puddles of mud, flatfooted. His speech was quick and energetic. He sw the American lady at one of his tables. They talked. They both stood, she placed three francs beie r the table glassware.

We fight when… France is takn over… or before? Hitler will not stop at the border, you know that. mliel said. He regarded her words with a solemn look of dubious concern. She, had come oFrance from Poland, where she had first entered the United States Foreign Service, to respond to abuses to the Jews by the imploding German regime, her mother being a Jew. Also, she was an adventurous young woman still in her twenties. She had met Amiel at his cafe, and they had struck up a quick friendship. The news beiln hawked had quickened her ambition to join the ambulance corps. Being a young woman of strong will, she was poised to do just that.

I intend to join, may it surprise you, my friend Amiel.

How… You are not a nurse. They sat down at anempptytable. I have a capacity for… call it organization. And, also, I can roll bandages. One need not be a driver or a bearer of stretchers to be useful to the corps.

Where… ?

Right here… in Paris. We do not need a war to make us useful to the French people.

But you are not… French.

A French citizen? No, but I have made application to become one, through the American Embassy in Warsaw.

Amel was taken by surprise with her revelation. His life in the French Quarter had been a domestic disaster. His father had just disappeared and his mother had taken to cheap wine, doing washing for the dwellers in her tenement; while he had gone on to the academe to learn jurisprudence. He had become a proprietor as a learner, like a guildsman. When the owner had died, Arniel took charge of the buiness. There was little chance that he would be able to apply his schooling, now that the cannonades of war had sounded… for him. He saw ahead. He peered into the satanic abyss of the darkness yet to come over Europe. The Amerlican lady was naive but ready to engage in service for a nation threatened by the fierce and unstoppable tides of war that were gathering with the Hitler’s first move of conquest.

Arniel was impatient, he ha work to do, yet out of politeness he and Diane were asesssing the situation… in French, as facile for her as English. Citizens of Paris were hastening along the sidewalk, passing them brusquely, a woman pushing a baby carriage with a flower of idyllic blue wafting over the hood. The faces of these Parisiennes bore expressions of alarm and anxiety as they sped to their destinations. NAZIS INVADE SUDETANLAND, THREATEN CZECKOSLOVAKIA" the newsboy was shouting. His route led to the sidestreet where the Ambulance Corps was located, in a granite-faced gray building distinguished only by its numerous darkened windows and the sign in flaking gold on black paint that identified the Emergency office of the ambulance corps. They, too, had heard the dismal cry of the newsboy broadcasting Hitler’s first triumph, as if to savage their contentment and destroy forever their sense of security as a nation.

The French had no part in this, Arniel said,

No, Mon amis, but Hitler will work his will against the Austrians.

He claims most of the Sudettanese speak German there…

Than what… What other language competes with German in that province?

I cannot say, the Madamoiselle Ballou replied.

See him… . Arniel pointed to a large fellow, burly, who wore a turban. You do not believe it. He is a member of the French ambulance corps. Madamoiselle looked and could only watch. him pass on the sidewalk.

The idea struck me. It is the right thing to do-to join the ambuslance corps. She stood. Why, why not? She thought to herself: So I lack experience… not a nurse or a doctor. I can stop a man’s bleeding with a toumequet. I can… I can lift when it is necessary. I can console… and give medicines when I am instructed to." Arnel regarded her with some doubt. She sosod and rudely vanise from the cae, leaving Amiel to do his work. Hurriedly, she left the Boulevard and turned down Merchand way/ She strode to the recruitment office for war-workers.

France will soon be at war, Diane thought. Poland will be next. Poland. What is there in Poland for the German heathens?. Power, supplies, barracks for the Nazis and factories to supply him with war stuff… and women. he must spills the blood of innocent people. That is hlis pre-condition for war… .

She stopped beneath a sign that read: "L’OFFICE DES AMBULANCE D’SERVICE. Sshe walked in, soije briefly with the Madamoiselle and two fellows who were rolling strips of clean linen for bandages.

You had a problem, Mdamoielle an attendant asked in greeting her. Diane looked around the interior, then replied. I wish to join the ambulance corps the girl did not reply at once to Diane;s announcement. It was as sif she was afraid to speak. I do, yes, I wish to sign up. Do not bother about my nationality. Yes, I am an Americaine. My shouldes are strong. and… 1 can also roll bandages. She smiled. Then it was done. Diane signed a paper while the younger wman looked on.

You live here in Paris? the madamoiselle attendant asked the new recruit.Theundulating scream of ambulance siren passed the shop.

Yes, yes, with residency in the French Quarter.

I see. Good, bon… bon. She studied her two smale cohorts to asess their response to this new recruit. Their faces were unperturbed. Then you will report here tomorrow at seven in the morning . . and help to roll bandages and… she looked around her… and to load ammunition into bandoliers. That was Diane’s first contact with the the French underground. You see, Madame Balleau?"

Madamoiselle Balleau.

Madamoiseille Balleau, we prepare for trouble the Geman leader, Hitler. We do not trust him. He will attack France… after he has satisfied after he takes… Poland. The Jews… .

Yes, I know about his hate for the Jews, Diane said.

We have Jews here in France. He will not be careful in his… selecting. They wished her a good day, and she departed for her quarters, a third-floor single-room off Rue d’ Vanguard.

There it was, Diane Balleau was in the ambulance corps. She reported early the next day. Frenchmen about her d contemplated volunteering for he military, such as rired French officers had organized in keeping with the Napoleonic spirit and appearance in uniforms, he had taken a different way of fighting for their belonved France. Some had joined up with a small contingent of French who identfied htmselves as a of the resisance in France. As Diane, the new recruit, worked in rolled-up sleeves and a sheet-cloth apron, her ring-free fingers worked with considerable untrained skill and speed. The supervisor’s face appeared pleased with the choice ofan ambulance attendant.

The chief medic took pity on Balleau, the American, because of her lack of experience. He was stout, swrthy, wilth delicate hands and a youth’s voice. He moved about with an appearance of urgency. So what difference. actually, did that make to him with his squeeky voice and her naivete about emergency work in any damned acciden… ? The Corps was set up for emergencies, not just for wartime incidets. Nobody expected the Paris streets to run with blood… but there could be crazies who would need a sedative. Well, who can say what might happen when the Germans cross the Rhine? Then real trouble begins, that is more than an exercise and the godawful corruption in France that makes this country lame-tarde with the Fascists, oh, I have heard a lot about French box cars, French gold, mines, and stolen art fromt he Louvre, oh, my God… sick and feeble, well so be it… he saw he American browsing through the stalls on the West Bank and spoke to her in French, to which she replied to… much to his surprise. He took her for a tour or a tourist. She did not then anticipate how helpful he would be to her in my flight from fear later on. She rolled bandages and converse in French with her new compatriots… the French were realists about Hitler. Field Marshall Petain is a weak men, they told her. He will cooperate with the Nazis. Balleau’s knowlege of Frence was arcane, only what she had picked up when she was learning French at her girls school. The lives of all French people were now in jeopardy, for the tiger had been let loosed, partly because of the stupidid Englis Prime Minister Lord Neville Chamberlain, who returned home to announce to the press that he had signed a peace pact with Adolph Hitler and waved the signed document to prove it. But the French did not drop their guard, as the saying goes Well, Balleau now considered herself to be partly a French person… not yet a citizen, but in tune with their fears and their expectations… . had hoped before she came to France to be a part of the Foreign Service Corps in an embassy for the United States.

She had hammered a typewriter at the American Embassy in Warsaw in an office of the Conunsellor de Regular Partisan. It had been in a dingy, nondescript small room lighted by desk lamps only amid a sea of paper islands at which her colleagues sat and typed like so many mechanical dolls. They were the slaves who fit into the Polish Government. The women—there wer no men among them—were all hair stylists, she happened to notice. She had never cut her dark auburn hair and as a strange consequence she found them to be congenial company. They had sat around a big pot-belly stove drinking sluffs—the sound of the word described it, a kind of egg nog spiked with bourbon. One elderly woman with freckles and heavily powdered cheeks had tied her black hair in a knot and dashed it with a gray bun. A young woman, dressed every day in pink and not much over fifteen beside Ginny, had rolled locks into what looked like handle-bars to a bicycle. Another woman, so thin and angular she appeared to crack when she moved had woven hers like a rush mat. A fifth woman who seemed to grope when she walked and peered with heavy hornrimmed glasses tied her hair into spiked above her ears, as if she wore a headset. They were the memorable five. They had always, of course, conversed in Polish, leaving her out entirely, a language of which Diane had not an inkling of understanding.She had spoken with one or two in their smattering of French. That way she and they had gotten along. Diane had typed in French, to be translated. She remembered their five pairs of small, knotty, little hands stuck out toward the pot-belly stove, one clapping her hands now and then and the others rubbing theirs together—like peeling potatoes—to keep warm in the biting air of the frigid work-room.

Well, what could she do? Diane, the attache-office employee of the American government looked around the cold office, the islands of paper anchored by obsolete typewriters of 1904 Americanv vintage, shelves of manuals, a spoiled cat, fed from brownbag lunches, that roamed betweens the chairs beggin wih meows for scraps of food. at the noon hour. It was a reality for the populace of Warsaw that hunger had fallen over the entire city with the blockade of the seaport town of Czczecin. She had witnessed adults, formerly it was just the children, scavenging for food. She watched boys pillage the garbage buckets outside The North Care Center. Warsaw was alive with fear, amounting to terror. The Polish are a smart people. The Danzig Journal had tried to allay thei r fears, but they would not be dissuaded. Surprisingly, the office director presented Diane with the New York Post. He had urged her to to copy stories he had marked out that included an editorial. He wanted to use this American information for his collagues and the Polish Danzig Journal, to alert the Poles to the fact they had a friend thousands of miles away. Small comfort such a distant ally when one is under attack! he had confided to her. But the Nazis had not struck first… and the Americans were warning the world about Hitler’s contempt for an entire race of people… and what his hatred could lead to, the division of Geranmy by race rather than by class hatred as had occurred in Lenin’s Russia. The communists, however, were at work in the Reichstag. The Post educated Diane in what she could expect in the months to come. She came to be in France by her choice, her fluency in the French language being one motive, and her love for French literature being another. Also, she reasoned that by her self-removal from the awsome powers of Fascist darkness, she would survive longer in the foreign service. She could little reckon what lay ahead for her, a woman of exceptional intelligene, self-reliance, courage and purpose.

II

Now in Paris and just recently recruited into the French Ambulance Corps, two incidents occurred when she had taken up her duties in the French Aambulance Corps. She felt compelled to mention. them. There occurred late one night a partisan shooting in a bistro on a side-street off the Champs de Elysees., On another occasion, she was involved in an attempt on Petain’s life that nvolved a violent struggle following the near murder. In responding to the first incident, she and her driver Pierre and their stretcher attendant found that the crowd was almost impenetrable. She remembered how wildly her driver shouted to clear the way as he and his helper entered the bistro. She was momentarily left behind to observe, an assignment that vexed her greatly, she being a woman of action. Instead of remaining behind, she had gone in to watch. In a matter of minutes, the driver and his helper emerged earring the body of a woman on a stretcher. This incident was Diane’s first contact with the bloody business of war. A Nazi sympathizer had tried to kill the victim, screaming Sieg heil, Sieg heil! With the siren in shrill, blarring crescendos, the driver drove madly through Paris streets to the Hospital of Our Sacred Dame in Paris. They carried the dying woman into Emergency.i.no guemey for her. Diane witnessed all this emergency action. Andre drove back to the ambulance station. letting her off at her apartment. She got ot of the square, top-heavy ambulance