05 May
By Erwan Michaux
…Protecting her, neighbours told Germans she was their own daughter…
Brittany, 1940:
Louise was 14, raised in a peasant family, third child in a brotherhood of 5. Lent to a neighbour family, in order to help with wheat harvest, she was away from home during the late summer German invasion. Protecting her, neighbours told Germans she was their own daughter. Sheltering from the weather, Germans occupied the farm for 3 years. During all that time they forced my granny to cook for them (few days before her death she was still remembering words Germans taught her, like kartoffel (potato), schweinefleisch, kassler, schnitzel, fleischnacka and so on…
Before long (autumn 1942) peasants posing as her parents told her to bring some food to “workers”, 30mn from the farm, in a small forest. Guys weren’t using any tools, on the other hand they had guns, maps, and a radio (which was rare at that time): obviously they were from french resistance!
1943: Germans were requisitionning everything, from tractor to swines and cows. As she was preparing breakfast, she overheard a conversation about a raid in her family farm, every swine they had would be taken in order to power the war effort. As soon as the german platoon left her kitchen, she ran to her family farm, crossing fields and pastures, avoiding roads. Thanks to her landscape knowledge, she made it in time, giving her brothers time to hide swines, keeping her family from starvation during the second part of the war.
Few months later Germans were leaving (thanks to the Americans), allowing her to get back to her family, that was hosting french resistance people. She met there my grandfather, a normandy paramilitary policeman (“gendarme”) that refused to pledge loyalty to the Reich and joined the resistance.He was her one and only love.
Well that’s it, she told me that story pretty much every time I paid her a visit.I think she never told us the whole thing, since she had tears coming when she described german occupation. Plus she had a dead-born daughter at 18, something like 5 month after Germans left. My mother believed she was raped, and choose to abort her pregnancy the hard way. Even if i’m inclined to think so, we’ll never know the whole story…
