Andrée's War (31 page)

In December 1940, Georges Piron and Henri d'Astier de la Vigerie recruited Alain and Andrée into their Franco–Belgium resistance group. Piron had contacts with British intelligence from the First World War, and as early as June 1940 he was back in touch with the Resistance group St Jacques, run by Duclos. The following year, Alain Griotteray formed his own Resistance group, Orion, in April 1941.

Resistance groups spanned the political spectrum, from de Gaulle's conservatism to the involvement of the Communist and Socialist Parties, who became more prominent in the Resistance after Germany attacked Russia in June 1941. There were Jewish Resistance groups, German anti-Nazi groups, Italian anti-fascist groups and SOE (see the Epilogue). Once America joined the war, their Office of Strategic Services (then the OSS, today's CIA), established its presence in France in July 1942, recruiting its own agents despite the fact that France officially came under the domain of SOE. The Americans had been keen to sponsor traditional military resistance that avoided political entanglement, preferring the malleable General Giraud over the irascible General de Gaulle. In January 1943, the Organisation de
la résistance de l'armée (the ORA) was formed, whose members Général Verneau and Capitaine Cogny were such a help to Orion.

In February 1943, German-enforced labour laws came into effect: those young Frenchmen determined to avoid the call-up escaped the country while others went underground and hid in the countryside, in forest cabins, caves and mountain refuge huts, fed by supportive locals. Pro-Communist refugees who had escaped Franco's Spain went underground and joined up with their French compatriots and together they began to create a network of guerillas and partisans: this was the foundation for what would become known as the Maquis. Towards 1944, they numbered over 25,000 members. Despite their significant contribution to the Resistance, the Maquis were at times not taken seriously by the Allies, who often thought of them as terrorists. Their support for the Allies during the Normandy landings, however, was invaluable; they helped delay the Germans bringing in reinforcements to fight the landing troops.

Frenchmen and women also helped save the lives of thousands of Jews. In 1940, France's Jewish population measured some 330,000: of those, over 75,000 died at the hands of the Nazis and/or the Vichy government. Many of the 255,000-plus survivors avoided capture because they were hidden in homes or on farms around the country. Thousands of Jewish children were smuggled into villages and subsequently schools. Some authorities may have been simply unaware of what was happening; in other parts, people turned a blind eye. Every man and woman who helped in this way was part of the French Resistance, regardless of intent: with such actions, they risked a great deal, often their own lives.

After the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942, the Wehrmacht marched into the Free Zone and occupied the whole of France. Préfet of Chartres, Jean Moulin, later to be described as the head of the French Resistance, was worried about the existence of so many separate and autonomous Resistance groups. He travelled to London to discuss the situation with de Gaulle, suggesting to him that all the resistance groups should be brought under de Gaulle's leadership. Moulin believed that de Gaulle needed to be recognised as leader of the whole of the French Resistance – a movement which included the Maquis, Communists and
Socialists, the Forces françaises de l'interieur, and de Gaulle's Free French army in London. Both Moulin and de Gaulle were concerned that the liberation of France might provide the Communist Party with the opportunity to take over the Resistance movement, which in turn would threaten the US, which would then impose an American provisional military government of occupation until free elections could be held. De Gaulle was determined to avoid such an outcome at all costs.

In March 1943, Moulin set up a Coordination Committee to help the Resistance organise itself on a national scale: on 27 May Le Conseil national de la Résistance (the National Resistance Council) was formed. In June 1943, Moulin was caught and tortured by the Gestapo. He died while in custody, but his plan to unite the disparate Resistance groups into a strong and powerful movement was already developing.

Andrée always claimed that she and her friends knew nothing of Jean Moulin and the National Council until well after the end of the war. She often said that during the occupation she never heard of the Resistance, nor what it represented or meant. She knew de Gaulle was in London, listened to some of his broadcasts and was personally determined to do everything she could to ‘resist' and humiliate the occupying forces in her country, but the concept of the Resistance, as far as she was concerned, only came into existence after the liberation. Similarly, François Clerc told me: ‘we did not know this word Résistance'. The expression ‘la résistance' only came into vogue after 1944.

At the end of the war, the French authorities officially recognised approximately 270 networks as ‘les réseaux de résistance de la France combattante' or Resistance groups of the Free French. Each group had to provide details of its activities, name, purposes, numbers of members, and its dates of operation. The Ministry of Defence checked this information and then created a file for each group.

I have seen the file for the Orion Group, which includes the correspondence Alain Griotteray had with the armed forces at the end of the war as part of his bid for official recognition. At that time Alain was a captain in the French army and he recorded Orion as having eighteen agents. The Ministry of Defence's file records that each agent was integrated into the
army in June 1944 as the liberation of Paris was about to take place. This was most likely part of a deliberate attempt to integrate Resistance members into the French army – headed, of course, by de Gaulle – to minimise the chance of the Communists taking control of the Resistance movement and thus potentially the whole country in due course.

In what was then a heavily male-dominated society, it is unsurprising that women generally played less of a role in the Resistance movement, making up some 15 to 20 per cent of all
résistants
. Only one woman was ever recognised as the leader of a Resistance group: Marie Madeleine Fourcade, head of the réseau Alliance. Of the eighteen official agents registered as members of Orion, only two were women (Andrée Griotteray White and Margit Ehrart Hutton), though others did contribute.

After the war, 250,000
cartes de combattants
were issued. These testified that the bearer had been an official member of a recognised Resistance group, although many fighters joined up only after the Normandy landings in June 1944. The total number of 250,000 may well have been exaggerated – with many saying they were involved in Resistance activity despite having done nothing – but de Gaulle was on a mission to revitalise and heal France, and was perhaps inclined to be generous.

Between 7 January 1944 and 31 March 1945, over 45,000 Médailles de la Résistance were awarded (15,000 posthumously). The black and red ribbon each medal hung from was a reminder of the grief France suffered and the blood spilt on her behalf during the Second World War. Despite France's humiliation and all that the people suffered during the occupation, it was perhaps through the achievements of the Resistance movement that France was able to find her honour and her pride again.

I would like to express my great appreciation to Alain Gandy for his extremely useful book
La jeunesse et la Résistance: réseau Orion, 1940–1944.
Much of what he says I had already learnt about through conversations with my mother, my uncle Alain and Yves de Kermoal, but his book helped me confirm the memories of conversations which took place many years ago.

Jean-Marc Berlière's book
Les policiers français sous l'Occupation
has been a very useful source in helping me understand some of the work my mother was doing at Police Headquarters throughout the war.

My uncle's book,
1940: Qui étaient les premiers résistants?
, and his memoirs, have also helped reconfirm the conversations I had with him over the years – during which he sometimes got quite annoyed at my lack of understanding of what they had all been up to.

I am enormously grateful to Matthew Cobb for
The Resistance
and
Eleven Days in August
, both of which helped me understand better the circumstances in which my mother and her family lived during the Second World War.

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1
. Matthew Cobb,
The Resistance
(Pocket Books, 2010), page 18.

2
.
http://www.theguardian.com/century/1940-1949/Story/0,,128218,00.html

3
. Cobb,
The Resistance,
page 43.

4
. Cobb,
The Resistance
, page 44.

5
. Cobb,
The Resistance
, page 45.

6
. Alain Griotteray,
Mémoires
(Éditions du Rocher, 2004), page 32.

7
. Alain Griotteray,
Qui étaient les premiers résistants?
(L'Age d'homme, 1999), page 206.

8
. Griotteray,
Mémoires
, page 32.

9
. Gandy,
La jeunesse et la Résistance
, page 38.

10
. Cobb,
The Resistance
, page 144.

11
. Alain Gandy,
La jeunesse et la Résistance: réseau Orion, 1940–1944
(Presses de la Cité, 1992),
page 88.

12
. Gandy,
La jeunesse et la Résistance
.

13
. Gandy,
La jeunesse et la Résistance
, page 127.

14
. Gandy,
La jeunesse et la Résistance
, page 106.

15
. Griotteray,
Mémoires
, page 60.

16
. Gandy,
La jeunesse et la Résistance
.

17
. Gandy,
La jeunesse et la Résistance
, page 148.

18
. Gandy,
La jeunesse et la Résistance.

19
. Griotteray,
Les premiérs résistants
, page 247.

20
. Matthew Cobb,
Eleven Days in August
, page 319.

21
. Griotteray,
Les premiérs résistants
.

22
. M. R. D. Foot,
SOE: The Special Operations Executive 1940–46
(Pimlico, 1999), page 18.

23
. Foot,
SOE
, page 73.

24
. Foot,
SOE
, page 150.