Wars I Have Seen (12 page)

Sometime it will not be a mistake the war will be over at any rate France will be free. And we. Nobody felt like that in the last war. It is like that other joke, in the 1914–1918 war everybody always used to say, we’ll get them yet, and they did they got the best of them and somebody said in this war, they used to say in the last war we’ll get ’em yet, and now he added we have them. It is nice to say in French very nice. But now everybody has had enough enough. That is the difference between the 1914–1918 war and the 1939–1943 war everybody has had enough.

Eating too much meat gives you indigestion and evil thoughts make you eat too much meat.

The funny thing about the ’39–’43 is that anybody can feel anything can think anything. In ’14–’18 everybody well if not everybody the great majority knew who was an enemy and who was a friend, if they did not know they were pretty sure, and they mostly were not mistaken an enemy was an enemy and a friend was a friend more or less. Life in the nineteenth century and ’14–’18 was just going on with that although there was Clemenceau
who said that nobody was what they were supposed to be the English who were supposed to be so calm tended to be hysterical, the French who were supposed to be so light-minded were terribly serious and sober, and the Americans who were supposed to be so quick were so slow. But even so almost everybody continued to feel simply, an enemy was an enemy and a friend was a friend and war was war and peace was peace, to be sure there was Trotsky who said to the Germans he wanted to make a treaty that was neither peace nor war, all these things showed that the nineteenth century had been pretty nearly killed but still it was very much alive, it believed in peace and in war, it believed in a possible Esperanto, and in progress, it believed in humanity and the white man’s burden, it believed in a nation in arms, it believed in a future and a past it believed in veterans, in short it really was the nineteenth century. And now, except Germany there is really nothing left of the nineteenth century and when that will be exterminated then the nineteenth century is over, and the twentieth century has come to stay. I belong to the generation who born in the nineteenth century spent all the early part of my life in escaping from it, and the rest of it in being the twentieth century yes of course.

Wilson spoke of himself as having a single track mind, Americans are like that, they see what they see and it bothers the European. They see in this war that the only thing necessary to do is to destroy the German material at its base, nothing else is worth while doing or being killed in doing, there is no use fighting until the German material is destroyed at its base and then it is only necessary to do enough fighting to make them know that they have no material and then the war is over. Europeans do not understand that, they believe in fighting first and then destroying material as the completion of fighting not as prevention, and so the American has a single track mind and it all seems so slow to the European because nothing happens until nothing has to happen. Enough said that is not the way the French mind works.

In the last war 1914–’18, it was not so evident that they could take six different roads at once because after all it was a nineteenth
century war, and the way was a comparatively simple way and the way to go had some variation, but on the whole they were fairly united, they did want to win the war and that was quite simply that, but the ’39–’43 war not at all, not, at, all.

After the armistice in ’40 I was surprised, I can always be surprised but I was decidedly surprised, so many of them were not sure that they did not want the Germans to win. And I said why, I do not understand, how can any Frenchman feel that way, why, I said why, and I said it pretty violently and pretty often. The man at the bank explained something. He said there are a great many different points of view and one single man can have quite a great number of them.

Is it worse to be scared than to be bored, that is the question.

Any one man, so said the man at the bank, could want the English to win, because as he was in business he wants business to be secure, and if the Germans win business would not be secure not for him, at the same time he has a son who is a prisoner, his only son, and he wants the Germans to win because his son would come home to him, and if the English were to win the war would be long and his son might die before he came home to him, then at that time Germany was allied to Russia and might that mean communism and then he would want the English to win, and then there is another point of view, the French love to talk about discipline, they always think their country is very disorderly as a matter of fact they are so traditional, and they love so passionately to grow vegetables that they can really only be orderly, and never anything else but they like to think there is no order and that there should be. That is Petain’s point of view, that was the point of view of a crazy man at the end of the last war in 1918, who one day started to ask everybody to show him their papers at the station, and everybody did, naturally one does when asked to do so authoritatively and finally there was a big crowd waiting to show him their papers, military and otherwise, and a policeman came up seeing the crowd and said what is all this, and everybody said he asked us to show him our papers, and the man when he had
been taken to the police court and had been asked why he had gone on like that answered, because I want to put a little order into my country. The other day, when everybody was growing potatoes and everybody was putting on all they could in the way of disinfectant and hard at it they were and one day I was out walking on a little road and a nice elderly, retired civil servant came along and he had a blower in his hand, and I said pleasantly and you are disinfecting your potato plants, and he said yes, but it would be more useful if everybody did, but I said they all do as much as they can, not as much he answered as they would if there was more order in the country. That said he is what we French suffer from a lack of order. I was polite but I wanted to say oh Hell, you all feel you are in prison because you are always being ordered, and it is funny, if anybody is alone they want company and if they have company they want to be alone. Human beings are like that, finite and infinite, when they have peace they want war and when they have war they want peace, Well anyway. Then gradually things changed the Russians became Germany’s enemy, and the French were having more points of view in one man than ever. The middle classes were once more torn, if the Russians win, would there be communism, if the Germans win would there be misery and oppression, if the English win would they lose all their colonies. Shall we, said the people of Lyon, shall we lose our land or our pocket books, which will we mind less. They even began to make jokes about it although it was very real, it is very real. The most astonishing people, astonishing to me, that they should feel like that, said they would if they were younger go and fight the Russians, what I said with the Germans well not exactly, against the English well not exactly, well what then I said, and they said well what, and that conversation ended. Conversations were leading very strangely in those days, in the days after the armistice. And then there was Petain. So many points of view about him, so very many. I had lots of them, I was almost French in having so many. This was what happened to me about him.

When the farmers heard that the Russians had come in to fight
the Germans, they were single minded about it, they all got drunk with joy quite simply drunk with joy, and later when the Germans did not get to Moscow, just the same they said the French army under Napoleon, did take Moscow they could not hold it of course but they did get there, they were on foot, on foot you understand and on foot they got there and these others with all their automobiles they cannot get there. We got there they said we were on foot but we did get there. The French all this time were making jokes very funny jokes they still are but there was this nice one about Napoleon. They said this was in ’41, they said that Hitler went to visit Napoleon in his tomb that time he was in Paris, and Napoleon reluctantly came out of his tomb to speak to him. Hitler said I am a great conqueror, perhaps not quite so great a conqueror as you were, this he said politely, but pretty nearly as great a conqueror, I too have conquered all Europe. And England, said Napoleon, not yet, said Hitler, Napoleon sighed I didn’t either, and Russia said Napoleon, not yet said the other. I did not either said Napoleon, go away, said Napoleon, and he went back to his tomb, and shut himself in. It was pretty good for the Parisians to have invented that story in the winter of ’40–’41, pretty good. They tell so many funny stories, and the Parisians are funny, that is what bothers the Germans so, the jokes are never what they expect, no never.

But to tell about Petain and all the things one could I could think about him.

It’s funny about honey, you always eat honey during a war, so much honey, there is no sugar, there never is sugar during a war, the first thing to disappear is sugar, after that butter, but butter can always be had but not sugar, no not sugar so during a war you always eat honey quantities of honey, really more honey than you used to eat sugar, and you find honey so much better than sugar, better in itself and better in apple sauce, in all desserts so much better and then peace is upon us and no one eats honey any more, they find it too sweet and too cloying and too heavy, it was like this
in the last war ’14–’18 and it is like this in this war, wars are like that, it is funny but wars are like that.

And just now there is also what happens in this war, not in the last war, but in this war, as it happened in Napoleon’s wars and the wars before that, any war before that but not in the nineteenth century wars not in ’14–’18 war.

Anybody can be taken away from where he belongs and put somewhere else to work, or to live, far away from where it is natural to be. That is the way it was in the history of baronial wars and all that, in all the historical novels that was what was so awful anybody can be taken away, taken up in the street, taken at any time and carried away to work in a far away country and perhaps never to come home again at any age and in any place.

Victor is the son of a baker, a nice boy, and fond of children and a kind of easy coming and going, he has four sisters and a father and a mother and they all love Victor, he is the one each one loves the best, each and every one. And Victor, is strong and well-fed and at twenty he went to the Camp de Jeunesse, which replaces military training in France, and he caught a bad cold and he was in the hospital and then he was given convalescence leave and he came home and he was not as well fed as he had been but that was no matter it was easy to feed him up again, particularly as he was to have ten more days of leave. This evening going up the mountain I met his father and another man. We stopped and talked, but not as much about the war and Victor, but about the weather and the moon and the mountain and my being fond of walking and then I left them and they went on up the mountain, and I made a round and I came in front of the bakery and there Victor’s mother was fumbling at the door not going in but not not going in, and I said good-evening how is Victor, and she said he is not to have any more leave, but I said he is really not well yet, and she said yes he was to go to-morrow to Lyon for an examination, and she said no, no he will not leave, not leave and she went in and I went on, and he has not gone, oh dear me, we like Victor, if it all will finish fast enough it is all right but if not, you cannot stay on
the mountain all night not in the cold but anyway they always come home at night why not if nobody wants to find them, why not.

And then I was walking along and a woman and I were talking, we were talking about apples and grapes and that money did not count, it was only food, that was important, for the first time in the history of France peasants do not care about money, food and food is what they want but said the woman there is my grandson my André, I call him the little Didie, he is in Germany, he is only twenty, he was very ill when he was twelve, and the doctor said he would have to go to a sanatorium and I said no let me try, and I took him, his voice was gone, and the doctor said no lessons and no work, nothing but out of doors and no talking nothing but out of doors, and so I made him a little suit that left most of him exposed to the sun and in some months he was better but the doctor said not better enough and so I kept him and then he was all cured and never sick again and he went on studying until he was nineteen and now he is in Germany and when he was examined to go his mother told the Germans he had not been strong and the first visit they said no he did not need to go and the second visit they said no he did not need to go and the third visit they said go and his mother said but no and the German said do you think we do not have better doctors there than here and he went and he can get the grippe and indeed they did take very good care of him but he has so little to eat, he writes, grandmother send me anything raw or cooked it makes no matter, and I have sent him five packages and he has only so far received one and it is hard to find things to send, and he writes anyway writes me letters long letters pages of letters, and I said do write him all the details of your daily life just the way we have been talking and how you remember him as a little boy that will comfort him, and is he the only grandson I said no she said he has a brother just eighteen and now his mother is afraid he will have to go it says so in the papers or at least everybody says so and he did not study like his brother he was apprenticed to a trade, well I said I really think it will be over
soon and I hope said she you are right I do so hope so, with the bombardments of the factories the boys, they do not even say oh dear, it is just like the middle ages, they are carried off from them in their midst, and that is what is happening.

Marechal Petain, was the hero of Verdun in the 1914–1918 war everybody knows that, but many do not know that it was he who saved the French army from mutiny. This is the story. The French army in ’17, was about through, they had had more than enough and they did not like what was happening to them, too many commanders-in-chief in quick succession and they were tired of the way they were being handled and when Petain was put in command, he said he and they needed a change, he said all officers should explain to their men what they wanted them to do and why before they ordered them to do anything, he arranged that everybody should have regular leave, every four months and that they should have ten days, a week in which they went back to the work they used to to steady down and then a couple of days to eat with all their relatives which is the French way and thus cheered by a regular civilian life they would go back to the front with a better strength and they did and the mutiny was over. Then after he retired he thought and wrote a great deal about how France was getting slack and how they could not win the next war, there being neither enough men enough material or enough allies and he also thought and wrote a great deal about a new political scheme which should consist of government by specialists and selected men, a sort of heroic rotarianism in every walk of life. I used to hear Bernard Fay talk about this and mixed up with it all was a desire to have back a king, they thought that kings suit France, most Frenchmen prefer a republic but everybody has to think as they like about that. And France is so traditional and it does so like novelties, and a king would be both a novelty and a tradition. There would be that. After that Petain was ambassador to Spain and he hoped Franco would do what he thought should be done but did he does he, and there was Portugal and they too were perhaps doing so, all this very much excited Petain and then
came the war the 1939–’43 war, and of course that had begun. Petain was not very cheerful about it, he said over and over again without sufficient armament without a sufficiently well organized army and without enough allies, France was bound to be defeated. He had been a young officer in 1870 when the French had been defeated he had lived to see them victorious in 1914–1918 and now he was to see them again defeated, and they were. He was undoubtedly right, they were.