This memoir is a guest, posthumous, sharing of my father’s wartime memoirs published originally in French and in the journal of the Free French Forces called Le Lien. My father and I, along with my brother Paul Barchilon, worked on translating these memoirs while my father was still alive. The last few pages I had to translate on my own as he had already died.

An (almost) unknown moment in the life of General de Gaulle

By Jacques Barchilon

(Born Casablanca, Morocco April 7, 1923 – Died, Bayside, California, USA, June 19, 2018) 

This translation is from two issues of Le Lien and includes two articles, #28 July 2012 and #29 November 2013 that have Papa’s war-time stories originally in French.  Nicole and Paul both worked with Papa during the last few months of his life. He translated for us from the French and we typed his words.  The first twelve pages of this narrative were done in this way.. After Jacques’ death, Nicole finished this translation, without Papa’s voice as guide and gauge, but his spirit has hopefully come through regardless.

The following narrative is a firsthand account From Jacques Barchilon, who was a young man and soldier during the French Resistance. An 89-year-old man, the author of this article remembers having seen General de Gaulle in Gibraltar, on the 29th of May, 1943 in the following circumstances.

Four days before, on the 25th of May, in the black of night around 10:30 p.m. on the beach in Tangiers, where I was living with my family, in the expectation of an emigration visa to the U.S. I had jumped with two other escapees into a Portuguese fishing boat, secretly bound for Gibraltar. For the past few months I was in contact with the head of the Gaullist network in Tangiers (we can call her now, after so many years, Madame Many). She was the wife of a doctor by the same name. Without understanding it very well, as a young student of twenty years old, I was already a member of the French Resistance. Madame Many then organized the escape towards Gibraltar. It was necessary to leave secretly because Tangiers was at the time under Spanish control (Frankist/Fascist government of General Franco). I mention these circumstances to give an idea of the somewhat poisonous atmosphere of a city supposedly neutral but which was, in reality, sympathizing with Germany and the Vichy regime.

Nevertheless, after a rather dangerous night crossing (with terrible sea-sickness, bad weather, and all lights extinguished), in the morning of the 26th of May the little Portuguese fishing boat we boarded was accosted by a security ship of the British Navy.  One of their officers welcomed us, rather warmly, and the weather became magnificent. The harbor of Gibraltar was filled with British war ships, which dominated our miniscule fishing boat. I noticed an enormous aircraft carrier whose name escapes me, (Arc Royale, Prince Royal?). I was happy to find myself in a world at war and glad to have left behind me the school-like routine of the Lycée Français of Tangiers. I was ready to join the Free French Forces.

Once landed I was led into  the British barracks where I was immediately transformed into an allied soldier, duly dressed in the traditional British battle dress in khaki wool. This kind of get-up was rather warm in this last week of May. Through the streets filled with English soldiers much more comfortably dressed in tropical shorts,  I was led to the top of the city in an office where I met two French policemen, who looked like ordinary French officers. The two gendarmes gave me a form which I was supposed to fill and sign. It was my “promesse d’engagement dans les forces Françaises Libres, a dater du 26 mai 1943.” (promise of commitment to the Free French Forces, as of May 26, 1943)
All I had to do now was to wait to embark in the direction of England, where I eventually signed other documents about my volunteer enlistment for the duration of the war plus three months, Army Number of the FFL (Force Française Libres) 55, 742. I was onboard an American transport ship called the Santa Rosa, amongst a large contingent of soldiers, perhaps 3,000 ready for England. That was my case, but on this ship, there was also a future leader of the French resistance called Pierre Lefranc. We were not all soldiers for the Free French Forces, rather a cosmopolitan group of Americans, Poles, and other Europeans. From the deck, I was admiring the beautiful bay of Gibraltar when all of a sudden, while leaning barely on the bannister, I saw a small group of French officers on the gangplank going up on our ship, the tallest of them was General de Gaulle.

I was then, a barely twenty-year-old soldier without great knowledge of historical circumstances of the war; at the time, I had no idea of what the general could be doing in Gibraltar, precisely on that day. Why had he come aboard? Did he want to talk to the soldiers and officers ready to go to England? Many years later, thanks to the reading of the excellent war memoirs of General Pierre Billotte, I learned of the early morning of the 29th of May, 1943. General de Gaulle was flying from London en route for Algeria with the intention to create and direct with general Gireaux the CFLN (Comité Français de Libération Nationale). In his memoir, Billotte wrote:

“the 29th of May in the morning we say goodbye to London. De Gaulle is accompanied by Massigli, Philip, Palewski and myself. We leave for Gibraltar by means of a modest bi-motor. The Germans would have had an idea of our passage over the ocean in Spain, would they have made a mistake of a day. The  fact is that an aircraft similar to ours but going in the inverse direction would be shot down. On board, was the admirable English actor, Leslie Howard.” (pp 248 and 253)

In his famous memoirs (Paris: Edition Gallimard-Pleiade, 2000) General de Gaulle does not mention his Gibraltar stop-over. Without knowing the book of Pierre Billotte, one could believe that he arrived in Algeria directly from London. Here is a passage from General de Gaulle: “the 30th of May, noon, an aircraft of the fighting French with Marmier as the pilot, we land at Boufarik, an airport near Algeria” (p.365).
Looking at these passages, essentially that of Pierre Billotte, it is clear that the general and his cabinet of four members must have spent the night in Gibraltar. I mention these details because, insignificant as they may be, they matter because they concern historical figures.

From Issue: No. 29, Le Lien, November 2013: Souvenirs of daily life in England and London in the Free French Forces, 1943, 1944.

First Weeks:  I

The Santa Rosa American Troop transport having left Gibraltar the 30th of May 1943, after a crossing in a convoy,  arrived in the great bay of Greenock, near Glasgow Scotland. It was then the 6th or the 7th of June. We landed and immediately boarded a special train ready to take us to London. It was cold. The kind assistance of the English Red Cross warmed us up with our first cup of strong British tea with sugar and milk. We left immediately, arriving late in the evening in London. We were lodged at the “Patriotic School,” a group of large buildings in the south of the capital, in the district of Camberwell. There were luxurious accommodations. In the big meeting room, a placard informed us that “We must be patient. We are welcomed by the General de Gaulle,” but were told that “England is a fortress defending itself at its doors.” The placard is signed by General de Gaulle himself. A few days later, the French singer Germaine Sablon entertains us with patriotic songs. I remember: “Paris is ours, every street, every house and not for the enemy.” In spite of this all, most of us were a little discouraged by so many trials, so many dangers in the resistance and in our escape and then, there we were, still more or less prisoners under control of the British government. We were quizzed and interrogated by different officers of the intelligence service. We didn’t understand all this distrust, but were glad to provide the English Intelligence Service with information on the German army in France or North Africa. Some of us could even pinpoint locations of German airports.

After two weeks at the Patriotic School, we were on leave for two or three days in London and then were transported to the boot camp of Camberley in a suburb of London where we really began our military life in the Free French Forces.

The Camberley Camp

Camberley is a little pleasant town in the county of Surrey. It is about 50 miles, one hour by train from the London station of Waterloo. This is the location of the military academy of Sandhurst, the English equivalent of the American West Point. The majority of British statesmen and generals of Great Britain, including Winston Churchill, are former students of Sandhurst. The basic location of the Free French was on a large plateau, well above the city, a windswept plateau interspersed with groves of pine trees, Old Dean’s Common, where the Free French were assigned a series of Nissen huts, a simple long hut made out of a piece of folded metal looking like half a sausage with doors at the front and back and some windows. There were also wooden quarters with a huge parade ground in the middle. It was a fully equipped army camp; there was even a stockade building for recalcitrant soldiers.

We were under order of colonel Renouard. General De Gaulle mentions our troops at Camberley in his memoir by saying:  “at the camp of Camberley the colonel Renouard introduces me to a battalion of infantry, a small artillery unit, the telecommunication units, etc….Every six months a group of soldiers graduates.” (Paris: Gallimard, Pleiade, Edition 2000, p.242).

I arrived there ca. the 20^th of June. A group of about a dozen of us had been transported by train from London, and then ferried by bus from the station. As we disembarked from the bus, we were asked to stand in a couple of rows. We were supposed to stand straight like ramrods. An officer was standing in front of us. He noticed that I was slouching because of my feeling of depression; it took so long to get here at this barren plateau. He looked at me reproachfully, held his shoulders back to indicate that I should straighten up. A military band played for us some military tune of welcome. Somehow that army fanfare sounded false to my ears and inner mood.

I felt depressed intermittently for the next few days It felt interminable the wait to be beginning. After we were assigned sleeping cots and fed an early dinner we were free to leave the camp provided we came back at curfew time (10:30 p.m., I think). As soon as I realized we could leave the camp, I felt much better, and walked around the lovely wooded countryside of Surrey. It was the furthest north I had ever been in my life and I noticed that it was daylight until late in the evening. Days in the summer, this far north, were light until midnight or one a.m.

Most of my fellow soldiers had chosen to go to downtown Camberley in search of local pubs to imbibe beer or other alcoholic solace. I wandered alone, enjoying my newfound freedom to come and go as I pleased for a few hours. I saw a woman in front of her cottage, and said, “good evening!” I was somewhat startled to hear her returning the greeting. In my shy and reserved upbringing, I was not accustomed or advised to greet new world strangers and expect them to acknowledge my existence. The simple behavior of that English woman was new and pleasant.

The weather was warm and our cleaning and washing facilities were adequate but not superb. I could not find showers and washed myself outdoors, stripped naked.  A friendly older fellow said: “No need of false shame in this outfit.”

The day after we arrived we were led to a classroom of sorts with desks and asked to fill out forms to finalize our formal induction into the Forces Françaises Libres (Free French Forces). On the form where I was to enter my name, I instinctively wrote “Lawrence, Jacques.” Like most soldiers of Jewish origin you didn’t want anything about you showing Jewishness. In fact, the dog tag used in the American Army, you were not supposed to write H for your religion as Hebrew. We knew not to show Jewishness on any of our documents in case we were taken prisoner. Out of admiration for the writer David Herbert Lawrence, I chose the name Lawrence. That was my nom de guerre (war name) for the duration. “La durée de la Guerre plus trois mois” (Duration of the War plus three months). We were photographed, and like all Free French soldiers inducted in England, we were issued a British Army Book, or Soldiers Service and Pay Book. I saved mine as a souvenir. On page two; my Army Number, 55742 (which I have not forgotten), my nom de guerre,  Lawrence, Jacques, born 7^th of April 1943. The date on my official birth-certificate is April 8, 1943, but my mother always told me I was born the day before. The date of my enlistment is June 6, 1943, but the French Officer told us to write: “to date from June 18, 1943” giving us a few more days of service under the flag of France for inexplicable bureaucratic reasons.

Other particulars were fancifully handwritten by me on page three: height 1m.70 (five foot six inches) much taller than my actual height. My weight of 65 kilos/143 lbs. was also a guess on the high side. I must have weighed much less. A photograph is attached: the young twenty-year old stares glumly has much more hair than now at age 76 and now  94. A red stamp across the bottom, with a corner covering part of my photograph reads: “FORCES FRANÇAISES LIBRES, CAMP ET C.I.C. D’OLD DEAN. COMPAGNIE DES SERVICES GÉNÉRAUX.”

II

The Free French volunteers contributed to the resistance and to the liberation in their work in London and England in 1943, 44. May the reader forgive me for writing in the first person. In the enormous historical background where great actors, great statesmen work for the liberation of Europe, the modest soldier that I was, is making his modest contribution. With a memory better than mine, other veterans have also made more interesting contributions (see attached bibliography).

The officers and non-coms do their best to form various promotions every six months. Some of my friends had a very distinguished career after graduating from Camberley. My great friend Serge Cany, from Madagascar, graduated as a sergeant, and eventually became a lieutenant. He distinguished himself in the campaign to liberate the south of France. He has a mention in the book Compagnons de la Libération (Jean Christophe Notin, 1061 Compagnons, Paris: Perrin, 2000, p. 741).

Among the officers entrusted to our training, I remember the name of Mantoux. There were two Mantoux brothers, sons of the professor and diplomat who was an interpreter between Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson after the first World War. Military training is often a painful routine, but there were a few pleasant moments; in particular the 14th of July, 1943. The Free French marched through the streets in front of friendly Londoners, as we are on duty in front of the statue of Maréchal Foch, behind the Victoria railroad station. I am proud that I was a member of this company, of my own volition, at that historic honoring of France, occupied currently, but honoring the liberation of  the Bastille on the 14th of July, 1789. This was the last parade of the Free French in London. After the short service, we were free and could stroll in the quiet sunny capital.
The summer of 1943 was very pleasantly warm; the afternoons were long. We could relax at the Camberley swimming pool and playing sports was encouraged. We were even allowed to wear civilian clothes outside the camp in order to play tennis. There was a nice library of donated French books.

We were roused daily from sleep by the trumpet blaring the famous and ubiquitous “Reveille.” Every day after Reveille, we have a period of exercise on the parade ground. One of our southern officer’s could never pronounce it right and calls it the “paragroum.” We were barely awake and very high in the blue sky, we saw the white tracers of planes on their way to devastate Germany. We heard the hardly muffled sounds of large American bomber planes, called “flying fortresses.”
The camp was comfortable and well warmed with coal. However, the cooking was often very bad. I remember having been sent to the infirmary because the military doctors were afraid of an epidemic of dysentery.

Another form of sickness was depression and lethargy, among us, was common. The time was long and we were impatient to start active training and it weighed on us. The two chaplains (whose names I’ve forgotten) were here to cheer us up once in a while. The  more paternal of the two, said, “Boredom is a form of depression.” The other chaplain, whom I talked to surprised me by saying that I received a lot of mail. This seemed suspicious to him. Needless to say he was also censoring all of our mail. The reason why I received a lot of mail is because in Tangiers, neutral territory, where my family was living, there was a little post office which happened to be British. The proximity of Gibraltar made the routing of mail easier. In general, soldiers whose families were in North or South America could also receive a lot of mail, even if all letters were militarily censored. Needless to say, very little mail came from Nazi occupied Europe.

At the end of our basic training we were finally scattered all over the map, duly provided with a military British driving permit, I was assigned to London, which meant, I had to learn to drive on the left.

LIFE IN LONDON
January 1st, 1944  is an unforgettable date for me. With three or four other comrades, we emerge from the Waterloo railroad station. It was raining and we made our way slowly through the slippery London streets, on our young shoulders, we balanced the heavy British duffel bag. We arrived at Dolphin Square, Greenville House. S.W.1 in the Victoria Station-Belgravia district. We had to register at the office of the Free French. I was not told then, but through other drivers, I learned that the young female drivers were no longer assigned to work with the French officers, and that they (the French officers) were especially forbidden from going to their rooms to wake them up, for obvious reasons.

Male drivers were a safer choice. We were moving between the garage and the headquarters of General de Gaulle at Carleton Garden. The officer in charge of the chauffeur service surprised us, pleasantly. He told  us that in over-populated London there is no room for military barracks for foreign soldiers. This is why we had to be lodged and take rooms among the civilian population. We were given 25 shillings each for renting rooms. This can seem somewhat surprising, like a special favor, but in reality, our lodging endowment did not allow us to be lodged in an apartment. We could only be in a room, there was no great luxury. For the noon meal we had a free Dolphin square canteen. For every other meal we had to make do on our own. We didn’t have much money and looked for cheap meals for students.

London was then an enormous cosmopolitan city bursting with allied soldiers of all kinds: Poles, Belgian, Dutch, etc… These soldiers were going to different paying canteens for their meals, where we can sometimes afford to go as well. The American canteens were only open to Americans. We used to say: “The Americans are over-fed, over-sexed, over-paid and over here.” (added by Nicole and Jacques in 2018).

Two kinds of visions dominate my memory, on one hand the complete black-out; you had to learn to navigate in the dark among unlighted streets bumping into all sorts of people in the dark, not to say anything about prostitutes. On the other hand, the memories of subway stations (underground) where poor families were sleeping directly on the ground, sheltering themselves from constant bombing.

Our work was at once serious and important. At seven in the morning we had to pick up our service cars in the garage of Dolphin Square, on the edge of the river. We were to pick up various officers in their apartments and drive them to Carleton Garden, or elsewhere according to their assignments. In the basement of Carleton Garden there was a waiting room for drivers on duty. After six p.m., we had to return our little service cars to the garage; these were either requisitioned service cars or camouflaged Renaults or Peugeots. When we were on night duty, driving was difficult in the black-out (no headlights to guide us in the black night). I remember in the obscurity of a certain evening, a tall and distinguished looking gentleman in civilian clothes asked me to wait in a parking lot of a building I didn’t know. This was General François Astier. He guided me slowly to a parking spot and asked me to wait. After 45 minutes I saw him on top of a stairway shaking the hand of a man round and smiling dressed in a kind of mechanic’s outfit. It was Winston Churchill. I remember a few other night’s service, two or three officers whispered delicately behind me, they did not specifically give me a destination, they simply told me “turn left, turn right, etc…” I didn’t know where I was, some secret destination. The next day, a comrade driver, more experienced than me, explained it to me. “You have driven an agent, having spent his last night in London, before being parachuted into France.”

After a few weeks we spent more time waiting in Carleton Garden, but also in the district of Mayfair. It was the headquarters of General Koenig. General Koenig was in charge of all secret service in occupied France. In his office there was a room full of advanced radio equipment broadcasting secret messages to French agents.

All the officers who were driving through London showed a certain sympathy towards their chauffeurs (“since when have you been in England, where’s your family, etc..”). It was obvious they were happy about their military assignment and that it was important. I noticed that they had frequent rendezvous to a certain address, well-kept guarded in the American army. They told me, “Go to Kingston.” I soon knew by heart the way to Kingston. It’s only after the war, fifty years later, that I learned the secret of Kingston. It was there that the supreme commander General Eisenhower had located his headquarters, in a quiet suburb, because he prefered the quiet of the suburb.

I was quite aware that these officers were preparing the immanent D-Day landing. They were responsible for the liaison with the resistance in France. Among these officers some were unforgettable, like the American John Hasey. When I asked him “what is this decoration green with black stripes?” he answered proudly: “C’est la Croix de la Liberation” (It is the cross of the liberation of France). Among many others: Bernard Dupérier, the squadron commander, and especially the late Étienne Mantoux (dead in Germany, a few days before the end of the war). He is fondly remembered for his activity during the liberation of Paris. He was the brother of Lieutenant Mantoux of Camberley, also the son of the translator of President Woodrow Wilson, many years before, at the end of World War I.

D-Day soon arrived. The officers went back and forth between Normandy and London. They come back with Camemberts, which they graciously give to the staff still working in London. At first I didn’t know how to eat them, until I was told that the crust was also edible.

Here we are now; this is the pièce de résistance of these memories. My microscopic contribution to the liberation of France. I’m telling things I did not quite understand at the time: simple private that I was then.

During two or three days after D-Day, around the 15th-20th of June, I heard everybody saying, quite frequently: “Monsieur Coulet!, Monsieur Coulet!” without knowing who he was. Here is how I understood without understanding, as I finished my work at Carleton Gardens, the motorcyclist picking me up told me, “Get in the back of me, we have an important mission, urgent!” We arrived at the garage, where they showed me one of our Peugeot light duty trucks in which there was something which I recognize like the twin wheels of a French car. I was told of immediate departure: “you’re going to Portsmouth, deliver this to the Free French navy.” I had no written order.

I left immediately with my shipment. I did not know the way to Portsmouth, but I managed. I asked my way while talking to various policemen, the way was long and slow in the night of the blackout. I arrived at my destination in the black night around three a.m. I was shown where the French navy was. A sailor, hardly awake, takes my shipment and doesn’t give me any receipt. As he unloads what’s in the truck, to do so, he has to remove the back door and doesn’t put it back. I fell asleep, in hunger, in the truck. I woke up around eleven a.m. and then noticed that I had no back door for my truck. I drove to the lost and found, an enormous place. A nice woman in charge said, “Anyone seen a part of a French lorry?” and then I got my back door back. I kept looking for the Free French. I found them under an enormous camouflaged tent, like the top of a forest.

The officer in charge, John F Hasey, recognized me, and said, “Lunch with us.” I would have liked to stay with this small detachment of the Free French. In London, I would probably have been reported as a deserter from my position, with my own countrymen. But, I came back to London and to my position before nightfall. The adjutant Vauxcelles, my superior, berated me, for not having delivered my confirmed regulation receipt. “Where is your return order?” What could I do? I had no orders written of any kind. That was the Free French efficiency.

Many years later (see the bibliographical annex), while reading books telling the history of D-Day. I understand clearly that François Coulet was at Bayeux with general de Gaulle as soon as the fourteenth of June 1944. He was the first French governor of Calvados, appointed by general de Gaulle. I assume that in his function of delegate of the French provisional government, he needed a car, a really French car. Part of that car was what was in the truck in the night delivery. Remember that the Free French soldier Jacques Lawrence had just delivered this French part to be fitted at Bayeux, the first important city liberated in Normandy.

One should read the pages 372-378 of the souvenirs of the Free French called “des hommes libres.” In it, the French diplomat Francois Coulet said: “The general said to me ‘tomorrow, the 14th of June, first visit of the allied bridgehead, I will leave you there as provisional delegate of the French Republic, you will manage.’  But that wasn’t easy, because the allies had not recognized me as a regular French officer.” {Churchill and FDR had created a fiction called AMGOT American Government of Occupied Territory they had not recognized Coulet as a delegate of Eisenhower. They had appointed Americans to all the posts that French men were already chosen for by the Free French} “…I was weighed down by my responsibility, which included an enormous iron truck containing thousands of bank notes of the French. Why? To pay the administration of the French regions to remove the traces of the Vichy government that were everywhere.” {American forces landed in Belgium, they used Belgian money printed in Washington. They tried the same thing with French money, which was why Coulet had real French money in his truck. The Belgians paid their taxes with this false money and all of this contributed to the enormous confusion in Europe.}

One can only imagine the general confusion between AMGOT and the legitimate money under the control of Coulet. One example will suffice. General Montgomery, the son of a high dignitary of the Anglican Church, recognized the authority of Francois Coulet when he is told that Francois Coulet is not a Catholic but a Protestant like him. They were attached to the preparations of D-Day.

Section III

Last weeks in London, V1 Bombs falling and the return to Paris

It was impossible to forget that we were at war every day.  In fact, hardly a week after D-Day, on the 13th of June, the first guided bomb, the V1 falls on the capital.  We pretended to ignore them by pure stoicism, like all the London citizens. But in reality we were afraid. The bombs arrived over the city with a sinister slowness, at the end of their fuel.  We could see them distinctly. On their tail they had the radio control mechanism. The characteristic buzzing of the engine stopped. How could we know where the bomb was going to fall? It fell in an enormous explosion, destroying a whole five-story apartment building. In driving through London, you could take a fatal turn from one street to the other. It was a new blitz.  The destruction was visible everywhere. My room on Pembroke Road, near the French Lycee, was one block from the Earl’s Court underground station. On reaching my room on the third floor, I found there was no door, the hinge had been undone by the explosion. You could only enter the room by lifting the door and moving it. In front of the underground you could see that half the streets were an enormous ruin.  We were all stoic Londoners.

With a comrade from the French navy we went to see the British ballet, we had free tickets.  It was the first time that we saw a ballet, it was Coppelia. In the middle of the show, the V1 bombs started falling. Outside the theater, the air raid warnings were sounding.  In the theater, we heard nothing. But in front of the stage, employees brought an enormous poster to warn us of the air raid. Needless to say, nobody got up to go to the air raid shelter.

The month of July passed quickly during this period of bombing. Perhaps as many deaths as in the original blitz of June 1940. We were all asking ourselves the same question : “When do we go to France?”  But we were still in England. As long as General Eisenhower was in England, the French mission stayed. There was a lot to do to command the internal resistance by radio. There was a well-organized infrastructure, and orders were communicated by reading poetry on the air. The French poem by Paul Verlaine, Les Sanglots Longs, was read as a coded message:

“Les sanglots longs, Des violons De l’automne Blessent mon cœur, D’une langueur Monotone.” (Long sobs, the violins of autumn injure my heart, a monotonous languor.) Once completed, the poem indicated that D-Day would be tomorrow morning.

* From this point forwards, translation is solely by Nicole Barchilon Frank, minus the help and voice of her father Jacques, who died before we could finish translating.

Finally, Paris is liberated, and everything goes very fast. General Koenig is in Paris. We are at his orders. With the Warrant Officer Vauxcelles and my friend Sargeant Barbeau, here we are all three of us, in service, ready to go to France. We were supposed to drive to Paris, with two service vehicles, on the one hand the caravan-trailer from the campaign, with Warrant Officer Vauxcelles and my friend Sargeant Barbeau, and on the other hand, an American model car that I’m driving. Before leaving we are secretly loaded aboard a cargo ship in a port of the Thames with our vehicles.

The freighter shakes in the night; the next morning we are in front of the coast of Normandy. We land at a slow speed; rolling in on gigantic pontoons of the artificial port the Mullberries, that relays our cargo to the coast. We are finally on French soil, d’Arromanches-les- Bains. This is the still secret site (Gold) of the landing of the English and Canadiens a few weeks before us. After celebrating our arrival by toasting together in a cafe of the Arromanches, we inspected our cars and refueled. I remember checking that the little revolver I was given was in the pocket of my battle-dress.

We drive in the middle of the “Red Ball Road, the one-way road which, night and day, without stopping, carries ammunition, food and gas to the troops of the front already located in the east of Paris. “ [Pierre leFranc,  D’une résistance, l’autre,   Paris: François Xavier de Goubert, 2005, p. 312]

I clearly remember going through a city in ruins: Caen. Today, tourists can buy post cards with juxtaposed photos of the city from 1944 and modern beautifully rebuilt Caen. We arrive in Paris, just before night, and deposit our vehicles in the garage of the Invalides. My adventure in the Free French Forces in England during the war is finished.

POSTSCRIPT OR CONCLUSION

From the perspective of my 90th year, I “run” back the film of my life. I notice that I started serving France during my years in England and continued doing so in the United States in my university career. Indeed, emigrating in 1947, I obtained my first diploma with a Bachelor’s degree in history, continued with graduate studies at Harvard University, to finish with a Doctorate in Romance Languages and Literatures. These diplomas allowed me to teach French language and literature in several different universities during many years. Since 1991, I am Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado.

This long paragraph above has a certain relationship with the story, as clearly as I can remember it, of my service in the Free French Forces. It is in my activity of professor, in the work of my publications on the history and the classics of French literature: the “Grand Siècle” (dear to de Gaulle) of Racine, Corneille, Molière, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld (including Perrault and other storytellers)- that I learned and appreciated research and scholarship.

One final reflection. I have sometimes been discouraged (what’s the point?) during the writing of these memories. I found a little courage in thinking about the young students invited to our reunions. It is very important for them to know how their elders, their parents lived. How can I not think that I heard Raymond Aubrac (95 years old) declare that “we must visit the schools … that the children know, that we must not forget.”

~Jacques Barchilon*

* Former soldier of the Free French Forces. Engaged at Camp Camberley England, suburb of London, June 23, 1943 under the name of war “Jacques Lawrence” Matriculation number 55472 Last assignment to the reinforcement battalion of the Second Division Blindée, Demobilized October 25, 1945

The link below: “Video of Papa” is my father speaking about his brother Arturo Cohen and Arturo’s friend, the painter Renau,in the years leading up to and beginning of WWII in Spain and France. This story is about saving art and secretly outmaneuvering Facist and Nazi forces. 

Video of Papa speaking about Renau

Bibliographical Annex:

For everyday life in England and in London, and for a general interest in the resistance, here are several important works, simply in alphabetical order.  We must insist on a common observation in all of the following works: the British civil and military people have always been hospitable, amiable and friendly throughout the years of the war.

• Pierre Billotte, Le temps des armes,  Paris: Published in, 1955. Essential work and cited. This is how Pierre Billotte talks about life in England when he leaves London at the end of chapter III (p.246): …for myself, I will leave a part of my heart there … the welcome the British, of all conditions, have given us will remain unforgettable. “

• Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. First Edition: 1948
• Charles de Gaulle, Mémoires, Paris: Gallimard-Pléiade. Édition 2000. Capital work, essential and quotes
• John F. Hasey,  Yankee Fighter, the Story of an American in the Free French Foreign Legion, Garden City: New York, 1942, 1944, Garden City Publishing Co. Inc.
• Pierre Lefranc, D’une Résistance, l’autre, Paris: François Xavier de Guibert, 2005. The tale of the escapades of life in England is often pleasant, with rather picturesque incidents. Exemplary career in resistance and liberation.
• Jean-Christophe Notin, 1061 Compagnons,  Paris: Perrin, 2000, Essential and cited work, necessary for the lists and biographies to read about the famous Companions.
• Daniel Rondeau et Roger Stéphane, Des hommes libres, Paris: Grasset, 1997. In this essential and quoted work one must have read the pages 372-378, remarkable to understand the importance of the mission of Francois Coulet from the time he arrived at Bayeux on June 14, 1944.
• Serge Vaculik, Bêret Rouge, Paris: Artaud, 1952. Same remarks as Pierre Lefranc’s book for the “picturesque”. On the other hand, an important chapter is entirely devoted to Camberley. One must read how the author escapes his execution by the Gestapo thanks to his courage, and an incredible chance.