A Foreign Field by Ben Macintyre

Author:Ben Macintyre [MacIntyre, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007378395
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2001-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

There were only a few uneasy and unkempt civilians to be seen. Everywhere there were soldiers in worn and torn coats, with tanned faces and thick beards, who went to and fro with long swinging strides, or lounged in small groups by the cottage doors assailing newcomers with chaff … All the available space had to be made full use of. The gardens were partly occupied with huts and temporary dwellings of one sort and another … dragoons watered their horses in the village pond, infantry training went on in the gardens, and all over the meadows soldiers lay and sunned themselves. Nothing was kept that did not serve a military purpose. Hedges and fences were broken down or removed altogether to give better communications. Roofs fell in and all that was burnable went for fuel … in the whole village there were no boundaries and no personal possessions.

Through his smuggling Florency Dessenne had managed to put aside some substantial savings before the war – a box of gold Louis d’Or coins, which was hidden behind the stove. In the early days, the additional food needed for the soldiers could be begged and borrowed, but now it had to be bought at considerable expense. ‘I spent the lot, to feed the Englishmen,’ Florency Dessenne would later claim.

The wisdom of teaching Digby and his companions to live as French peasants was now apparent, for there were almost no hiding places left. The German troops were steadily stripping Villeret and other villages down to their skeletons. In Bertry, Patrick Fowler was beginning to suffer, not surprisingly, from his long incarceration in the Belmont-Gobert armoire. At night he was able to get out and stretch his legs, so long as there were no Germans in the house; but during the day he remained cooped up in the dark. Fowler was already forty when he began his strange captivity, and despite the attentions of the Bertry pharmacist, who was let in on the conspiracy, he was often ill. When there were Germans in residence, the women would leave the shelved side of the cupboard open, to give the impression that it was shelved throughout, and a hole was cut in the side, through which food could be passed without opening the door. The house was often searched, but Fowler was never detected, partly thanks to his protector’s canny understanding of the male soldier’s psychology: ‘When a German was making straight for the cupboard, Madame Belmont-Gobert would play her last card. She would draw attention to the photograph of her second daughter, Euphémie. Euphémie was good-looking. Furthermore, she was safely away in Marseilles, and she was a sure draw. The Germans forgot the cupboard and crowded round the photograph with eager inquiries as to where the young lady was to be found.’

Even at night, with soldiers billeted in the house, Fowler could not relax, for the hungry men would sometimes ‘creep down to steal the potatoes that were kept on top of the wardrobe’. Madame

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