Late September 2020
La Résistance is the term that was used most accurately, historically and fundamentally for the covert internal fight against the occupying enemy, the Nazis Germans, as well as against the Vichy regime within France. There was also a Resistance in each of the other conquered nations of Europe during World War II, including in Nazi Germany.
The members of the Dutch Resistance of World War II valiantly saved lives, even as their own world came shattering and crumbling down around them, and for a long time afterward. I know personal stories of the incredible and stubborn courage of the Dutch people. Those detailed tales still bring tears to my eyes. The adjective, bull-headed Dutch, has been used as a precise descriptor for the type of will that did not break in the face of treachery and evil.
The expression, The Underground, was not spoken by the leaders of these groups and movements, which ultimately became organized military units, to liberate France. I did not find one usage of the term throughout all of my exhaustive historical research. General de Gaulle certainly never spoke the word.
“The French Underground” is most likely a term coined in Hollywood, referencing an American-ism dating back to the Underground Railroad that was the covert fight of Americans to free African-American slaves from their bondage in this nation.
There also existed a French Resistance during World War I, or the Great War. Anytime an enemy physically, or economically, or even emotionally, invades a sovereign country that is capable of defending itself as a nation, the word, Resistance, is not merely employed among the patriotic citizenry. That word comes to life with sincere meaning and passion and purpose, noble purpose. The current crops of cowards tossing that term around like cheap coins of propaganda deserve to have their heads shaved.
La Résistance turned an incredibly difficult and long corner in the history of France, in the history of Europe, and in the history of the world during 1943. The many scattered resistance groups of surveillance and intelligence operations, sabotage and military force were coalescing, gradually, but inexorably into The Resistance — as the war progressed toward an armed fight of citizens against the enemy in what was then Occupied France and Vichy France. Operation Torch, launched on the night of 8 November 1942, prompted the immediate occupation of the Free Zone, Vichy France, by the Nazis that same month. All of France, l’entière France, including the island of Corsica, became Occupied France.
The whole shooting match of Nazis — soldiers, bureaucrats and Gestapo — marched their smelly filthy black boots into the Free Zone, stripping away whatever sense of liberty those French had enjoyed since the Fall of France in May 1940.
In THE DAWN, Comte St. Guillaume de Vallon must flee his Château Vallon, an inevitability that U.S. Army Colonel Arthur Boucher Carmichael, recast in France as SOE agent Artur Boucher, has not only foreseen, but has cautiously helped this French aristocrat to prepare for, emotionally as well as physically.
By 16 November, this Allied invasion of French North Africa had been transformed into a major campaign victory. The Vichy- and Axis- “controlled” French colonies of North Africa were liberated from Nazi domination and placed under the command of the Allies. The Free French, les Forces françaises libres, had been joined by turncoat Vichy forces of about 60,000, along with courageous colonial soldiers fighting for a free France.
Militarily speaking, the Free French Forces came into their own, on French soil, French colonial soil, as l’Armée d’Afrique joined them in August 1943 to form l’Armée française de la Libération. With the stage so triumphantly set militarily in French North Africa, General Charles de Gaulle in May 1943 was able to jettison his headquarters in London, along with the Anglo Saxons, and establish his official headquarters in Algiers. He became the one and only head of the French Committee of National Liberation, the FCNC. From July 1943 onward, the Forces françaises libres were more accurately termed « les forces de la libération », the forces of liberation.
Political intrigues and brinksmanship created and fomented by U.S. President Roosevelt and directed toward General de Gaulle took a turn for the worse during 1943. Roosevelt insulted this Free French leader, in as many ways as this wily man could have devised, at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943. This Allied strategy session became a snake-pit of internecine hostility and rancor between those two Allied leaders.
Artur Boucher becomes aware of the gravity of the petty insults and indignities from his President toward this gallant yet haughty founder and leader of the Free French. Artur consequently worries about the adverse effects of those moral injuries on the deepening trust and friendship between himself and Guillaume.
The relationship between the United States and France was forever-after marred by the demeaning ways in which this U.S. President treated the French patriot who stood alone, and tall — against history, the enemy, tradition, and l’État de France — to liberate his patrie and to point her in the direction of the future. I wrote THE DAWN with that somber knowledge in mind; and I have translated this novel into the French language with that somber knowledge even more in mind.
Desperation was despicably heavy in the air during this year of 1943 in France. The Milice, la Milice, was the political paramilitary arm of the Vichy government. These voyous, or thugs, were diabolically recruited in January 1943 by an increasingly inept and faltering Vichy regime slavishly working toward a German France and Hitler-Europe.
Philippe Petain, Victor of Verdun and former national hero, had been hand-picked by Hitler as the puppet Head-of-State for this gouvernement fantoche. This 87-year-old man was declining rapidly into dementia, thereby granting, as had been ghoulishly planned, even more power to Pierre Laval, the real power behind the phony throne. The ignoble Laval put into motion his evil stratagems with even more wicked intent.
An SS-officer and Frenchman named Darland led this crew of bloodthirsty cutthroats as the Vichy regime tried to put an ever-tighter stranglehold on the French citizenry and on the French Resistance. Basically, the Vichy toadies were attempting to save their own necks by proving to Hitler, through criminals and traitors and the assassins of more and more French people, that they, the Vichy men, could still be counted on to secure France for Nazi rule. Like goes to like. Thus went Vichy straight toward Nazi Germany.
The Milice were human hunters of Frenchmen and Frenchwomen, armed bullies who stopped at nothing to bag their prey, for money. Hired killers of French citizens became the force of Vichy law in Nazi France in 1943. It was a good time for an aristocrat resister called Guillaume de Vallon to “go to ground”, and he does, with the able assistance of Artur Boucher.
Camille now fully understands the nature of her love for this Frenchman, more deeply than ever, as she also realizes her profond and passionate love for this foreigner, l’étranger, who journeyed into Provence to lead the covert fight for liberation. Those illicit activities can only endanger the loved ones of this Frenchwoman. Her initial and deep hostility toward Artur turns the corner toward an ever-lasting love as she belatedly surrenders her heart to this never-ending journey that has been her love for Guillaume de Vallon.
Once those corners are turned, emotionally, militarily, politically, morally and historically — there is no turning back, for anyone in l’AUBE, or elsewhere.