LittleField Notes: True Stories from France

by Ryan Foxley of Arlington, WA

Interview with Jeanne-Marie Smith of Camano Island, WA

I don’t know if it is privilege or perdition, but we who are alive today are certainly witnessing one of the greatest technological transformations in human history, and it is happening in the blink of an historical eye. In the span of one human lifetime, we have gone from plowing fields with teams of horses skillfully driven by sturdy men, to plowing fields with massive tractors piloted by artificial intelligence. The world has gone from the analog: keeping count with ledger-books and slide rules, to the digital: algorithms and metrics, where an astonishingly powerful computer/phone/camera/gps fits in your shirt pocket — like the one on which I write these words. This techno-transformation was well underway when I was born in 1971: the horses were gone from the fields, the telephone had long supplanted the telegraph, and when I was in the fourth grade, the use of personal computers was just beginning to be taught in public schools. We used the Apple IIe with all those floppy disks and the green boxy font. The clunky Apple IIe of my youth has become the sophisticated iPhone of my middle age. What’s next I can’t even imagine.

The changes I have witnessed, as big as they are, are not as momentous as those seen by the two or three generations older than me, especially among country people. Those growing up in the 1930’s and 40’s would have been well versed in the use of an outhouse, pumping water by hand, and harnessing a horse. They may also remember well when rural electrification finally brought electric lights to the farm. I am privileged to have known a number of people over the years who lived through this great transition. Indeed I largely learned the teamster craft from men who grew up working on farms using horses. As a young man I rode for miles on horseback or in covered wagons listening to true stories of an older way of life by men who had lived it. But a human lifespan is not without limit, and those generations are passing on. When the storyteller goes, so too goes the story – unless it be written down. It is in this spirit that I offer with this edition of LittleField Notes a few of the remarkable stories that my dear friend

Jeanne-Marie has shared with me over the past few years, stories of her youth on a farm in the North of France during and just after World War II. Jeanne-Marie was born in Gouy-en-Artois in 1939. She grew up on a classic old-fashioned mixed crop and livestock family farm, so common in those days, both in Europe and in North America. She moved to the United States with her American husband in 1963, raised a family, and has lived here ever since. We have lunch together once a week; we talk about gardening, music, art, language, and everything in between, but I especially like to hear her stories of the old days on the farm. Realizing the importance of her stories, I decided to record her telling them; they are simply too rich and too important not to be remembered and retold. What follows is my translation of her words (and a few of mine) from the French.

Potato Harvest

J-M: In the month of September, with school not yet in session because we had potatoes to harvest, all the children were there in a line, each with his basket. We put the potatoes in our baskets, until they were full. Then a farm worker would come along and put them in a waiting cart. Except that, when you had picked up all these potatoes by yourself and the basket was not yet full, he would take your basket and empty it into another and another, until he made a full one, then he would dump it in the cart. Like this, he felt that he was harvesting the potatoes by himself! When really no, it was the children who were doing all the work.

RF: Did you use a horse to dig the potatoes?

J-M: Yes, that work was already done when we arrived at the field. At that point, the horse was simply pulling the cart.

Do you remember the nature of the potato digger?

I believe it had kind of shaft that turned…

I saw something like that in France last year, where there was a reel that spun in a sense perpendicular to the row and moved the potatoes to one side.

Yes, so the potatoes below ground were brought to the surface so the children could come along and fill their baskets, except for the farm worker who did not participate in the harvest, but felt that he had.

And after, the potatoes were for market or for the house?

On our farm the potatoes were for home use, but also they were cooked and fed to the pigs. We had an enormous pot in which to boil the potatoes for the pigs.

Abbot Davault

Tell me the story about the priest who escaped the Germans in the cart.

Ah, the story of Abbot Davault, the vicar of our parish. He wasn’t associated with a monastery; it was my father, who called him Abbot. It was wartime, and one day the Gestapo learned that he was part of the resistance. They came to the presbytère to arrest him. He told them he was going to get his shoes and coat in his room. There was only one door that exited the presbytère. What the Gestapo didn’t know, was that in the wall that separated the presbytère from the church was a little door. And so he went out through a window and on through that door and crossed over to the other side of the street, behind our house. When he reached the neighbor’s house he said, “The Gestapo are looking for me, can you hide me?” The neighbor didn’t know what to do, so he went to see my father and asked simply, “What should I do?” Papa said, “Bring him here and I will get the cart.” He put Abbott Davault in the cart and piled straw on top of him, hitched up the horse and headed for the neighboring village. Nobody was the wiser. Along the route Papa chatted with the vicar. Someone from the village working in his field shook his head and said, “There goes Pierre riding along and talking to himself!”

The Gestapo continued to wait at the presbytère. They never did find Abbot Davault. They should have cast their eye in the next village over after he disappeared.

After the war he became the Vicar of another village. Eventually he retired to the south of France. Each year he would write to Papa. One day, my two brothers, who lived in the south of France, were walking along and wondering if old Abbot Davault was still living there when they spied him working in his garden. He asked them about the happenings in the village. “How goes it with the old presbytère?” They told him that the mayor had sold it. It made him sick at heart to hear it.

When he still lived in the village, he had inherited his family’s money. Using this money, he built a parish hall for festivities and works of theater to be presented. At some point its ownership passed to the village, and recently the mayor renovated it, and renamed it Louis Davault Hall. Thus was he immortalized.

The Day of Liberation

I remember the day of the liberation. There were trucks and American tanks passing through the village. A young girl from the village climbed up to the church steeple to hang the French flag. My great aunt Ida was very angry with her and said, “The Germans are going to pass by here, see the flag and destroy the whole village.” You see, the Germans were not too happy about losing the war. Indeed, a friend from my class had a brother who was playing on a street in the village when the Germans came through on the day of the liberation. They killed him and all the other boys that were playing together on the street that day. The Germans were angry at having lost the war; they were taking their revenge. It was terrible, but war is war. “À la guerre comme à la guerre.”

Prisoners of War

I remember the German prisoners of war. There were two of them who lived with us, ate with us, and worked with us there on the farm. Papa had two motorcycles and those prisoners would go out and about on them while the two village police officers only had bicycles! [Jeanne-Marie has a hearty laugh at the memory]

I still remember the game we used to play with the workers: butter, brot, papier (butter, bread, paper). They would make on your hand like they were making a sandwich, with the butter and the bread, and in the end fold the paper around it, at which point they would grab your hand and twist it all around. I still remember those German words: butter, brot, papier.

The Stars

N.B. In French the Big and Little Dipper are often called the Big and Little Chariot. The French word for cart is chariot.

The German workers who stayed with us did learn to speak French. I remember my great aunt, pointing out the stars to me one night. “There is the Grand Chariot, and there is the Petit Chariot.” When I couldn’t see the Petit Chariot, one of the German farm workers there with us pointed at the farm cart nearby and said, “The Petit Chariot is over there!” They understood enough French to make jokes like that.

After the war, they returned home, but one of them did stay in touch with us. After his retirement, he drove his truck to visit us on the farm on his way to Morocco for vacation. Over the years, he would send us photos, his marriage announcement and the like. We did go visit him at his house in Germany at one point around 1963.

The Bombing of the Bridge

The Netherlands and Belgium were neutral, and thus France had done nothing to protect itself along that border. They did however, build very strong fortifications along the border between France and Germany known as the Maginot Line. The law is the law, but Hitler didn’t obey it. He went around the Maginot Line and through the Netherlands in one day, and through Belgium the next. He did not even declare war on them, he simply walked through their undefended countryside. What could they do? There were lots of escaping Belgians who arrived in the village. We were not far from Belgium after all.

I had an aunt and uncle who were married on the same day as my parents. They had just had a set of twins six weeks before, which made five children for them. My mother only had three. I was the third. Because Papa was off fighting the war at Dunkirk, my uncle took the children in the car and made for safety in Normandy where my mother’s sister lived. We had just arrived at a bridge when the car ran out of gas – actually on the bridge. My mother went to look for milk for the eight children, and my uncle went to look for gas for the car, which left us 8 kids alone in the car on the bridge. When my mother and uncle returned with milk and gasoline, German planes were busy bombing the bridge. I was only one year old and I don’t remember, but my brother Maurice, who was four at the time, remembers that the children were laughing and clapping at the wonderful fireworks display. I do not know if the bridge was destroyed or not, but we did manage to escape in the car.

The Doubletree Incident

N.B. At the time of the incident related below the doubletree had been removed and was hanging from the back of the wagon as was usual in that part of the country in those days.

There was a second time when I could have died because of the Second World War. It was just after the war and the American military base at Laon needed provisions, so Papa had grown a crop of leeks. He never had grown leeks as a cash crop before, but only for the house. There was a scale in the village, and the wagon would be weighed with a full load, and then weighed again after the crop was unloaded to determine its weight. With the horses no longer hitched, the doubletree made a sort of swing for us kids. Each kid had his own with which to swing. The doubletree was plenty heavy as it was made out of wood with chains that hung down behind. As I was standing there swinging, with the leeks all piled up above me, the doubletree suddenly fell and smacked me full on the nose. Fortunately I had an aunt who lived just next door who came to my aid. After, there was a mountain of napkins soaked in blood. I lost a lot of blood and my nose was broken. That was 1947 when I was eight years old.

Wartime Village Life

After we left for Normandy, my grandpa, who was mayor for 45 years, remained living in the village with my grandma and great aunt, but he thought maybe they should leave as well. He hitched up a horse and headed out in the cart with my grandma and great aunt for the neighboring village. Someone stopped them along the route and said the next village was completely occupied by the Germans, that there would be nothing but trouble for them there. He had only gone about halfway before turning around and going back to the house, which at this point was full of refugees, all sorts of people, Belgian refugees with their red blankets, maybe from the Red Cross, I don’t know. The house was open, that’s how things were then. My grandpa stayed there and busied himself helping those who needed it, feeding them and taking care of them.

It is hard for me to imagine, sitting here on this pleasant afternoon, so far away in time and space, that you actually lived these incredible stories.

Oh we children didn’t worry ourselves too much in those days. There was always something interesting happening. At one point there were numerous airplanes landing on the field. Everyone would run out to meet them. There was a man from the village who had lost a leg in the First World War and had a wooden leg. He couldn’t run as fast as the others. My brother Hubert ran with him, and the two of them were the last to arrive.

There were camps in the fields too, mostly of English soldiers, I think. We took them eggs from the farm and they gave us chocolate. When I broke my nose I didn’t go to school the next morning. Some Americans came to the farm house to get leeks, and in exchange one of them gave me chewing gum. It was the first time I’d ever had chewing gum. And from an American! They appreciated those eggs!

There was a refugee in the village, of maybe 14 or 15 years, always very well dressed, who would come to the farm to buy butter. Mama would say, “Oh it’s Monsieur Excusez Moi coming. He would arrive and say, “Excusez-moi de vous déranger,” excuse me for bothering you. Monsieur Excusez-Moi! [big laugh].

Dunkirk

At the beginning of the war, Papa was in the army at Dunkirk. When the English were evacuated, the French were taken as prisoners. The Germans didn’t have very much to eat and they released some prisoners. My grandfather had gone there to put in a word for my father, who had three children at the time. Farms were needed to grow food for everyone, and you needed people for a farm to function. The Germans of course had need of food themselves, and they let my father and grandfather return home to work the farm; once more a stroke of luck.

The Official Papers

There is another story about how Charles De Gaulle had prepared the country for the end of the war and the fall of the government. From London, he had designated who would become prefect in each prefecture, or department (there were 90 or so departments) in the case of an allied victory. The prefect would represent the government for the department. He could (and still can) say if the mayor was good or bad; if he considered him bad, he could choose another.

De Gaulle appointed Michel Cabouat as prefect for the prefecture of Pas-de- Calais, and had sent the official papers, to be hidden, so that no one would know. Papa sold butter to a certain man every Saturday and one day when he went to his house Mr. Cabouat was there with his papers. Papa took him on as a farm worker in order to hide his identity. The room where Mr. Cabouat stayed was called la chambre de Monsieur Michel. No one was allowed in the chambre de Monsieur Michel. Mama told me later, much later, that she had gone into his room to make the bed and had found the official papers and read them. She told no one what she had seen; it was not meant for her eyes. Papa ended up digging a hole in the dirt floor of the barn and burying the papers so that no one would find them.

Mama’s work was to make the butter. She would put it in the molds, while Mr. Cabouat as farm worker, was given the task of wrapping the butter in butter paper, like Amish butter. So there she was, my mother, giving the future prefect of the department orders, about which she was very uncomfortable. No one knew; she played her role.

When the government did fall, the people didn’t think they had a prefect and were saying, “What shall we do? What shall we do?” But along came Mr. Cabouat announcing that it was he who was prefect, and he had the papers to prove it. Everything was in place because of the papers that were hidden on our farm. No one had seen them except mama, because she was curious, which she didn’t confess for years and years.

Papa’s Beef and Butter Troubles

There was a certain man who had worked on the farm with Mr. Cabouat before anyone knew that he was to become prefect. Later, when he wanted a good teaching appointment in the village, he asked Papa to ask Mr. Cabouat, now prefect, to secure such a post for him. Papa said, “I will do no such thing!” Because of his refusal to help secure a good teaching post, the aspiring teacher caused Papa no end of troubles. He was very angry with him and accused him of all manner of things, including selling on the black market. It’s true, he would sometimes butcher a cow and sell cuts of beef around the village, which was not legal. Papa was judged guilty and punished by a fine of some millions of francs. He never did have a bank account or they would have taken all of his money to pay the fine, instead for years and years he used nothing but cash.

The sale of butter was regulated for quite some time after the war. It was all part of the rationing that was put in place during the war. I remember going with my great aunt to pick up her weekly ration of butter, and she was given no more than a sliver! After the war though, there was plenty of butter, and no need to ration it. Despite the law, Papa would take a horse and cart loaded with butter and go to the weekly market in Arras calling out, “Who wants butter!” Because of the accusations of Mr. Cabouat, he was thrown in jail again, this time for selling butter. Finally, the law changed, and he was released from jail. When he arrived in the village everyone was there to greet him, children stood in the schoolyard with flowers; they had picked so many flowers! Someone had made a large sign that read:

Liberation of M. D’Hollander!
Liberation of the butter market!

Papa continued to have problems for years, until finally, decades later, his accuser wrote him a letter admitting that he had lied in order to get revenge for not securing him a teaching post. I have a copy of that letter.

Papa died in 1994. He was 84 years old.