Sober, dignified and disregarded, the monument stood alone at the end of the
lane. You had to strain to decipher the inscription beneath its stark cross
of Lorraine.
“Passant, souviens-toi,” it read (“Passer-by, remember”), above the names of
seven men “who died in combat on this spot for the liberation and greatness
of France, brutally slain by Nazi soldiers on 6 August 1944”.
Nearby were smaller monuments to two teenage boys and to Honoré Enjalbert, a
44-year-old miller “fusillé par les Allemands”. Butterflies wheeled through
the air, birds and cicadas sang in the woods, lizards scuttled through the
dry grass, now and then a car sped past; yet here the silence seemed to hang
still. What desperate events had unfolded in this lovely spot?
It was August 1989. I was a freelance editor and translator of books on art
history; my husband, Gavin, was an actor. We hadn’t planned to fall in love
with a derelict water mill in the Aveyron, a remote corner of la France
profonde, but the Moulin de Parrot (half a mile from Enjalbert’s mill, near
the small town of Réquista), combined our twin passions: ruins and rural
France.
As we rounded the bend in the rutted lane, there it stood in the hot sunshine,
encircled by wild-flower meadows and a meandering trout stream, its medieval
walls rising from the river bed and topped by a huge stone roof supported
(just) by beams hewn from mighty oak trees by some Aveyronnais Obélix.
As any imbécile could see, the mill was a hopeless case, with no running water
or sanitation and no electricity. The first floor was largely open to the
elements, the building was filled with the detritus of decades. At a little
more than £20,000, it was way beyond our budget. Who cared? By Christmas, we
had moved in.
It was to prove more than merely a renovation challenge. It was also to lead
to one of my most fascinating projects: translating the memoirs of a French
heroine of the second world war, Agnès Humbert, and getting them published
in English for the first time, more than 60 years after they were written.
I had no inkling of that, of course, that icebound winter. Bundled up in
jumpers and fingerless gloves, I translated elegant tomes on the classical
gardens of Versailles and Vaux-le-Vicomte while Gavin hacked his way
steadily through the frozen wilderness around us to reveal a millpond, a
bread oven, sluices and streams, weirs and waterfalls. When darkness fell,
we worked on by the light of oil lamps and candles. We reeked perpetually of
wood smoke and prompted much mirth among the locals. It was all very
different from life in southeast London.
As work progressed, little knots of people would appear in the lane, offering
gifts and advice, gazing in bemusement and shaking their heads over their
coffee or pastis in kindly disbelief. As our social circle grew, so did the
opportunity to quiz people about local memories of the mill and the story
behind the monument.
In the summer of 1944, following the Normandy landings, the resistance
fighters who had taken to the hills and woods of the Aveyron waged an
intense campaign, armed by allied parachute drops, against the German
occupying forces.
We heard tales of maquisards (guerrilla bands) fleeing through the woods and
down the river to seek refuge after the ambush of August 6, hopelessly
outgunned by a 25-vehicle German armoured column on a mission to search out
“terrorists”, of clandestine meetings in Enjalbert’s mill and of the
Germans’ fateful discovery of an allied parachute there.
We heard stories of bungling (“The lookout fell asleep”) and betrayal (“It was
Monsieur X from La Selve”). Over coffee in her kitchen, beside the barn
where Gilbert Dalmayrac, the mayor, milks his ewes for the local roquefort
cheese, his mother, Madame Dalmayrac, told of emerging from church that
Sunday to see smoke rising from barns and hayricks along the Rodez road,
torched by the Germans in reprisal; and of poor Madame Y, injured when the
Germans opened fire on parishioners coming out of church in nearby La Selve
(“The bullet went in through one cheek and out through the other”).
Now a sprightly 91, Madame Dalmayrac recalled the ambush itself in startling
detail. She had gone out early to kill a rabbit when the first shots rang
out. So deafening was it, her knife — which she had put down while she
caught the rabbit — shook where it lay.
In prompting these memories, I was aware that I was trespassing on delicate
and sometimes disputed ground. My infatuation with this region of France had
taken root years before, when, as a student, I spent a year in Toulouse.
In the blistering summer of 1976, I had heard tales of silver-haired
resistance veterans arguing about what really happened and knocking each
other off their bar stools.
I had been spellbound when I read Le Silence de la mer by Vercors (the nom de
guerre of Jean Bruller, who first published his novella clandestinely in
Paris in 1942).
I had grown up with the few tantalising details my mother would divulge of her
experiences of France in 1946.
Newly qualified as a teacher of French, she spent a year in St Marcellin, near
Grenoble and the Vercors plateau, a resistance stronghold. Only after her
death did I discover among her things, along with her French ration card, a
small tricolour resistance badge.
Ten years on from that August day in 1989, the mill was at last a
self-respecting family home. We had bedrooms (six), bathrooms (two),
balconies and barbecues; we had terraces of roses, wisteria and jasmine
tumbling down to the river; we had a swimming pool in one of the meadows;
and we had good friends. Our two children had been embraced by village life
and glided off down the lane to school each morning in a succession of
restored Citroëns.
Clearly, it couldn’t last. Sure enough, the vagaries of life swept us back to
Britain. Obviously, we would have to sell the mill. It was the only sensible
thing to do. Except that we couldn’t do it — it would have been like cutting
off a limb. We decided to let it to sympathetic souls, and it was for these
summer visitors that I sat down to pull together a history of the place.
Online, I tracked down a yellowing tome entitled Mémorial du Rouergue en
Résistance; astonishingly, it proved to contain a photograph of the
ceremonial unveiling of “our” monument, on August 6, 1945, along with an
account of the misdirected heroism of that morning’s ambush. The story
corroborated exactly the vivid memories of Madame Dalmayrac. With this
discovery, a passion became a full-blown obsession. What other treasures
might I find?
As addiction to French eBay took hold, so a steady stream of padded envelopes
disgorged documents, memorabilia and books onto our kitchen table. Then, one
day in 2006, I stumbled on a listing that intrigued me: a memoir of the war
years that, unlike most others, had been written by a woman. What was more,
Notre Guerre was published as early as 1946. Who was its author, Agnès
Humbert?
In due course, a cream-coloured copy of her memoir, darkened by age, slid onto
the kitchen table. Its post-war blotting-paper pages exhaled the atmosphere
of wartime Paris; and, as I started to read (there was no preamble; it cut
straight to the action), I could feel the hairs stand up on the back of my
neck. Amid a sea of untold stories, here was one that should be told.
A respected art historian (I sensed a connection already) at the Musée de
l’Homme, in Paris, Humbert took a leap of blind faith and reckless courage
in the summer of 1940. Facing the ignominy of occupation by the Germans, she
rebelled. (“I feel I will go mad, literally, if I don’t do something.”) With
a handful of museum colleagues, she formed one of the country’s first organised
resistance groups — an unlikely collection of academics and intellectuals
who surprised themselves with their daring, ingenuity and resourcefulness.
Little could they have known that their little group would become the nucleus
of an organisation that would spread throughout France; that information
they passed to the allies would prove crucial to “the greatest raid of all”,
on the German U-boat base at St Nazaire in 1942.
Ultimately, the Musée de l’Homme network was to earn a tragic place in
history. After infiltration and a year of interrogations, the men were shot
by firing squad and the women deported to Germany; Humbert, who was among
them, survived and lived until 1963.
These are the events she describes with immediacy and razor-sharp
intelligence, refusing even in extremis to surrender her compassion,
humanity and wry humour. How had Humbert and her journal remained virtually
unknown outside a select circle of historians of the period? Why had Notre
Guerre never been translated into English? Then and there, as I read those
first pages of the 1946 edition, I resolved that I would translate it.
As if by design, the history of the mill and its monument to seven unsung
heroes had led me to Humbert and her comrades.
We may never know the full story of Enjalbert and his fellow maquisards, of
the young lads who died and those who fled downstream through the woods,
where one of them is supposed to have hidden by squeezing into the space
above one of our mill’s great roof beams. But we can remember and honour the
sacrifice of these brave men and women, whether farm hands in the Aveyron or
distinguished scholars in Paris. In Humbert’s words: “In the end, national
frontiers exist only as lines on maps. There are just people: those who
fight for civilisation, and those who fight against it.” Passant,
souviens-toi.
www.moulindeparrot.co.uk
Resistance: Memoirs of Occupied France is published by Bloomsbury at
£14.99. To buy it at The Sunday Times BooksFirst price of £13.49 (inc p&p),
call 0870 165 8585 or visit timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst
French Fancies
The Aveyron offers rustic retreats to suit most tastes and budgets
Najac £3m The 19th-century Château du Pic has seven bedrooms and
three reception rooms, including a large drawing room with a marble
fireplace and original stained-glass windows. Its 40,000 square metres of
land include a hilltop swimming pool and outbuildings to be converted.
The chateau is an hour’s drive from Rodez airport.
Savills; 020 7016 3740, www.savills.co.uk/abroad
Albi £340,000 Set in 40,000 square metres of land and bordered by
a stream, this 18th-century mill house in the Aveyron has been recently
restored. The four-bedroom property also has a vast living room, a family
bathroom and a mezzanine. A self-contained apartment has 110 square metres
of living space and four bedrooms.
Latitudes; 020 8951 5155, www.latitudes.co.uk
(click
here to view details)
Nuces £162,000 Dating from 1800, this two-bed cottage retains lots
of original charm – fireplace and flagstones in the living room – but has
been modernised. Features include an 80-square-metre living space with
underfloor heating, a covered dining terrace and a 720-square-metre garden.
The property is 10 minutes’ drive from Rodez airport. Latitudes; 020
8951 5155, www.latitudes.co.uk
