(Or, if the large kitchen table could tell what it had seen and heard…)
Hans, with your large glasses and your old bicycle,
you arrived at our home in 1941, together with the Prussian colonel whose orderly you were. You were barely eighteen. To us, you represented the hated occupier. War had reached even our kitchens!
Do you remember our cantankerous cook’s complaints when you borrowed her pans to prepare meals for your Prussian colonel and returned them with their bottoms all blackened?
When food had burned onto the bottom, she would become very angry; sometimes she even went to complain to your Prussian colonel, who laughed about it, as we did too.
In 1942 Willy arrived, ‘the schoolteacher’, which was what he had been between the wars, for he had already fought in the war of 1914–1918. He served as secretary to your Prussian colonel. He often helped us fill in all the forms sent by your country’s bureaucrats to find out how many cows, pigs and hens we had. Cautiously, he advised us to declare far fewer than we actually owned.
Willy was married and had two children. Once, this allowed him to obtain ‘exceptional’ leave to visit his family. To thank him for his help as an intermediary, we gave him a large loaf of bread on the eve of his departure—white bread, like the good bread of our Norman countryside! Do you remember how happy he was? When he returned, he showed us photographs of his family.
Hans, with your large glasses and your old bicycle,
as the months and years passed, you and Willy were no longer complete strangers: you shared your rare joys and your many family bereavements with us—and there were many at that time. In turn, you shared in our family life, its good and bad moments, and our bereavements too. When our grandmother, an irascible Alsatian woman, died, your Prussian colonel very courteously went away for a week, taking you and Willy with him, out of consideration, so that all our relatives who had come for the funeral could stay in the house. Even the captain left—the one who often asked my grandmother, ‘What news is the BBC in London giving?’ He knew perfectly well that she listened to British radio, which was strictly forbidden, but he never reported her. Perhaps he did not believe the news broadcast by Berlin radio!
Hans, with your large glasses and your old bicycle, you had a certain admiration for the cantankerous cook ever since she had confronted the major, probably a Nazi. He had come, as he did every week, for a surprise inspection: all your comrades had rushed out to line up in the courtyard. One unlucky man had slammed the greenhouse door too hard and a pane of glass had shattered. The major punished him with extra duties and demanded that he pay for the repair, which was expensive at the time.
The following week, the major returned for his inspection. He checked that the pane had been replaced and summoned all your comrades. Once again, everyone ran, full of anxiety, because it was during these roll calls that the major selected those who would be sent to the Russian front—from which one did not return. Once again, the same unlucky man from the previous week slammed the glazed door too hard, and once again the pane shattered. The major became furiously angry, shouted a great deal and ordered a punishment: four soldiers were to seize the unfortunate ‘repeat offender’, each taking an arm or a leg, and throw him into an enormous heap of barbed wire, then throw him back in whenever he emerged, bleeding, his uniform in shreds. The cantankerous cook, outraged by such savagery, came out of her kitchen, pale with anger, and planted herself in front of the major, both fists on her hips. In a shrill voice, she shouted that this soldier was a human being and must be respected as such. The dumbfounded major, unable to get a word in, finally gave way, probably to silence this ‘shrew’, and stopped the punishment. Had a French man done that, the major would almost certainly have had him imprisoned; faced with a woman, he did not dare. Hence the admiration you and your comrades felt for this cook: cantankerous perhaps, but certainly courageous.
Hans, with your large glasses and your old bicycle,
you had never been a good cook. So when Field Marshal Rommel announced that he would be visiting the beaches and intended to have lunch at the house, our cantankerous cook spontaneously helped you prepare the meal, because we knew how worried you were.
During the harsh winter of 1943–1944, things began to go wrong. An early sign was that you, the ‘victorious’ German soldiers, began to run short of food. Do you remember the day when your army’s supply service allocated only a small bag of sugar for you and your Prussian colonel? We had flour, milk and eggs, but no sugar. It was the cantankerous cook who decided to make pancakes. I do not know who brought beer, or where the cider came from, but remember: that evening, exceptionally, no one went to bed hungry.
Hans, with your large glasses and your old bicycle,
you were with us in the kitchen at about four in the morning on 6 June 1944, when the sound of gunfire and bombing aircraft made us all sense that momentous events were about to unfold.
Do you remember the look in Willy’s eyes as he crossed the kitchen? He looked steadily at the cantankerous cook. As if through a premonition, she understood that he was saying goodbye. And he left, bravely, without a word, alone in the night, his rifle slung over his shoulder, to take up his guard post just a hundred metres from the house, at the corner of the field beside the church. He was killed there by a bullet between the eyes: the American GI’s repeating carbine had fired faster than his German Mauser rifle. When his body was found the next day, he was still at his post, his hands still gripping his outdated rifle. His bayonet could be seen fixed to its muzzle, as he must have done in the trenches during the war of 1914–1918, a sign that he had been determined to fight to his last breath—for his country, not for the ‘National Socialist Party’. Much later, the cantankerous cook admitted to us that, although Willy was the ‘Boche’ she hated as such, she had nevertheless said a little prayer there before his dead body, asking God to receive his soul.
Do you remember your Prussian colonel?
He remained an aristocrat to the end! As he too prepared to return to his post and crossed the kitchen, the cantankerous cook, who had so often helped you clean his uniforms and therefore knew them well, asked reproachfully why he had chosen his finest uniform and his Iron Cross when he was going into battle. He replied, ‘You have to look your best to die!’ Then he left through the little wood behind our home to return to his office at the Kommandantur. He died there, burned alive. Nothing was found of his body.
We went to shelter in the trench you had advised us to dig in the vegetable garden, and you in turn went to your post, in the observation platform that had been built at the top of the tallest tree in the grounds, close to the house.
Hans, with your large glasses,
shortly before six in the morning on 6 June 1944, you saw it all from up there: the countless ships of the armada coming over the horizon towards Omaha, the ‘bloody’ beach; American soldiers landing and being cut down by machine-gun fire; bunker guns firing at ships that caught fire, while their own guns continued to fire at the bunkers. You saw all of it. You tried to warn your superiors using the telephone installed at the top of the tree for that purpose, but it did not work: the French Resistance had cut the wires.
And you felt powerless, you whose large glasses prevented you from using a rifle. So you lay flat on the platform, motionless, to avoid being spotted, because the Americans feared snipers concealed in treetops. You heard bullets whistle and shells explode against the house. You saw the corner tower of the house collapse, and the church tower and church destroyed by shells from the American navy, because German artillery observers were hidden there. You hoped that a counterattack by your own side would free you. But there was no counterattack. Under those circumstances, climbing down would have been suicidal. The next day, 7 June, still from the top of your tree, you watched two American assaults on the little wood behind my home, defended by seven of your comrades. They successfully repelled the first assault, but all died during the second.
During the night of 7–8 June, you decided to climb down from your tree, without hope, alone, hungry and thirsty, for you had neither eaten nor drunk for two days. It was the cantankerous cook who heard you enter the kitchen; the Americans had not yet occupied the house. She gave you the only piece of bread we had left—dry bread!—and at last you drank. In the darkness, speaking quietly, you made her understand that you wanted to leave. She offered you civilian clothes, but you refused them, saying, ‘If I must die, I want it to be in my uniform.’ You were proud of your uniform, and rightly so. And you left, with your large glasses, on your old bicycle, through the little wood behind my home. But why did that damned old bicycle have to squeak so loudly? We had never noticed that noise! We could hear it for a long time… We did not rate your chances of survival highly—and neither did you!
With you, the last German soldier to stay in our home as an uninvited ‘occupier’ departed. A few months later, other German soldiers returned, but as prisoners of war. We put them to work repairing the buildings and fences of our devastated farm.
Hans, with your large glasses and still on your old bicycle,
as you passed through the ruins of Trévières, the small town seven kilometres from our home, on the morning of 8 June, the Feldgendarmerie stopped you, believing you to be a deserter. You explained in vain that your large glasses prevented you from using a weapon: they wanted to shoot you. A Frenchman saved your life by recognising you and confirming that you really were the Prussian colonel’s orderly. They finally released you, and you were able to continue.
Soon afterwards, you came across a column of German soldiers returning to the front on foot, in a long line along the roadside. A French girl, seven or eight years old, stood in a little garden beside the road. One of the soldiers stopped, took a slice of grey bread from his pocket and gave it to her, saying, ‘Here, little one, take it. In a little while, I won’t need it any more anyway,’ because he knew he was going to be slaughtered. The soldiers following him did the same, so that by the time the last soldier had passed, the girl’s apron was full of bread.
Hans, with your large glasses and your old bicycle on your shoulder,
you managed to cross Saint-Lô, in ruins, crushed by bombs from American aircraft. A few kilometres further on, you stopped at a farm to try to find food and drink. A sign was nailed to a post at its entrance, bearing the words ‘Cholera’ and ‘No entry’ in large letters, with a skull and crossbones drawn on it. But you had ignored it. The farmer’s wife was still there. She gave you the only thing she had in abundance: milk from her cows. You asked why that sign was at the entrance. She explained that, two days earlier, the German sergeant whose men had occupied the farm for a long time had told her that they had been ordered to leave and would be replaced by the SS. ‘Do you know the SS?’ he had asked. When she said no, he added, ‘Well, you’re going to get to know them! But I can do something to help you: when they arrive, tell them to look at the sign at the farm entrance, if they haven’t already seen it.’ And indeed, for two days there had been SS men nearby, but none at the farm. Those who entered by another way went to look at the sign and did not return!
A few days later, you met a school friend from your village. He offered you a ride on his tank. Clinging to the back of the turret, your feet burning from the engine’s heat, but still holding on to your old bicycle, you saw the American aircraft coming to strafe the column of trucks and tanks. You shouted a warning to your friend, who quickly shut himself inside the tank: he burned to death there. You survived only because you managed to jump to the ground in time and slip beneath the apple trees with your old bicycle. In this way, you escaped the Falaise pocket and the vengeance-hungry Polish soldiers who closed it. They too took no prisoners in the ‘corridor of death’. Afterwards, on the road to Paris, you could ride by day: what aircraft would waste even a single burst of gunfire on one soldier on an old bicycle? At night, however, you dreaded a French peasant coming with his great scythe to cut your hamstrings as you slept—a way of fearing an act by the French Resistance.
You crossed Paris before the uprising. Continuing on your way, you managed to reach your own country before winter. There you were assigned as orderly to another colonel.
By 8 May 1945, you had been without officers to command you for several weeks. You no longer had your old bicycle, but you had kept your large glasses safe. So you found civilian clothes and returned home, on foot this time, to Altona, near Hamburg.
But there was no ‘home’ left—only a heap of ruins in a field of ruins. You were your family’s only survivor: your mother and sisters lay beneath those ruins, burned alive by British phosphorus bombs. Your brothers, all in the SS, had been killed on the Russian front. Your father, who had already fought in the war of 1914–1918 and had been called up again in 1939 as a stretcher-bearer on the French front, had never returned; no one even knew where he had died.
Hans, with your large glasses, but in a fine car, you came back to tell me your story ten years later.
You had promised to visit me again, once you were married and had children, you had specified.
But you never returned. Perhaps because, on that day, my father had unceremoniously shown you the door, saying that he had seen and put up with enough of you and your people during those five years of war and occupation; through you, too much bereavement and misery had come upon us.
I have always regretted it.
For on that day, Hans, with your large glasses, you became my friend.
J.-P. Hausermann — Vierville-sur-Mer, September 1990
Source: the Word document “Hans.doc”, preserved in the Yves Cordelle collection.