Sunday, May 08, 2005

On VE day, a war-time memory

A story of the Second World War from 1983! My family and I had our first holiday in France in August 1983, Patsy and I and our five children, Catherine, Helen, Mark, Anna and Ben [then aged four]. We’d never been abroad, never towed a caravan, never camped … quite an adventure, and we allowed two days to get from Didsbury to Dover, calling in to Birmingham to say goodbye to my parents. It was as though we would never return! As we left them, my mum gave me two missals that she had since 1944. Her brother in law, Jack Snell, a sergeant in the South Wales Borderers, had liberated these missals from a French farmyard, brought them home when all but fatally wounded in France, and given them to Muth as she was Catholic, and he thought they might be of use to her. Muth always did feel guilty about having them; she knew they should be with their real owners, that Jack had recognised their attractiveness, but that they should not be with her. [For those who don’t know, missals are the books of readings and prayers that Catholics use at Mass. In this case the missals were printed in both Latin and French, were leather bound with gilt page edgings, and were mementos of the First Communions of Roger Luet of Torteval and of Denise Lebarbet.] 

As a child, I remember being intrigued by these missals, regularly taking them down from the bookshelves and wondering what had become of Roger and Denise. And now the missals were on the back shelf of our Peugeot 504 on route to their French homeland! What a month! Parthenay with the girls’ pen friends, fishing in the Loire near the Chateau of L, La Rochelle and the Atlantic coast, a great holiday which came to an end with the missals still on the back shelf of the car! It was time to set off for Calais, our last day in France, and we were due at the ferry at midnight. The Office de Tourism in La Rochelle was very helpful. Torteval did not appear on their maps either, they had no hotels registered there, so the assistant looked up the telephone directories and was able to tell us that the village of Torteval Quesnay was in Normandy and had eight telephones, hardly a thriving Norman centre. We still had no map reference and Normandy is big! We drove for several hours and knew we were just a few kilometres from Bayeux. Ben was getting fractious so we stopped for lunch in a remote lay-bye. Ben and I walked the fifty meters to a field gate where we were to kick a football around while Patsy prepared lunch in the caravan. At the gate was a telegraph pole with a notice nailed to it ….. Torteval! Quelle chance! 

After lunch we left the caravan in the lay-bye and drove up the narrow road to the church that could be seen on the brow of the hill. Torteval had Mass only once a year on 15th August. It was like the village deserted. We knocked o the door of the house next to the church. It was answered by an old and frail woman who seemed reluctant to answer questions when I began our conversation with the words “pendant la guerre.” Maybe she was often interrupted by old soldiers and those revisiting their wartime haunts. Armed with instructions to the farm of Roger Luet, we drove about four miles, and up a long and straight farm track with the farmhouse in the distance. In the farmyard were teenage children playing. They stopped at the sight of a British registered car approaching. A large blue overalled woman came out into the sunshine. Our children got out of the car, all very excited, and immediately got back in and locked the doors as dogs standing four feet high emerged as well. This left me standing on my own holding the missals behind my back. The farmer emerged and looked quizzically at me. “Etes-vous Roger Luet, monsieur? “ I asked. He replied “Oui monsieur, mais pourquoi ? “ I produced the missal from behind my back. He cried, I cried, and then instead of taking it he ran into the stables at the side saying “un moment, un moment”, and returned within seconds with a white leather presentation case. He took the missal from me, put it in the case, snapped the clasps shut and said “C’est complet.” We went into the farmhouse and sat around the large kitchen table to exchange details of the story ….. how after the D-day landings the Germans fell back from the coast and established a defensive line that passed through the Luet family farm ….. how the family, together with hundreds of locals had deserted their homes for life in the woods for about six weeks before returning home to find it in ruins …… how Roger had kept the presentation case for 39 years despite the comments of his wife who wanted to throw it away when they moved farms ….. how he had always said, “One day! You never know!” …… how his father had died some six months earlier, and how he would visit his mother with his first communion present later that day. 

We returned home, delighted to have put right a little wrong, but now I feel that a little of our family history has been lost, those missals that were part of my home for 39 years. We never heard from the Luet family again; we just drink to their health each time we open up the bottle of Calvados that they gave us way back in 83! This story is dedicated to Jack Snell and his comrades, some of whom gave their lives for freedom and democracy some sixty years ago. May they rest in peace!

1 comment:

Dalva M. Ferreira said...

Amen!
I enjoyed your history very much, it was clear and sensitive. You are a great writer! Let's see the next, for I am sure you have many good histories to tell. Your life has been rich, and you paid attention to the really important things in the way. Congratulations, Paul (the thinker)