France, Part 20 - Cloak and Dagger (The Stories of Arnaud de Roquefeuil vs Nazi Germany)

Arnaud de Roquefeuil was an incredible man.  Sitting here, thinking of the story I am about to tell, it is a wonder that such a man could have lived and that his prodigy told me the stories of his adventures.   I warn my readers that this is a long post and some of what I am going to tell is very hard but it is all true. War is not simple, it is not clean, it is violent and cruel and it changes men into beasts.  Despite that, there are those men who cling to their humanity, who fight for the basic decency of other men.  Arnaud de Roquefeuil was one of these men.

It was my mother who asked about something we’d been told by our guides regarding a book written and illustrated by Reggi’s father.  When we asked the count about it the man’s geniality did not change, but I saw him stand up a little straighter and more proudly.    “Yes, it is this way.”  He said, leading us back to the main hall.

Arnaud's book.  There are only 1000 copies around.  

A small book sat on an old table, its pages opened to illustrations in a comic-book style.  Reggi smiled and gestured to it.  “This is the part of the journals of my father as he related his experiences before, during, and after World War II when he fought with the French Resistance.  It is one of the only French accounts of the war in this way from the experiences of one who truly experienced it.”  He smiled at it proudly, but acted like this was any ordinary thing. 

To describe this book as just that falls short of the real thing.  It is a comic, all without words, hand drawn by Reggi's father.  The best way I could describe the thing is to liken his style to that of Herge and Tintin, but not quite the same.  It's a remarkable work, to say the least, and there is no other document like it about real events during the war.

What follows is a paraphrasing of some of the stories he told of the courage of the French Resistance against the depravities of the Nazis.

“Here he is making fun of the Germans,” Reggi said pointing to the hats worn by the Germans.  They had that sweeping curve one sees in the hats worn by Nazi officers, but were so large and accentuated as to look absolutely ridiculous.  He flipped back a few pages to a certain point.  “My father hated the Germans, could not stand them, even before the war."

Upon one of the first dinners with the woman who was to be his wife, his father went to a fine restaurant in Paris during summer.  The weather was hot but his father dressed in his best tuxedo.  Well, at another table were a group of Germans in lederhosen and behaving in such "atrocious ways."  Reggi’s father complained to the waiter to see how they were dressed and acting.  The waiter made excuses about the hot weather, not wanting to cause a disturbance.  

Dad wasn’t going to stand for it.  He made some remark to the effect of, “Well if they do not have to dress nor shall I.” He then proceeded to drop trousers and moon them right in front of his new blushing bride.  “My mother, she must have wondered what she got into.”  Reggi said.  “But they were wearing the Iron cross and swastika in Paris, even in 1931 … 1931.”

The Message Bicycle Lamp, The Camp Cup, and the Stone.  Each has an integral part to the story.

He flipped a few pages where there was an illustration of a man being stopped on a bicycle by two Germans in the full Nazi uniform.   “During the occupation, my father ran messages hidden in the headlamp of his bicycle.”  Reggi said.  “Upon one outing he was stopped and arrested, and the Germans confiscated his bike not knowing he had plans hidden.  So he asked the Germans if he could keep the lamp as a memento since the bike was a gift from his fiance.  The Germans agreed and so did he spirit away a piece of paper that would have landed him in a concentration camp.   I still have the lamp, would you like to see it?"

I remembered the bicycle lamp on the table, sitting next to the rock and the cup.  I hope you remember it from my previous post as well.

Our host with the three artifacts of his father.

He went into the other room and came out with the very same plate with the rock, the cup and the lamp on it.  He lifted the light up and smiled.  “This is it,”  he said.  The old, innocuous and slightly rusted object lay in his palm, nothing special on the outside, but now the context was quite clear.     Next, Reggi turned to a page and I could clearly see the outline of the house against a sky, and in that sky were dozens and dozens of planes.

D-Day As illustrated by Arnaud

“D-Day,”  Reggi said simply.  “My father’s view of the planes as they flew in over the coast.”   The planes had just finished dropping their bombs on the Atlantic wall, and one such bomb had landed near the house and left a deep crater that still exists there to this day. 

Next, Reggi flipped through a few pages, and I could clearly see that these illustrations were very grim and graphic – of men in striped uniforms behind barbed wire.  I will not parse the story as I have above except to say that his father was eventually caught and captured.  He was arrested in the very room in which we stood, and his home was occupied by Nazi soldiers for a time afterwards.   I cannot imagine how terrified he had been. 

Reggi took up the cup next, and explained that his father was held in a camp in France for a time with no food and hundreds of other men.  Conditions were deplorable, and they were only allowed dirty water once a day to drink from this very cup.  Men were tortured here, disease and death were rampant, and … he pointed out, what food they did have was impressed upon them to be human flesh.

Throughout this time, our host had remained studious and gracious, but now as he took up the stone – the very stone I had held for a moment, I could see his eyes mist over.  “I cannot hold this stone or tell of it without being filled with emotion,”  he said.  

In the end, the men were rounded up to be put on trains bound for the death camps.  Reggi’s father knew of the camps, knew what went on there, and knew what would happen to him when he arrived.  That day, his father faced what he knew was certain doom.   As he waited for his name to be called, he picked up a stone, a bit of France to take with him … a bit of home.   

I was nearly in tears hearing this myself at this point.   This man, this person, was expressing to us such a time and an emotion that I cannot begin to fathom.  Reggi said that his father was "always secure in his faith, and that day the grace of God shone on him." The men were ordered aboard the train according to the alphabetical order of their last names. That day the call stopped just before the letter R, and the train departed.   This particular train became known as "Le Train du Morte" – only one out of four packed on that car by the hundreds survived.  The father’s story does not end there, however.

They were packed into a different train the next day to the same destination, but the train was prevented passage by a bombed out bridge.  The prisoners were forced into cars and driven a quarry, and now Reggi showed a simple picture.  There was no flourish, no emotion to it.  Just a quarry.  The men were lined up, and they expected to be shot.  Reggi said that his father faced his death with courage once again, for after all "it would only hurt a moment and thereafter would be paradise."    

They were not killed, but his father tried to escape once or twice and succeeded, but he had to return for fear of his brother who had been arrested as well.    “He knew his brother would be killed if he escaped.”  Reggi said.

Reggi once again, I could not get enough of his story as he held these articles.

Sometime between, they were taken to another prison and he got a message to the resistance in a nearby house by flashing messages with a tin cup.  The resistance freed them just in time before they were taken to Bonenhau death camp.   In the end, Reggi’s father had lost a ton of weight.  He was 6’1” and only 100 lbs.  He was taken to the hospital.  We saw pictures of the Germans leaving in one image, and Americans arriving in another.   His father was so malnourished that he had to have nurses take care of him.  

Here Reggi told us something very dark to the perspective of an American citizen, something not easy to swallow.  For anyone who wants to learn more, I would point them to several sources which I referenced before making this post.  I warn my readers it has to do with racial relations during the war.  I remind the reader, this is the father's story.

While having a meal with his nurses and a few friends, Reggi’s father’s party was suddenly approached by two black American soldiers wearing guns who demanded the female nurses come with them at gunpoint.   After all the horrors he’d been through, and every moment facing death at the hands of Nazi’s, Reggi’s father still stood his ground.   He warned the men that if they did this, they’d be killed.   The men ran away.

As Reggi said, it is not a pretty picture.  It certainly was not something I had ever heard myself, even with all my research.  It is a dark chapter in an otherwise outstanding role that America had in the war. 

Reggi continued now, but the tone had shifted from darkness into light.  He showed us pictures of American planes chasing German ones.  “Americans, king of the skies!”  he stated proudly.  Eventually his father came home to his wife, there was a happy reunion and from that Reggi was born.   All the history we were told, all the stories culminated in this single act, and the end of the book leaves on the promising note of a free France. 

This is the last picture of the book, of Anaud coming home.  After such a long, hard journey, this humble picture speaks so much.  Reggi was practically in tears as he told this part of the story.

It was an incredible experience to listen to the man, a living part of that great history.  Reggi had other souvenirs of the war in his house.  Among them were German and American helmets, pistols, gas masks, and other such things.  These were nestled in their own corner near his office.  The man spoke with such pride of the American war effort, because that pride and the freedom he now possessed had been secured by young men a generation before.  His father always impressed upon Reggi the tenacity of America.

The corner of the house dedicated to World War II artifacts.

In the end, the story of Reggi’s father ends just after the war, after all the battles and the death had gone.  There was a need for cemeteries to hold the honored dead, and Reggi’s father had been elected as the representative for the area due to his own activities in the war.  The man pushed for the building of Saint James Cemetery nearby, and it was largely due to his influence that the place was built.  Reggi told us it was not as large or crowded as the ones by the beaches, but that we should go.

“Perhaps you can visit the grave of George Mick,” he said.  “I was given the opportunity to take care of this soldier.   He was a soldier from Wisconson, “   he said.  We promised we would.


---Post Script---

Closer look at the different artifacts

I close here with this particular set of stories, knowing that it will be hard for my readers to comprehend.   Some may question why I share these things, and the reason is simple. They deserve to be known.   This man, this family fought for the chance of freedom and liberty.  Men would fight and die on the beaches of Normandy and it is because of the work of Arnaud de Roquefeuil and his brothers and sisters in France that I can share this today and you can read it.