The great upheaval that shook Europe, during the period of Nazi hegemony had no equivalent during the whole history of mankind. Greater Germany was raising according to the plans that Adolf Hitler had exposed in "Mein Kampf", and the peoples, for not being able to stand up to the rise of Nazism, were suffering under German rule, with sorrow and tears. The barbarians used to kill those they had defeated or used to take them into slavery. The Germans, as for them, invented the extermination camps, and in that way, with starvation, axes, ropes, fire, gas, millions of human beings, and more than two millions of children had no way of escaping their ruthless ferocity. In order to accomplish his diabolical plans, Adolf Hitler found everywhere people traitors to their countries, collaborators, ready to carry out his orders, but he also found elites who with weapons or with their bare hands stood up to the Nazi order. We saw in this country, in France, but elsewhere, in Poland, in Sweden, in Denmark, in Czechoslovakia, in Holland, in Greece, in Italy, in Belgium, in Yugoslavia, in Bulgaria, in Russia, but also in Germany, and in Austria not only group of resistant, or partisans being formed but also individual reactions. Some Durands and Duponts said "Non" ! Some Müllers, Grubers said "Nein" ! And if not all of them formed some groups of Maquisards, or organised groups, in every place where circumstance would take them those heroic defenders of the right to live a free life contributed with all sorts of actions to the weakening of the Nazi war machine. And all those actions some famous, others unknown, but all of them glorious made up the Resistance movement, that is to say the fight against the Barbarian order, the fight of man so that his sons need not be ashamed of belonging to the human race. But is the historian able to gather all the testimonies, all the facts, and to give to our children all the pages of this magnificent history of the Resistance ? I do not think so. Because the actual Resistant is also and very often, he who, once peace was restored, returned to his clan, to his family, and locked himself in silence. You will not know of the Actions of Resistance of my family in Lower Austria, who will keep quiet out of a sense of modesty, and also because what was done by Amalia Fertner, by Hellen Mittendorfer seemed to them so normal that even the death of the spouse under torture in the Vienna prison has always seemed unreal to them. You will not know of the sorrow of our friend, Zwickl, this Viennese whose husband was given to the dogs of Mauthausen to eat., and who continued to fight clandestinely in the urban Resistance. You will not know of the abnegation of this engineer in the death camp of Buchenwald and of the actions of his spouse Hellen Schuster who on her own, her heart seething with anger continued the fight against the "loathsome beast". And then there was the daily resistance of thousands of war prisoners, who wherever they were, and with whatever means they had, with patience but also constance and tenacity, would sabotage whatever would come across their bare hands, and that despite the attention of the warden, but very often hiding from their own companions. Because, as we will see in this story, the denouncer existed everywhere, who had his justification in the defence of his own mean interest, who was the "No trouble for me" type, that I have heard so often, or worse still who stood by the Nazi theories, or were members of the "Cercle Pétain". The archives of the camps will may be reveal to the historians, the actions of those who were acting in the Lagers and in the Commandos. The records of the war council in Linz, and in may other German cities, will many reveal their high deeds to them. Most of them remain silent, as will remain silent forever, those who were arrested, destroyed taking with them their secret. And yet. The survivors of those gruesome times, those miraculously alive, those who were born under a lucky star, have a last duty to accomplish, that of passing on their testimonies to their children, our children. Our example must be worthwhile for the coming generations. May they learn how to say "No". May they resist all the oppressions, dogmas, excesses, aggressions against human dignity. And if death is promised at the end of the adventure, so be it ! What is the importance of dying fighting for mankind ! In the horrible silence of the night, when nightmare wakes me up, when anguishes and palpitations overwhelm me, my memory displays in front of my dimmed eyes, memories that are for ever graven on my raving mind. I feel the same sufferings as the one suffered by those men and women in the death camps. I cry for the elderly, the mothers, the innocent children offered as an holocaust to the German Gott. And I then feel how trivial my adventure is, since, I am alive....

The great sorrows are always silent...The great emotions are always (sorry, should be) discreet. If the story is moving, it is thanks to its discretion. No big sentences, nor bombastic words, but an account made up of little strokes, of little bits and pieces... with no obvious link between them. Only on the surface because the frame that holds all those pages together does exist, strong, solid, still present : the true emotion, the one what makes us put forward the fringes and not the substance, a modesty that cannot stand glitter. To be read in between the line, then ? No, to be read for the lines, vivid, brief, full of interest and of plain simple anecdotes.

But, to be read also with "complicity", being accomplice with sensitiveness, which is the only way of making us feel everything that Michel El baze has not wished to say explicitly.

From his campaigns in France, in Libya, in Tunisia, in Italy, in France again, Hubert Piccard only wants to retain this pitiable episode in June 1940, when he was taken prisoner by the French and very nearly got executed. The memory is still there, alive of that sad time, when everything was going to pot.

In January 1944, General Beaumont Nesbitt who was in charge of the British forces in the countries of Orient, under French mandate orders his officers to organise in Beirut a party to tighten the friendship between France and Britain. All the general officers, and field officers were invited. As I was on a mission in Orient at that time, I was naturally invited to join. This party was held in the sumptuous lounges of the St George Hotel that has unfortunately disappeared since, following the dramatic events of those last few years. The atmosphere was cordial, and the Martini-Gin was flowing abundantly too much may be, since an English M.G.W., somehow tipsy, got hold of the shoulder of a French officer and exclaimed loudly in French strongly tinted with an English accent: "Oh my dear, we have been given the order to be nice to you today !" Immediately taken away by his English colleagues, he literally disappeared. This "cri de coeur" is a remarkable illustration of the dual role played unremittingly until our departure by the English authority in Orient, and most particularly by military personnel depending from the Colonial office, under the complaisant authority not to say more of General Edward L. Spears appointed in February 1942, special envoy, and plenipotentiary minister to the Syrian and Lebanese republics. Despite the love he was claiming to vow to France, his second fatherland, he never ceased to undermine the authority of the France Libre in those two countries, until our complete eviction in 1945. A film shot in Damascus during some demonstrations, clearly shows the attitude of the English policemen who were encouraging the population to demonstrate against France. In march 1944, I received a telegram from Mr Mendès-France, representative of the France-Libre, to greet in Beirut, an English General Officer especially sent from London to implement with me, in the territories under French mandate, an agreement settled between Duff Cooper, Foreign Office minister, and Mendès-France, which totally guaranteed our role in those two countries. I greeted him at the airport on a Friday, Spears was also there. I suggested that we started meeting on the following day. Spear disagreed completely, arguing that the envoy from London was too tired, and wanted our first meeting to be held on Monday morning. That could only have been a manoeuvre to enable General Spear to keep away Duff Cooper's envoy. I opened the meeting on Monday morning at 9 AM, stressing that we were together for the implementation of this well known agreement, the words of which were very explicit. spear claimed that our role was simply to examine if it was possible to implement this agreement in view of the circumstances. This position was unacceptable for France. We could not come to any agreement, so I left the meeting. Finally in spite of this envoy from the Foreign Office, General Spears continued his action against us. AS Maurice Fleurent explained most pertinently, the English will not hesitate to go as far as murdering the French who were hindering their action. General Ralph Monclar and Mr Busson, manager of the "Banque Française du Liban" (French bank in Lebanon), had warned me personally. My predecessor had mysteriously disappeared, he was never to be found. Sometime, a French plane would burn, or on the road from Beirut to Damascus, in the curves in the middle of the mountains a mad lorry driven by an Arab, on the wrong side of the road would send in the ravines running along the road a French car with an important person on board. Back in Algiers in April 1944, I handed to General de Gaulle, a secret note from General Beynet, High commissary to the Orient, and informed him of all that I had myself witnessed. He got extremely angry, accusing Churchill of treason. That shows the importance of the account from Fleurent to show to the French people the duplicity of our friends at the time. I must say, as he expressed it himself, that in the fighting that continued in Europe as from June 1944, we saw the rebirth of a more unequivocal co-operation.

If the Resistance movement in the area of Guillaumes has been spectacular enough to be singled out as regards the actions carried out in the Departement of the Alpes Maritimes, and more noticed than those which took place on the "Plateau de Dina" and in the "Massif de l'Audiberge", (since those actions required an entire battalion of the German army to be dispatched there), it is due to the mountainous configuration of the land that perfectly befitted the operations that took place there, and the whole thing really started in spring 1944. Being an eye witness and an effective participant, I can give my testimony, that of a member of the Guillaumes community, that of an inhabitant of this town, who saw the Resistance movement taking root here. The atmosphere of suspicion and of fear that prevailed for a few weeks, shortly after the arrival of the two groups of Maquisards, ceased, and was replaced by a warm atmosphere between them and us, for most of the people in the village who understood gradually that the time for revenge had come. These are the military actions, and the special atmosphere that I want to bring back to life as a witness who would be somehow outside of this more or less guided Resistance movement, and as a member of this community which adjusted itself, whether they liked it or not to the necessities of the time.

alias Sous-lieutenant LECUVRE -:

After reading the testimony from Émilien Dellanoy, we remain astonished when we discover the inner nature of this teenager, of this young man, this man matured by the ordeals he went through, and whose behaviour never faltered at any time. If the story seems monotonous at the beginning, the interest of the testimony appears more and more conspicuously as one proceeds in the reading. Thus, when war breaks out in 1939, Émilien seems ready to put up with all its events, the importance of which he does not suspect yet. What imagination should one have had anyway to imagine the unthinkable.

But Émilien has always believed in his luck, and it is that belief, deeply rooted in him since his early age, that helped him to triumph over pain, suffering, after 40 years, but still bearing in mind the memory of his departed companions.

My family settles in Algiers in October 1937, coming from our homeland of Auvergne. In November 1942 I was 10 years old. My father severely wounded during World War I, very attentive to the events on the mainland, as we had left our grand parents there, acting as superintendent in Belfort, 16 Km east of Algiers. I remember that my father, a few month before the arrival of troops in North Africa, already, was entertaining in our villa, captain Watson quoted in this testimony, and we, as all the children of our age, wanted to know who that gentleman was, that we received with so much care, and who was causing us to be locked up in our room, each time he was visiting us. It is only much later that I learnt that this mysterious visitor was a member of the Resistance movement in the city of Algiers. My father must have played a certain part in the preparation of the arrival of the allied troops in North Africa: by the end of September he had installed a real flat in the basement of our villa without our knowing, and we were not allowed to go in. But in the week that preceded the landing of the troops, on the 8 of November at 11 PM, he put all the family there before leaving for the police station, from which he came back at around midnight. Around 2:45 AM, when the first canon blasts could be heard, while my mother was worried as she thought it was a German landing, I can still hear my father telling her not to worry as those were allied troops. Then he left, leaving us in the safety of our basement, only to show up three days later. A lot was said about the Landing of troops west of Algiers, (Cherchell, Sidi Ferruch)., but to my knowledge, never about the west part: Maison Carrée, Les Pins Maritimes, Le Lido, Ain-Taya, Surcouf, Cap Matifou...etc. Who were then the persons in charge of the intelligence service for this area in which many military camps were installed, mainly manned by Senegalese infantry. I think my father must have given a lot of information to Captain Watson about that. Unfortunately my father died and we will never know the truth. I also remember that in the fifteen days that followed the Landing, a violent air raid took place on the station of Maison Carrée, a dispatching station. That night an entire ammunition train was parked and there was also a carriage containing blowing bombs. The station master and my father unhooked that carriage and pushed it towards Hussein-Dey, and by doing that they spared Maison Carrée from destruction. Those images that struck the mind of the ten year old kid that I was are still roaming in my mind, and perhaps that is where the reasons can be found for the special affection that I have for those Resistants in Algiers, on the mainland, for all those soldiers of darkness, many of which are still bearing today in their flesh and in their mind the indelible scars of their sufferings and sacrifices because of our France.

The landing and dropping of men, arms, ammunitions, of goods of all sorts intensified in 1944. Henri Faure depicts here, the adventure of those who were not scared by repression. But he wants to it more and in a better still ! And in the night from 16 to 17 August, with his courageous team, he blows up the bridge of the RN7 over the Drome river linking Livron and Loriol. Held back in its retreat the German army will suffer impressive losses there which will hasten the liberation of this area of France.

Here we are with doctor Raffalli, in this sinister prison of Graudenz, in this "Prison of the Braves", reserved for the German officers, and to the prisoners convicted by the war councils of the Great Germany. Here we are with him, in this inferno, from which nobody, would come out alive. So I was convinced.

Released by the victorious soviet army, the convicted from Graudenz start in Marienburg a long trip that will take them to the Black Sea, and eventually to Marseilles, after eight months of wanderings, and of sufferings, to obtain their certificate of release...!

Born in Lodz (Poland), on the 16 of January 1905, Leon-Richard Berliner arrives in France in 1929. On the 27 of September 1939, he take a voluntary enlistment in Nice for the duration of the War. After a training in Coetquidan, then at the Special Military school of the Polish army, he is appointed second Lieutenant. Liaison officer with the French army, he takes part in the defence of Rennes, and is in charge of a company engaged in action between Rennes and Loudeac. Taken prisoner, he escapes and gets to La Rochelle, where during the night of the 22 June 1940, French and Polish soldiers embarked on board an English destroyer bound for Great Britain. He gets the order to leave the ship and stay in France. On the first of February 1943, in Nice, his mother and sister, as well as his parents in law are arrested and deported to Auschwitz. While under several nicknames like, "Bison", "Richard", or "Lolek, he is operating in the F2 and Monica-Combat networks. Forced to leave Nice, he gets the order to go and see Lieutenant-Colonel Gaucher, alias Martial, head if the Maquis in Dordogne, who gives him the responsibility of the Polish Group of Périgeux. Bison then becomes Richard Lacombe, in the Liaba Group which can boast to have managed an impressive series of sabotages, among which the destruction of the powder factory of Ripault in Bergerac, then along with Martial, he takes part in the liberation of Périgueux, and Angoulème, finishing the fighting as commander of the First Battalion of Polish Volunteers. After being released from his functions, he is called back by the delegate of the polish mission in France, and accredited to the provisional government to take the function of liaison officer. Already, lieutenant, then captain of the Internal French Forces, FFI, he will be promoted later to the rank of commander by a decree of the Minister of the National defence of Poland. He then receives from the polish government in exile in London, his nomination to the rank of lieutenant-colonel then colonel. Here is an exceptional military career, started by voluntary enlistment and the fighting in 1940, continued in the dangerous clandestinity of Nice and in Dordogne, ended by his active participation in the liberation of Périgueux and Angoulème. L.R. Berliner did all that because he simply had to do it, because he had to pay back his foster country, France, for the generous and fraternal hospitality it had granted to his family and to himself.

At a time when xenophobia, racism, blur so many minds it is good that those "foreigners" bear testimony and tell of their fight for their New Homeland.

Voluntary enlisted for the duration of the war, taken prisoner, he escapes ! In turns, Bison, Lolek, or Richard in the F2 and Monica-Combat and Martial networks, arrested by the Gestapo, he escapes ! Intelligence agent in the Alpes Maritimes, member of the Maquis in Dordogne, head of battalion of the Internal French Forces. (FFI), for the Polish military forces in France, Lionel Berliner's fight will only end with the liberation of his foster country, France, happy to have paid back his debt !!

From his early age, and as all of us, André Weiss is taught that is country is France, and his ancestors were the Gauls ! And here we are now that this far away fatherland, wounded by barbary calls her children from beyond the sea. Along with the Sanchez, the Martinez, the Ahmed, the Ben Ali, the Levy, and the Cohen, André Weiss arrives on the French coast to discover this country, where his flag is hoisted, where his language is spoken, this country which is his. From the Mediterranean to the Danube, from victory to Victory he will hunt down the Nazi beast.

...And when everything ended, he simply returned to his hovel, his heart full of joy, and his mind proud of having freed his country !..

"Humble and unknown", just like so many fighters, Jean Salvatico bears testimony of "ordinary" acts, carried out for the liberation of his country. And yet.

How many dangers did he face that he does not describe, but that we feel in the essence of his story, that claims to be simple, true and which contributes to the writing of the history of the liberation in our Department the Alpes Maritimes.

I have greatly appreciated the form and the substance. The style full of humour, bombastic reminded me of "Le Roi", a dairy which was also dealing with a war

Jacques F. Gilontin- Colonel- Paris

4.10.83

Your chronicle greatly interested me, and I took a real pleasure in this reading. The impression that I draw is that you have been exhaustive, the tone is indeed yours, and what we find you entirely in the way you have of telling the things. Your choice of pictures at last is extraordinarily rich. Some are really unexpected, funny, and really in keeping with the text.

Philippe Chesnay - Santiago of Chile

10.10.83

I shook with laughter at each page of the chronicle of the Kingdom of Plata. I knew you had a good stroke of pen. In that case it is sheer ferocity, for the greatest pleasure of the reader. The iconography and the documents contained in the book are fantastic, and the account of this stupid war had to be written on a comical note. I thank you so much for giving me this pleasure of being among the happy few readers of your chronicle.

David Mandefield - London

14.10.83

The three remarks that you have just read, show plainly that the account made by Raymond Denis does not leave anybody indifferent. In turn sarcastic, delightfully provocative, but full of finesse, and intelligence, the eye and ear witness live on the spot the events, with the same sharpness of mind as the one he had displayed when after enlisting voluntarily in 1942, in the II Regiment of Cuirassiers, he took part with the First Division of Français Libres (Free French), in the liberation of Alsace and of our Department of Alpes Maritimes. No doubt that the person who had fought ruthless fights in Autun, Giromagny, Sewen, Grismagny, in Alsace, who had confronted the Germans in the mountains of L'Authion, and in the Valley of Roya, no doubt that this person could afford to smile at the stupidity of some, if not cry on the murderous stupidity of others. Because eventually what stands out of this testimony is a great compassion, a gentle and boundless sadness on the renewed constatation of the imbecility of man.

After voluntarily fighting, at a very young age, with the Français-Libres, and having expelled the occupying forces from his country, here we have Raymond Denis, no longer taking part but witnessing a war on another continent, a war which he finds entertaining but leaves him, leaves us with a bitter taste, so great appears to be the naively of the people and the stupidity of the powerful that we view of sadness and dismay.

At 83 years of age, I start writing this epitomised history of my deportation as some kind of testament. The memory may be faulty at times, but all the facts stated will be real, without emphasis, nor over dramatisation. Forty years have gone by, but I am still left with the same impression of horror and disgust in front of human behaviour. I will keep silent about the cowardly actions that I witnessed, before. during and after my deportation. As far back as our knowledge of antiquity goes, throughout all periods, in the most different countries and circumstances, the winners, be they civilian or military, have tortured or killed their prisoners. The chains, the eyes gouged out, slavery, the capture and usage of women. Hitler only invented a methodical, fairly sophisticated, as his accomplice who was soon to become his foe, Staline. In the machinery of a concentration camp, the purpose is to dishumanize the individual, to reduce him to a vegetable like stage. The result was rarely missed, and the only thing that remained was the instinct for survival, eating, drinking, trying not to get beaten or shot. Those human beasts could at time behave like wild animals. Education, honesty, good manners are a fragile veneer.

Doctor Henri Garrigoux starts in actions in the Resistance movement as early as July 1940, by sending to all the deputies of Cantal a letter warning them of what was going to be requested from them at the meeting on the 10th of July 1940 in Vichy. During the four years that followed, our companion will unceasingly continue his propaganda actions against the occupying forces, against the Government in Vichy, and will thwart the departure of labour conscripts to the Compulsory work duty in Germany by whichever means he had. Placing himself under the orders of General Cochet, he is able to convince and bring together the future leaders of the Resistance movement in the area of Aurillac. Préfet Horno summons him twice in his office in January 1943 to try to get him to stop his activities in the Resistance movement and informs him that his name is at the top of the list of the hostages to be shot. Constantly under scrutiny, under inquiry by the German police and the militia, he had to leave his home several times, Garrigoux does not relent his services to the Resistasnce movement in Cantal, where he is the head of the medical section. Arrested by the German police on the 2nd of June 1944, and taken to prison in Clermont-Ferrand, the Gestapo within nine days, will submit him to three atrocious sessions of torture which will leave him scared for life, but he never gave any information, nor gave up any of his companions of fight. Taken on the l9th of July 1944 to Compiègne, then on the 29th to Neuengamme, he is released on the 29th of April 1945 by the British Army. It is this year, this eternity of suffering, this painful ordeal in the hands of the barbaric Germans that Docteur Garrigoux tries to tell you in his old age. May our children feel the emotion that grips us all through those pages, tighten their fists and say along with us : No ! Never again !

Talking about oneself, using "I" is indeed despicable, but it is because so many fighters, and the staunchest of them, are reluctant to talk about themselves and to tell us of their great deeds, that we are at such great pains to constitute a collection, and therefore bring to the historian the testimonies, the elements that would be so precious for him in order to understand this period of the history of France during which we saw the Resistance against the German invader come into being. Brignard François, our dear Doudou and his wife Yvonne are no stranger to this phobia of "I", it was not possible for us to get them to talk about, or write about their life, we have therefore been obliged to bypass their modesty and to search their personal archives, to retrieve from them the elements that constitute this volume, the reading of which will enable the reader to assess the courage of this couple united, in occupied France, who under the risk of all sorts of denouncements, will nonetheless continue their actions in support of the Resistance movement. As for the historian, towards whom this testimony is more particularly directed, he will be able to put together other testimonies or documents in which appear characters going by the names of: Schaeffer, Imbert, Paulin, Grieu, Castaing, Rollmer, or have a better understanding of the activities of the network "Andalousie", of the Special Services in south West France, of the Chiron Brigade, of the "Franc-Pommies" group for which and in which the Brignards fought.

May the reading of those documents prompts our children to follow the example of Doudou and Yvonne, if God unwilling our country was to be again in such an unfortunate situation.

Here we have a young couple, who in Toulouse instead of living in the peacefulness of non interference of most people, on the contrary put themselves at the disposal of the fighters of Darkness. What a beautiful example of serene and placid determination in spite of all the dangers and denouncements.

We sometimes feel the impervious need to revive through a few notes the memories of some events which had an important influence on the unfolding of a life. Our path on earth is strewn with accidents, we bump into them with an unequal ability to overcome them, depending on the moral, intellectual, and physical forces that have at our disposal. One day the passing of time will have cast its dark veil on the past, a few learned persons will then find in those pages, some sincere reactions, because they will have been expressed freely, with the rough contact of life, and on the spur of the moment, without the slightest concern to please or to displease. Many a book have been published, relating adventures, in turn commonplace, and in turn heroic, they never failed to have some interest for those who went through them in similar circumstances. So, I would like to emphasise more particularly, the atmosphere of those almost ordinary anecdotes, and the ideas they brought about, sporadically first, and creating afterwards within the world of the prisoners a certain community of views. It seems that a few months after coming back, the motivations that prompted the actions of many of us faded away due to the contact with the new life. Isn't it strange to hear some people relating some events with a different view from what was then expressed: This explains the constant change of the French opinion deceived in the hopes for which it had shown so much enthusiasm. What a beautiful opportunity to meditate on humility when one sees those braggarts who claims afterwards that they had foreseen the course of events. We are dealing, here with feelings in the world of fighters and then prisoners. It is possible that the civilian population may have reacted differently. The mind is under the influence of the environment and the ordinary people are very sensitive to a well orchestrated propaganda.

We only give a documentary value to the following pages, too many of the problems taken up would deserve an in depth study, whereas we restricted ourselves to a few reflections.

The testimony of Quesnel Émile strikes the mind by the density of the events he tells about and that he went through during his five years as a prisoner in Germany. Some terrible years for a well established lad, sure of his convictions, and whose strong personality owed him to be practically expelled from farmhouse to farmhouse and from Kommando to Kommando. Then came the much awaited liberation...and that was another ordeal this one unexpected, that our companion went through from Prussia to Odessa, discovering the Soviet Russia and its harsh realities. The account is gripping, full of anecdotes, of details that perfectly describes the miserable life of a prisoner. What struck us most is the apparent submission of Quesnel who has to survive nonetheless, without any other arms again his jailers than the faith which is in him and which will help him to overcome decadence and death.

Émile Quesnel has wanted to tell with simple, precise but always moving words his five years as prisoner in Germany, but perhaps above all the story of his five years spent with his soviet liberators which seem to him as important as the whole time he spent as a prisoner, so astonished as he is by the world he discovers there. No doubt that the historian will find in this testimony some element which will help him to better understand the psychology of the prisoner.

Armand Huet has the modesty of his actions in the Resistance movement, that's the reason why his testimony is mainly made up of photostats of authentic documents which show the courageous struggle of the Christians unions of the French railwaymen, and by accident, if we may say, his own activity. But we wanted to discover the personality of the witness, that's why this book will start, not as we usually do in this collection with the expression of the recollections, but by the transcription we took the licence to do of the elements contained in a report that Armand Huet had to produce on the 31st of august 1944, which means that all the events that he is talking about there, were contemporary to all those that he was to know. Armand Huet did his duty, nothing more, that is to say that he simply did what he had to do, when he had to do it, but still it had to be done, and he did it.

Let us have some respect for such an action.

We will never pay enough tribute to those French Railwaymen who individually or within networks, organised groups, or in the Unions had the courage to stand up first against the social order implemented by Vichy and then undertook an effective fight against the objectives pursued by the occupiers. The account by Armand Huet is short, concise, but edifying. Especially edifying are the documents that make up most of this testimony which shows that quiet abnegation fostered in the heart of steel and rail.

Enlisted with the Inner French Forces.(F.F.I.) at the age of 18, Gerard Fiory gets to know the harsh realities of the Maquis de la Piquante Pierre, as he escapes its destruction by the S.S. that left 220 killed. On the l9th of June 1945, he enlists in the 9th Division of Colonial Infantry (D.I.). After one year of occupation in Germany, which he relates with a lot of humour, there he is volunteering for the Far East where he lands in 1946, in Indochina with the Colonial Regiment of Infantry of Marocco. There, he takes part in all the operations in upper Tonkin, as head of armoured vehicle. The account that he makes of this chunk of life, grips us, and will no doubt enable the historian to position better Man in this war of Indochina which saw so many sacrifices, left so many people bereaved, and left so much bitterness.

From Haiphong to Haiduong, from Cao Bang in upper Tonkin, we follow with Gerard Fiory the unfolding of the Campaign of Indochina, as a young man of 20 full of courage and illusions saw it and lived it. This testimony will be read with pleasure, and will bring many informations to the historian for whom it is meant.

In his log book of marches written on several agendas, or text books, Robert Judlin tells us of the adventures in his daily life as an engineer sapper taken in the great upheaval. The first volume, as the rest of the work anyway is abundantly illustrated by pictures or documents which enable us to bring back the atmosphere in which the events described took place. Here we arrive on the 3rd of august 1914 in Versailles, during the whole of 1914 we wander around the Marne Valley, and in other places with Robert Judlin, in every place where the presence of his Engineer Company was necessary.

1915. Is the year of the great battles, Champagne, Argonne, It is this risky life in the wilds that we live with Robert Judlin, always there to repair the destructions of the Germans, to endure fatigue, mud, and unfortunately also the orders and counter orders of an authority which he judges with severity.

1916. The mission is to prepare the great assault of the Somme. Everything has to be done with nothing and quickly. How ? Just do it ! and they did it. Orders, counter orders, changes, modifications, people get nervous, they grumble, they protest, but so close to the front line as we are the grab is good. So let us be patient, we will have our own back !!!! Then Noune pays a visit to her husband in September, then everything gets brighter, life is beautiful.

How sweet is the leave that Robert Judlin spends with Noune at the end of 1917 in Carros. After three years on the front line, in the cold and in the mud, he got the permission to criticise the irresponsibility, the negligence, what he regards as incapability from the top ranking officers who send him here and there behind the front line and often without any reasons.

At the pictures, the news show enormous gatherings of the German people, arms uplifted in a forest of Swastika bearing banners. We find their leader, Hitler, funny with his Charlie like moustache and his yells. Then come the soldiers parading at goose step, followed by huge tanks. Above that the aeroplanes are darting past like lightnings in the thunder of their engines. People think that Hitler is mad, People say that he even wrote a book in which he claims that he is going to win the next war. That we find funny also !.. We have the Maginot line. The best army in the world. The Foreign Legion. And the Senegalese infantry soldiers who chill whoever look at them. In our country, men only take themselves seriously with their definitive judgements. Many claim that war will not take place. "Things should not be exaggerated, Hitler only straightened up his country". Mr Chamberlain, the man with the umbrella and Mr Daladier, the "Bull of Vaucluse", are there to reassure us, that's all we want anyway. One year later, war breaks out.

To Marcel and Fernand, childhood friends who did not understand a thing, and died in vain... somewhere on the Eastern front under the enemy's uniform.

"The order came to switch off all the lights, the black out was complete and the night lasted for four years. So every one made is own choice. The greatest number chose intellectual comfort, because to do nothing is also a choice. Then, some, too numerous for the misfortune of the country, allowed themselves to be attracted by false prophets, and ended miserably, hopelessly, deceived by those who made use of them, for a few ridiculous advantages from the enemy. A small number were carrying in themselves the honour of the Knights of the times gone by and gathered around a leader: General de Gaulle". Raymond Denis who writes those lines, was one of those. Today through a series of flashes, he is the historian of his own history, placing his testimony in the atmosphere he was in, and the edges of which he probably could not clearly see. Behind the lightness of the style, how many miseries, how many tragedies are evoked. How many treasons, vileness, on the part of too great a number of our fellow citizens, but also the example, that of teenagers brought up in the faith that gave them the strength to say No!

Each time I tell my family or my friends, different adventures from the period 1938 to 1945, they get very interested and encourage me to write my memories. Up to now, I have not deemed it opportune to do it. Writing one's memories can be justified for importants persons who had an influence through their past actions, and this is not the case for me ! I therefore restrict myself to presenting a series of memories, which happened during this period, which was simply for me a great adventure ! There may be a few inexactitudes but they are unintentional and without any consequences. I have not kept any notes, as I did not want my id papers to be compromising if they ended in the hands of the enemy. It is not a history book, others did it ? This gathering of memories comes in four parts, dealing only with my military activities. 1st part - A mobilisation for nothing 1939 - 1940 The phoney war- the real war. 2nd part - 1942-1943 - My escape from France. 3rd part - My military activities in Morocco. The departure and the campaign of France in the high commandment of the 5th armoured division.

4th part - 1944 - 1945. The campaigns of Germany and Austria.

This account of life, limited to the period 1938/1945 fits perfectly the preoccupations that were ours when we contemplated the creation of this collection. It will bring to the historian, the elements that he needs in order to write History. It will be of a high interest also for the reader curious to know the reaction of our fellow citizens in front of the extraordinary events of the time.

Écriture : 1986 - Édition : Mai 1987 - 60 pages

To decide to escape and manage to get free after so many adventures in an hostile country, such is the great deed accomplished by our four witnesses, each one in a different place and at a different time while they were prisoners of war in the hands of the Germans. Easy some might say ! To be seen ! Still they had to find the courage to wake up, stand up and go.

He illustrated himself a bit everywhere but never got illustrious ! After writing his memories in one go in 1937, my father, Georges Hubin (05 / 02 / 1875 - 10 / 11 / 1965) left them in his library until the day when he realised that he could not read again his own writing, asked me to type them, which gave this work of more than a 1000 pages, full of adventures and which fills us with wonderment more and more each time we read it. How could a man of average height, of modest origin, without any income at first, but his mind full of the desire to accomplish great things in the middle of great spaces, go through so many ordeals, through so many joyful and painful moments ? He could have settled in a dreamlike way of life, but each time the appeal of adventure was gripping him and his life was taking a new turn. One must have read those pages so fruitful in all sorts of events to be able to understand the nature of his goal so often missed or thwarted. He was anyway too much of an idealist to take advantage of all those situations. This is clearly visible at the end of his Memories, where disillusioned, defeated by the narrow mindedness of the Civil Service. he end up trying to live like everyone else, despite the terrible disability that his war wound left on him, blocking all the join of the left hip and of the left leg. This mutilation and all its consequences, that is to say, unable to bend, to sit down, depending on somebody for all the little things of life like putting on his shoes, getting dressed, probable dampening of his impetuous mood, he will go through it for almost fifty years still without complaining, and God know how big the difference with the man of action that he used to be must have been. He probably never stopped fretting, but always silently, and his musings must have often brought him back in the middle of the Sahara, at night under the stars in Madagascar, the beauty of which he was telling about so proudly, in Tonkin, in the bay of Along, for him the most beautiful place on earth, in Canada when he lived the real life of trappers, and the account of which reminds us textually of "Maria Chapdelaine", no need to talk about war, his own war that he lived so intensely, but so painfully also. That is without setting store by the great love of his life, his wife Magdeleine, our mother for whom he was able to perform the craziest things, but he knew how to be with him throughout those long years, during which she was this "other person", loving and dedicated, to help him overcome his ordeals. Nonetheless after braving so many dangers, and suffering so many wounds, of all sorts, this man our father, still lived for many years with his family, his children and grand children. It only took a little of apple stuck in the middle of his throat to choke him at nearly 91 years of age, while he was still in full possession of his intellectual capabilities, and put an end in a few hours to a life so rich in experiences of the most varied sorts, so intense in actions and emotions, so extraordinary in fact that often reality would supersede fiction.

But you have to read it to believe it, and I leave you with the pleasure of doing it.

Eager to break away from the peace and quiet of family life, gripped by a terrible anguish to get rusty, young Hubin Georges is 18 years old when his parents allow him to join the "biffe" (infantry), and will only fulfil his dream one year later in the Légion. This is the start of a military career that he will give up in 1917 after being wounded at the Éparges and having accomplished 24 years of service 13 of which in campaigns. With him, in that first volume, we live his childhood and adolescence and we discover Algeria and Madagascar as it was prior to 1900.

Here George Hubin leaves the Legion and his rank as petty-officer go back to the Naval Infantry with only one goal that of going back to the colonies. Here, we discover at that stage Indochina, French West Africa and Sudan.

Released from active service in 1900, Georges Hubin who is 25 years old at that point, comes back to France to start a business career using the knowledge he had acquired of the colonies. We then go back to Africa, Sudan, Bobo-Dioulasso, The Gold Coast. France again in 1904, then the Mossi in 1905, France again in 1907, and again Africa.

We are in 1908 in Europe were the conditions of life seem limited and therefore are not suitable for Georges Hubin. So where can he go ? Africa ? No it is over. The legion ? Tempting, but at 33 years of age, no too old. Morocco...? So Argentina or Canada which offer facilities for the emigrants. Hubin then chooses Canada, where we live with him his new experiences. Then on the 2nd of august 1914, he is enrolled in the army, it is the beginning of World war !.

The Vth volume which is the last one of the account of the life of Georges Hubin tells us of his life during the war and its eventual disillusions. He is declared unfit at the high degree for the army with a pension, for war wound in 1917 in the Éparges, he has to fight against the civil service to assert his claims.

Born on the 30th of July 1922, Edmond Chiaramonti studies in Morocco, at the Lycée Gouraud in Rabat., prepares for St Cyr at the Lycée Lyautey in Casablanca and joins the school for army cadets at Cherchell-Mediouna, Weygand class (1942-1943). He takes part in all the campaigns in the North African infantry group from 1943 to 1962. On the Italian front line, in the Moroccan mountain division of the French expeditionary corps led by General Juin, he is particularly outstanding during the great onslaught of may 1944. On the Garigliano where the C.E.F. breaks the German system of the Gustav line, thus allowing the fall of Cassino. Taking hold of the Monte Ceschito with his section he therefore opens the way for the armoured vehicles in the valley. His brilliant behaviour during the fight owes him to be awarded the War Cross on the very location of the fighting. Continuing its onslaught on Rome, then Sienna and Florence, his division comes across resistance from the enemy on a new defensive line, the Hitler line in Tuscany. During the attack his section his pinned down to the ground by the shooting of a machine gun. which fatally wounds its head group leader. To release it he impetuously leads his group to take on this machine gun, destroys it with hand grenades and takes two prisoners. His second mentions stresses this daring act of arms and his exemplar courage in action. Under his leadership his section the following days takes the villages of San Andrea di Val d'Elsa and of San Benedetto, despite a fierce resistance from the enemy, who knocked about, flees in disarray towards Florence, leaving its dead on the ground. Relieved from the Italian front line, he lands in Provence, at Le Dramont near St Raphael with Moroccan division integrated to the first French Army lead by General De Lattre De Tassigny and gloriously take part in the liberation of the National territory. Going up the Rhone valley he is involved in the Vosges where his battalion is designated as spear head to attack the winter line strongly organised by the Germans to break the progression of the French and to prevent them from getting to the Rhine. They give the assault at dawn on the 16th of October 1944. The break of the line of resistance of the enemy through the mine fields and the mesh of barbed wire, under a hail of fire from weapons of all calibres and a pouring rain, in the woods of "Hautus du Faint", overlooking Cornimont. Along with the first wave of assault they reach the summit. Despite the heavy losses sustained by his section he clings to it for eight days, repelling all the German counter attacks under the continuous bombing, inflicting heavy damages to the enemy. Wounded on the fifth day he refuses to be evacuated before the relieving of his company, which only numbers 27 survivors, after those five days of furious fighting. Taken to a country hospital in Vesoul and then in Dijon he is supposed to be part of a convoy of wounded bound for North Africa in order to release some space in the hospitals close to the Front line. He objects to his transfer leaves the hospital and gets back to his unit in Alsace where he goes back to the fighting. Crossing the Rhine and the Black Forest in pursuit of an enemy in disarray he takes numerous prisoners and enters the Moroccan section in the Voralberg in Austria when the armistice is proclaimed on the 8th of may 1945. Bearer of 5 war distinctions he is awarded the Croix de Chevalier of the Legion D'Honneur. In Indochina as commander of a grouping of section , then commander of an infantry company in the North African Mobile Group he becomes famous in all the operations G in North Viet Nam in the Delta and in the middle region among which Hoa-Bin and Nasan. Several times awarded the War Cross of the TOE with palms, appointed Captain to the exceptional board for Indochina he receives the distinction of Officer of the Legion of Honour with the prestigious distinction that we will find in the second book. This promotion includes the granting of the War Cross of the external operations with palms. In 2 years he is nominated five times of which four times to the Order of the Army adding four palms and a silver gilt star to his War Cross of the TOE. Appointed intelligence officer of the North African mobile group he is taken by air from Nasan to Luan Prabang, with two battalions and the artillery group of his mobile group, supported by the parachutist battalions of the famous commander Bigeard to ensure the protection of the capital city of Laos, threatened by the Viet-Minh divisions. His mission accomplished he is awarded the Royal Order of Laos award. Back to the Delta he undertook many operations where the exploitation of his information enable his G to achieve great victories. Always at the heart of action he is twice again awarded distinctions before coming back home after three years of continuos actions. Appointed in Germany as commander of a company of Algerian infantry he is called in reinforcement in Morocco in 1954 by General Duval high commander of the troops. Leading a company of Moroccan infantry he receives the distinction of Officer of the Cherifian Order of the Ouissam Alaouite for his brilliant actions while in the Moroccan troops. He gets back to the mainland with his regiments shortly before the independence of Morocco. Volunteer to go Algeria he arrives there in 1956, and is appointed as intelligence and ground officer of a sector in the Oran region. He is immediately noticed by his efficiency in researching and managing intelligence information. Managing with an unquestionable authority day time operations and night time ambushes, he achieves spectacular results. Creating a commando made up of prisoners converted thanks to its patient psychological action, he manages to break up several rebel groups and retrieve numerous weapons. He is nominated to the Order of the Army and receives the Cross of the Military Value with Palms. Entered on the exceptional panel of promotion for Algeria, he is designated to receive the tie of Commander of the Legion of Honour, with the rank of captain, very rarely awarded at that rank. Nominated once more for having led some rewarding campaigns one of them in the Cheurfas, allows a Katiba to be put out of fight. He is promoted major in 1959. He is promoted to the title of Commander of the Legion of Honour, an exceptional award for war actions, by decree on the 19 July 1960, at 38 years of age. Specialist of intelligence services and of the fight against subversion, he organises at the Military School in Paris a algerian operation office for his peers of the Higher School of War. Back in Algeria as a volunteer in March 1961, he is appointed as head of the Second Office of an area, in Colomb-Béchard, on the south Moroccan border, then in Mostaganen, in the Oran area. He applies his method with the same efficiency and gets magnificent results. General Ailleret, High Commander of the Troops in Algeria, awards him the prestigious award, mentioned in book II, on the eve of the cease fire. It is his 15th distinction. Present for twenty years on all the operation sites, in Italy, France, Germany, Indochina, Morocco, and Algeria. He comes back definitively on the mainland to take the commandment of a Battalion of Algerian Skirmishers, in Beauvais on the 1st July 1962, on the very same day as the Algerian declaration of independence is proclaimed. In 1964 the units of Skirmishers are disbanded and his battalion becomes the Mobile Battalion of Infantry. Appointed in Antibes as executive officer of the military physical training school, he asks to be released from his duty in 1965 and receives from General Ducourneau the following message : "I regret that a soldier of your value should leave the army at less than 44 years of age, it is a great loss for the army". On his departure in 1966, the Minister of Defence sends him a testimony of satisfaction for the support he provided. He is appointed Lieutenant Colonel on the reserve list.

This testimony relates the actions of the IV Battalion of Infantry of the VII Regiment of Algerian Skirmishers in Indochina, between September 1951 and December 1952. Less abstract and monotonous than the chronological and plain account of a diary of marches, this historical account was written after some stories and anecdotes related by the four unit commanders of this elite battalion under the orders of Captain Biard, now Army General, and Great Chancellor of the Legion of Honour.

Hélène George tells us of her 101 days in jail, first in Ky-Lua and in Langson after the japanese attack on the 9th of March 1945, then in Hoa-Binh, where she was kept prisoner by the Viet-Minh soldiers since the 19 September 1946. The account is very "simple, without any literary pretentions, as simple as was the life of Helene George, a life that she was sharing with so many other unfortunate prisoners".

André Chevallier, despite his fighting spirit, got mobilised in a unit that did not have to fight. Prisoner of war, instead of abandoning himself to the quietness of the Kommandos, he attempted to escape five times, but only succeeded when war was ending.

The following is the account of the comic adventures of a mule rider fighter. The simple association of those two words in the XXth century sounds funny. Yet a few years later, the mules of the Moroccan Tabors contributed to the capture of Rome, bypassing through the mountain the German positions. If we had proceeded in 1939 in Italy on a ground the roads of which would have been cut by bombings, our mules and mule riders would have been of use, but the Italians were no more eager than ourselves to fight, so they were of no use. So twenty four years later, we are only left with good memories of this anachronism : The fighting mules of the XXth century. I do not want the military scathed in this passage to take exception about it, no more than they would about the "Gaietés de l'Escadron". They seem to have understood that in the strike force, the mules are no longer needed, since they have been disbanded.

The war of a mule riding company that Jacques Chrétien relates with a lot of humour turned out to be more comical than tragic. The Historians must know anyway that at the individual level, the tragedy the nation was going through made some people laugh, rather than cry, with anger against the poor quality of our preparation.

"To be Jewish and to stand up to it". Easy to say nowadays !.. Some are even proud of it and claim their difference. But in those days..! While, apart from the Danes, the whole world was finding some advantages in the destruction of the curse race. How could one live up to his fate ? Évelyne Franck who, according to the Judaic law ,was not a Jew, yet had her share of suffering, because at that time, she was not a little girl like the others, since her father was a Jew.

"Campaign", "Maintaining of order", no matter the words for Claude Maille. For him, it is the war, the fighting with arms, the ambushes, the wounded comrades, dead to defend the political option of the moment. In a simple, bare style we live here, the period of a young recruit who tells us about his time, without any bitterness.

Confined in its galaxy by the Big Bang our planet was formed during the various ice ages, from the oreopitheque of the mountains to our present time, some seventy billions human beings trod on it, to end up some twelve thousands centuries later with our brilliant ENA students and their political careers the memories of which will fade away with time. In front of the perennity of the small ammonite a life is insignificant in the immensity of the universe but priceless to its holder, more particularly for the literary people, who love biographies : an incomparable means to tell the truth to other people. As I lack imagination and out of sheer vice, I will try to make use of it.

This testimony is edifying and brings a strange note to the idea that one usually has about the Resistance movement. We learn there about the secret but sustained action of the police officers in the AJAX network founded by Achille Peretti and the courage of the military tribunals in the free zone, which did not hesitate to judge severely those collaborating with the occupying forces, chased under the control of Vichy... On top of that and first of all we see the despicable actions carried out in the name of the Resistance, mainly by the latest recruits, by the Last hour heroes which vented their anger at the time of the liberation on thousands of French people. Settling of accounts, sometimes turning into real purifying expeditions not always justified by the law of retaliation. We have not had the courage of Jules Pivot and we had to clear out the names mentioned, may the witness forgive us.

"My father this hussar..."etc. Thus starts a famous poem by Victor Hugo that we used to learn at school. Those verses are still coming back to my mind, and if I still write those same words, I do it thinking of my father who served in the Hussars in 1914. I remember his stories as he used to say, that he was telling me at night. For me, as a child, those were only stories, and I did not know that one day they would be part of the History of France. I remember them so well that I can tell them in my turn and write them in all their authenticity. It would be necessary to bring back to life those years of my childhood to know what were those evening in the villages at that time of the forties and fifties...the neighbours, friends, relatives used to gather to warm up near a wood fire, and that's where I used to listen to those stories. How many times have I hear those stories from the mouth of my father !! Sometimes I was asking him myself to tell me a story, then the Hussars were coming with their red and blue uniforms, the horses were prancing about, Heroine, his mare which was galloping at full speed, then the sad moments of the war and of captivity would come. All that was displayed in front of my amazed eyes. But let me tell you...!

Struck in his childhood by the stories of his father, Pierre Vivet tells us today the war of his hero. He does that with fondness, and perhaps some nostalgia, a certain regret of not taking part in that "adventure" of the Poilus, the soldiers of 1914/1978

One of my friend used to say when he wanted to make his point more precise or give more weight to a statement : "I know the power of words and the value of statements". Personally I do not think that any word can render exactly the tragedies of war nor the horror of the moments we went through in the concentration camps, the famous Nazi "Konzert". The radio, then television talked about and showed pictures of reports from the camps of Buchenwald, Mathausen, and Auschwitz, numerous journalists published short accounts about the life of deportees. Some of the latter made some statements to the press. The others told the story of their lives to their friends and kins. Who, not having gone through those tragic moments, did not think that the author or the narrator was exaggerating. The listener would accuse the orator of making up the story. So, what can we say about the adventure which was that of Denis Guillon : after fleeing on the bombed and machine gunned roads, after escaping to England and the school of British special commandos for sabotaging, after his parachute landing, and his life as a young resistance soldier in occupied France, until his arrest by the Gestapo, his time in jail, and eventually his deportation which he ended with dignity with an escape from the pull back column of the survivors in from of the allied armies...with the cruelty of the S.S. jailers. He realised in his book a summary of the live of a young man disturbed by war and he ends it with an essay about life in a concentration camp. The Inter Allied Commissions and most of all the American ones, could hardly believe in the veracity of the reports that we, the survivors, were showing to them, yet taking them to the very sites, They could see for themselves in the same way as St Thomas did, that Dante was only a feeble forerunner !! The heaps of corpses that they saw, were only a remain of the daily inferno we went through. More than 80% of our companions never saw that France they longed for so much. Their beautiful projects will never come into being. Those men along with their companions miraculously alive, all suffered tremendously. A new Homer will perhaps try one day to write a new "Iliad and Odyssey of 1939/1945 ? He would have to write one for each of us, so unique our sufferings have been, although we suffered them in common. It would also be necessary for the academicians to speed up the common use of very descriptive words to describe the horror in what the Shakespearean theatre considers as horrible and terrible. This is the reason why I ask whoever reads those memories which are so fragmentary to consider them as a minimum account. I would like all those who are called to serve in the occupying forces in Germany to be aware in that way, of the way in which we were treated by the men of Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, and Himmler. It would be necessary to have those reports read by all those who supported or gave their consent to the brutalities we were subjected to or even to the regime that inflicted them upon us. The reader will find in this book the feelings written down sporadically by a young man, first a resistant then a deportee. Numerous books were already written on that similar subject. None up to now reflects with so much accuracy and simplicity the day to day life of the resistants and the deportees. To everybody it will give an idea of what the occupation and the Nazi "Kulture" was. What can we say about our young friend ? That he came back from all those senseless and tragical adventures, deeply wounded in his flesh but having kept the simplicity of "He who was lucky enough to be a surviving witness" ! That he kept, despite all the physical and moral sufferings he went through, a humility the courage of those who have known the best and the worst in a young life. To describe him :. After his return from captivity and six years in the military sanatorium in the Black Forest, he had installed in his parents house a small mechanical train that he was operating from time to time in front of the kids of the neighbourhood. His eyes were beaming with joy and bounty... It was also one of the rare occasions when he would kneel down in front of somebody. Years have gone by and we are now in a state of latent war, and of international terrorism. The big ones of this world talk seated around a green carpet. Rather than trying to establish a durable and lasting peace, each one tries to secure its political and geographical positions in case of a new conflict ! A matter of supremacy ?? For us. The deportees from the concentration camp. This expression is a synonym for persecution, for depravation of freedom, of sufferings, of abuse of power. We do not want to be the accomplices of torturers whoever they are and wherever they come from ! Why is freedom so difficult to keep, to win, or to reconquer and why do we always have to fight for it ?

As pupil at the Lycée "Charlemagne" in Paris, Denis Guillon is 14 when he has to suffer the shame of German invasion, so with his pals after a few sabotage action, he "borrows" a kayak at Le Tréport and rows towards England. Picked up at sea, enlisted in the Special Air Service in Britain he is parachuted in France for a specific sabotage operation then gets back home in Alfortville before being arrested and deported. He then suffers Nazi cruelty in Ellrich, Gunzerode, Nordhausen until April 1945, when he escapes from the crowd of the deportees, wandering on roads of Harz, he meets with the American troops with which he will cooperate later on to look for the war criminals. This is for you, young people who will read this testimony, you will take the oath to follow the example of Denis Guillon, your comrade if my misfortune our country was to be subjected again to the yoke of the same oppression.

How can one perpetuate the memory of somebody one loved but in erecting a monument for him ? This is what undertook and achieved Alice Nughes-Bourchat, by collecting the documents, the scattered notes of her dear husband, so that her family, the future generations, history know or do not forget the actions of this man who was a hero. He was nominated to the "Ordre du Regiment" in Verdun in 1916, then to the "Order de la Brigade" in 1917 in Serbia, and then to the "Ordre du Corps d'Armée" for his actions in the overseas resistance in 1944, in Budapest while he had been kept by order at the head of the consular service of the French legation in Hungary. This testimony is an act of love. History will obviously retain the exemplar courage and the abnegation of Jean-Sylvestre Nugues-Bouchat, but most of all the affection and support of his partner, his girl friend, his wife, she whose presence was essential, and without whom nothing would have been possible.

The lines that are going to follow are the unwatered down narration of authentic facts. They are not written for some kind of soapy collection but to be used as a testimony. Some words may be choking, some descriptions sickening. I have decided that my story should be sincere. If I cancel certain parts of my work, losing some of its substance my narration will lose its strength and truth. The language coarse at time is used on purpose, the colloquial expressions are retained. As I have never set my mind on a career at the Quai D'Orsay I have always had the habit of talking frankly, I have always hated to hide my face, even if that meant looking through my fingers. This is not my way of being. In all the war, there is courage, cowardice, death, sex, love, abnegation, and disgust. Can we set aside some actions and glorify other, without cheating. If you do not like my book, then please close it and throw it in the trash can. There at least some of my memories will be in their right place. Who am I ? I was born on the 19-July-1918 at the end of what was supposed to be the last of all the wars, "la der des der", in the little village of Essoyes in the Aube Region. There lived and is buried Auguste Renoir, the famous painter. Until the age of nine, I had an uneventful childhood. My parents were poor, and my father had to go to town to find a job as an assistant barber. That was the beginning of my misfortunes. One night a friend of the family came in with a gun to ask my mother to escape with him taking me. That was to be a hellish night, and we ended up running away in darkness with this gunman who was scaring us. We lived for a year in Brion-sur-Ource, and I had turned into a little brat. I ran away and was discovered in the marshes where I was hiding. In the days that followed I was taken ill, the doctor had diagnosed an infantile paralysis. For a whole month I fought against death, lying on a small camp bed. But I made it though, after long hours of raving. I was walking like an old man, the loins crippled by illness. Eventually my mother decided to run away from that man and went to Troyes where I was able to go back to school and catch up with my studies. At 12 and a half years of age I got my "Certificat d'Etude" with a good grade. Some time later my father died. My mother put my immediately at work, and luckily it was a pleasant work in a binder factory. On the 12 of February 1934 a general strike `was declared in protest against the fascist actions of the Croix de Feu. on the 13th of February my boss fired me because he was himself the head of the Croix de Feu in the area. It was then the beginning of a wandering life, during which I had several jobs. My mother was living with a new companion, a labourer by his trade. With him I came across the tough law of those big building sites where the dregs of society often used to take refuge. I played football and did some cycling competitions. One night as I had not been able to meet with my pals, who had left early to go to sport training, I dropped by to say hello, to my former colleagues of work. On the doorstep of the factory I came across a young lady which did not even pay any attention to me, but my heart did go bang for her. My former manager saw me by surprise among the office staff. He asked me if I wanted to come back among them, because he said that he had a great esteem for me. I accepted with joy and few days later, I was near my little brunette, who although she gave me a few kisses which used to drive me crazy never wanted to go steady with me. She found that I was to much empty headed and too much of a skirt chaser. It is true that I had forgotten to be shy. There you are. You now know the main features of my personality. I am now going to hand over the pen to a new character who is going to come into being with his military uniform, His pals used to call him Fufu.

Marie-Pierre, 20 years of age, quickly puts in the manuscript by Gerald Fussinger in her Mac when I hear her exclaim : "That's what I call a man". In one word she had just summarise your feeling, dear reader has you avidly go through volume I and II of this exceptional testimony from he who from the line of the prisoners of war managed to stand up and say "No", that is to say to be a Resistant.

It is with utter modesty that I wrote this text. I did that most of all for my pleasure, without the desire nor the hope to see it published one day. This text is neither a novel, nor a tale. Its only pretension is to be a memory narrating a period of my life which was marked for ever in my mind at the age of barely twenty. I was almost thirty when it ended. I had spent ten years of my youth, those years could have been the most beautiful, they turned out to be the most painful. Of course the days, months, years were not all marked by fear, danger, and death; but those three words, fear, danger, and death have constantly been hanging over my destiny. Nonetheless from beginning to end, I have never experienced a real feeling of fear, not more a feeling of a blissful indifference, which would have allowed me to wander through life from one day to the next. No, I have always put up action plans, a muffled, obstinate and silent revolt brewing in me. Above all though, I had hope, faith, the real one, may God forgive my lack of humility, but my trust in him never left me, and it is thanks to my faith that in the darkest moments with resignation I was able to wait and accept the fate that providence had in store for me. So, I have the deep conviction that if the ordeals to which I was subjected had been brought to their completion I would not be there to write those lines. I convinced that only providence wanted that destiny - my destiny - and that I would not have been able to stop its will. Therefore I thank the Lord for the sufferings that he imposed upon me because without them I do not know what would have happened to his humble servant.

Dominique-Rosalinde Térèse makes a detailed account the 2292 days, the 55008 hours that he lived during the campaign of France and his captivity in Germany. Out of the 462293 characters that we made up to describe this part of life, more than one will attract the attention of the researchers, among them the account of the released prisoner, wandering on the roads of Harz, with "the Jew", who miraculously came out of the concentration world, yet so close, the existence and even less so "the détails" of which neither our comrade nor his companion in captivity knew about.

"Il y aura toujours en France suffisamment de patriotes respectueux du Droit de l'Homme pour que - sauf du fait de l'étranger vainqueur Occupant que n'arrêteraient ni vos Ligues, ni vos Lois - le racisme soit combattu, muselé, proscrit. Il n'est besoin ni de Lois, ni de Ligues qui sont offenses pour nos martyrs et pour la légendaire hospitalité de notre Peuple."

The fighters of darkness, soldiers of a clandestine army which claimed to be secret for a better efficiency, had neither the will nor the opportunity to keep exhaustive archives up to date, nor detailed diaries of their adventures, to prepare therefore some scientific material for the researcher, the historian, or the young student. More than half a century has gone by, it becomes indispensable to put down on paper, just like a shipwrecked fellow would cast his bottle at sea, the actual testimony of facts and actions that the memory not yet impaired by old age, manage to retain filtering only the essential. It is by putting together those testimonies, by their cross checking that the History of the actual Resistance movement may one day be able to come out of the mass of lies that too often distorted it, disfigured it, sometimes even dishonouring it. If I add my contribution to this building it is not out of vanity, nor pride, nor opportunism, I have gone past the age of playing around, and receiving satisfecit is not my objective. Too many would be patriots, later on received honours, sinecures, powers, those very persons who vilely collaborated with the enemy, talked, wrote, expatiated on a Resistance movement which they only knew at best (for those who thought it was cunning to play a subtle and equivocal double game) for a few months, a few weeks, a few days, a few hours even sometimes at the moment when it turned out that the resistance movement was triumphant, to try to blot out four years of servility toward the occupying forces !.. Too many of those rascals acquired huge powers within those last two republics, for the authentic fighters of the army of darkness to remain for ever silent, even if their silence was only made of contempt... That's what it was until then ! Because what we did with our companions, during the dark hours of the Clandestinity, it was simply and only our Duty, it did not require any publicity. On the other hand, our Honour, and in that respect there is no possible compromise, lays in the Voluntary actions that we accomplished, nothing, nor anybody was forcing us to fight, only the presence on our soil of the conquering enemy, (and it would have been so much easier to serve them !), and how had said the General De Gaulle, the idea that was animating us to defend "a certain idea of France". After so many years gone by, what strike me in the quality of those resistant that I knew well, those alive as well as those who died is the fact that they belonged to that good old class of common people, poorly gifted by life, school teacher, teachers, small lawyers, postmen, and women, telephonists, power mountain countrymen, restaurants owners, engineers, millers, office clerks, house wives, refugees without work nor accommodation, workers, doctors, young people with no future in sight, outlawed, chased, all small and obscure people, they were softy lot but "good servants" of the nation. They all endured hunger, cold, fear... some of them torture... up to the point of suffering deeply from it in their flesh, some even reached the point of dying. But those who survived the turmoil, had transformed their sufferings into a marvellous hope, their fear into a marvellous go ahead courage which very often was exceptional ! Of their redemption from pain they made a liberation which in turn became the Liberation of a whole People reduce to slavery. Above all, they had in common, beyond the political, religious and philosophical passions, the sense of honour, which implies a taste for duty, and the acceptance of sacrifice. They also had, -perhaps beyond reason-, the love for France, whether they were Spanish, Polish, Italian, Armenians, Arabs, French from all areas, from the center, from the border country, Corsicans, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Lay people, or Free masons. If we had opened their heart, we would have found engraved next to the flamboyant liberty, the word France. So... When I see, hear, or have to put up with the fuss made by some go betters who draw some immediate profit from an imaginary risk of antisemitism or racism in France ! In France, a land of asylum for all the oppressed from any race, or religion ! In France, where for more than 2000 years, the foreigner, more and better than the locals, and than in any other country in the world, is pushed toward the acme of honours, richness, and power !.. An irresistible urge grips me to shout in their face : This is certainly what our women our girls from the Resistance movement would have said, them who used to greet in their poor dwellings in dearth, risking death, torture, deportation, all those chased, without distinction of beliefs, doctrines, colour of the skin... who, moreover could cure, comfort, calm down, devote themselves, them who knew of the Army of Darkness, only the Duties, so rarely the Honours, but which honoured it even more than men in that respect ! It is this detestable context of our contemporary history that demands that the wall of silence be broken. May some authentic testimonies clear away at last all the ambiguous ambitions, all the shameless use of a saga that was told in letter of blood, letters of rage, by others, by good people.

Excluded from the Upper primary school of Aix en Provence because of hostile propaganda activities against the French state, Marcel Allibert joins the secret army and dedicate his youth to the Resistance, first of all as an organiser of chains of evasion in France, then supplier of the maquis in the Basses Alpes, to take part eventually in all the fighting for the liberation of the country as head of the Corps Francs of the secret army of Forcalquier. Promoted to the order of the division, his Croix de Guerre, he is saying today allows him to tell and write "The truth without setting store by the hostile impacts".

An American... To me, this will be always a man or men in uniform that have me liberated. Each country is defended when it has been attacked. We during the invasion of May 1940. English after our defeat. That is certainly them who have had the most merit, because they were alone. Russians have entered in war when they have been invaded, despite the pact Germano-Russian. Summons all, each is defended when it has been directly concerned. Concerning America, placement aside the attack of Japanese, Europe did not concern him economically in the departure. Politically in an again distant future, but the G.I. who came to liberate me after having participated to the landing on the beaches of Normandy, came, admit from Texas, and not knew where it disembarked, either in what this European conflict that risked to subtract him the life concerned him. Then bravo !...

As the odour of his cigarettes, his jazz music of the period, today again fills my heart unforgettable souvenirs.

Whole what I have written on my newspaper is strictly lived, without that no passage has been fictionalized. Despite the asthenia, my youth has been a such point marked by this war, that tiny details have remained me engraved. These documents, I dedicate them first to my mother, because of the parents, it is certainly her who has the most suffered and then, to all mothers whose son is dead for France, because they have given to France what was the most dear. I put me again now many questions. How Hitler would have makes his war, (it would have-it been able) if he had not signed the Pact Germano-Russian and misleaded these last to the point to make the trade with them until his attack of Russia ? Non forget that our navy had to patrol in 1939-1940 to give the hunting to soviet freighters which supplied the Germany Nazi in nickel bought from Canada . Why the Vatican of the period has left to assassinate without never nothing denouncing and that more, had facilitated the escape of S.S. to countries of South America, the war finished ? It is to wonder if this was not, a news time, wars of religions with the extermination of Jews wished.

12 January 1942... Our fathers, our grand fathers carried out themselves the arrest of Raymond-Pierre Liénard and kept him in our prisons and confinement camps. 30 July 1944... The allied army have been fighting for 55 days already on French soil to release us from German oppression and yet...It is our civil servants themselves, the policemen, Gendarmes, GR, railway men who took part in the holocaust, in the German Got, by giving up Raymond Pierre Liénard and the others. Were all the Lagerältester, Kapos, Vorarbeiter, Schreiber of the Arbeitstatistik, all Germans ? Young people when you read this testimony, do meditate and with me weep on the great cowardice of man.

Distressed, yes, I am completely distressed when I read the diaries of the war 1914-18 that my brother just showed me and that my father wrote in Switzerland, after being release from confinement. Gripped with emotion and admiration, I went passionately through those simple pages, written in a direct style, without bombast. A career officer and an infantry captain graduated from St Cyr, my father got mobilised in the very first days of 1914, and as far back as I can search in my memory, I seems to remember very well this marking day, when at the age of four I was sitting on the good old mare Leda in front of my father who was taking me around the Place St Cézaire in Arles, when he was getting ready to leave. I would laugh, clap in my hands, unheeding, unaware that this fateful day would mark the beginning of an horrible war, a war that would be called the "Great War". How many sufferings, what an hecatomb right from the beginning of those battles where our ill equipped, with their light blue attire, encumbered with heavy packages were mowed down by this terrible weapon that was coming into existence on the battle fields...the machine gun, spreading its flurries of bullets on our men, and killing our officers, stupidly dressed in conspicuous clothes, and with the red trousers so visible in the plain. If my father could so forcefully remember this famous day of the 20th of august 1914 when he was so deeply wounded in front of Dieuze, then taken prisoner afterwards with his ambulance, I myself keep in my memory the fateful date of the 10th of may, It is not what you think. It is not the day wen a socialist puppet acceded to the presidency of France to bring it down to its knees. No, I am talking about the 10th of may 1940, when the Germans invaded Belgium, and which was to mark for me the beginning of a terrible adventure, but I will get back to that later. As my father would write, he was thinking very often of his wife Odette, our mother, during those terrible hours, and he was also thinking of his three sons. Three sons he can be very proud of, if he sees us from up there. Three sons that made up a great family at the service of their country. We were three boys, the first two of whom were following each other closely, they were following almost parallel studies. The first one, George had an adolescence remarkably marked by and intensive training for admission to the St Cyr school where he was to be highly successful. He will graduate as an officer, after a very good military career, punctuated by the Rif war in which he took part, he became afterwards a clandestine intelligence officer during the Resistance movement, for which he was arrested and deported from 1943 to 1945, ending his military career as a General. I think he will also put down on paper the highlights of his military life and sufferings as a deportee. The second son, Robert, was as brilliant as the elder one. exceptionally gifted, with a prodigious memory, he could learn very easily everything, and he passed immediately the admission exam to the Institute National Agronomique, he graduated as an agronomist engineer, and as he wanted to specialise he spent two years in training at the École des Eaux et Forêts in Nancy. He Spent most of his career in Grenoble, a country of mountains, forests, and lakes. If I talk about him in the past, it is, unfortunately because being an assistant conservationist for the forestry commission a stupid car accident was to remove him from the affection of his family. This gentleman was a skilled sportsman, he loved tennis, very good skier. At the top of his form, it took a stupid tragedy to have him disappear, after a brilliant career marked also by war during which he was commander in the reserve. I was the third one, Maurice, much younger than my brothers, I was the younger one that should have been a girl. I was a boy normally constituted anyway, and I am now going to set about telling you of the various episodes of my life, without any pretension, I will divide it in several chunks, those there were the most significant to me. As I am not the kind of person to show off, unlike many people we have seen on TV, I waited for a long time before writing a few lines about my life, and especially on my "war". Then I saw an outrageous TV program this summer about the liberation, a program that sickened me completely. ... The F.T.P liberated France by themselves, they did everything !!.. and the other !.. truth had to be restored for the information of our children, and for the glory of our country, because those braggarts have only too quickly forgotten the German-soviet alliance of the beginning, nor that they joined the convoy afterwards, when Staline changed side. I therefore decided to write, all the more spurred as I was by reading the accounts of battles that my father wrote. In the present state of deliquescence of France and faced with the loss of the moral values of this country, I had to find comfort writing those few lines dealing with the defence of our country in front of the occupying forces during what was later called "the second World War". The following account will not be exhaustive, because my machine to go back in time, my memory is somehow failing more than forty years after those events. Anyway some facts have impressed me deeply and I think to be able to reconstitute them. I dedicate those sincere pages to the memory and as a tribute to my father, and to my brother Robert.

After taking part in Belgium to the first great battle of tanks of the war, Maurice Pelissier left on boat on the 29th of may 1940 in Dunkerque bound for Southampton, and from there goes at sea again bound for Cherbourg, where he finds a France in complete disarray. War is over ! The Resistance then starts with the "groupement Servois des F.F." of the East Cher region which operates around Bourges until the liberation of the country. As to the style of this account the reader will judge it according to his political feeling. There remains harsh at times, but full of sincerity, no doubt important to the historian.

His nickname of "Malgache", come from the last colonial stay of Léon Bertrand in Diego-Suarez, from which he came back two days before war breaks out, a widow with a little girl of two. World war II was to deprive him of his leaves and send him on the war front with his unit, the 221 th unit of Colonial artillery. Refusing to retreat without obvious necessity, he held, with his group, a position which enabled him to destroy 48 German tanks, he never understood the collapse of 1940 and the occupation that was to follow. Surrounded by the S.S., taken prisoner, this small group left on foot for the camps of Pomerania, through Belgium and Holland. It was easy to escape but the German could as easily shoot the civilians found helping a prisoner, and Léon Bertrand quickly decided to come back on his own from the German territory. The life in the Stalag was to get him to postpone his escape, in order to help his companions, to prepare their channels of evasion, to have the sick being taken care of, to obtain some better conditions of life, to listen to Radio London for them. That may seem simple nowadays, but at the time it would take an courage as exceptional as it would prove enduring, and that form of resistance was in the memory of Leon Bertrand much more worthwhile than the short period of the Maquis. His 5th attempt of evasion proved successful in 1944, and he then arrives in a France the atmosphere of which he does not know. He quickly gave up his idea of going to England, and join a Maquis group in the Dijon area, where his parents from Franche-Comté had settled. He quickly understands that his goal as a soldier of freeing his country, would be better serve by as small mobile unit, lead and animated by himself, as his captivity had given him trust in his ability to lead men. This is the story he is now delivering to us.

After several attempts, Léon Bertand, prisoner in the inhumane Pomerania, manages to escape and goes into the Maquis to create and lead a unit of Resistance, the "Compagnie de Madagascar", which will became famous in the Côte d'Or region, around Dijon from June 1944 to the 11th of November of that same year. It is the daily log book of this Maquis that Ginette opens for us today. Ginette who took part in the fighting, and who was nominated for liaisons under the fire, but which her husband removed because he said "People would think, that this nomination comes from me, because I am in love, so be happy with mine !", also of this constant honeymoon that her husband the "Malgache" would give.

This testimony compiled in 1945, right after the miraculous return of Simone Rohner from deportation in Germany, gives us a detailed account of her descent to Nazi inferno. From the confinement to the prison of Dijon and Romainville, to the deportation in Ravensbruck and Hanover, you will shiver, reader, on hearing of the suffering of those women, who were able to say no, anyway and always. No ! that meant Resisting, that is to say existing. And if, just like us, on reading the manuscript you clench your fists, it will be to make the promise to yourself of bashing whoever in the future will try to oppress us.

After the liberation of the camps, numerous books have already been published on that subject. For the most part they have been written in the heat of the return. Their authors exhilarated by the return to normal life, not having overcome the miracle of their survival, only managed to produce, pages it has to be said that have something artificial about them. The misfortunes and sufferings were depicted most of the time with colours that were too vivid, colours that we would not recognise. The scene of sadism reminded us more of Grand Guignol than of the agonising darkness of the cubicles, the S.S. were too often depicted as stereotypes. The reader who most of the time had kept his common sense, would close the book, and remain sceptical. Some time later, with a few months gone by, we saw being published some novels, confessions, memories, from which laws are coming out, laws so special, belonging to the slavery of the Nazi camps. Today a young resistant of 20, who had joined the Vengeance network, to which he had brought all the freshness, and enthusiasm of youth, tell us with a very moving simplicity his ordeal in four different camps of Nazi Germany. First of all he tells us of his arrest, his prison, of his passage in Compiegne, of his arrival in Buchenwald, of his departure in "Transport". We find throughout those passages, all the moods of this young detenee, who from place to place was trying to understand the world he was going to have to survive in. Without glitter, he has us discover his thoughts, stratagems, his tricks, and all that sounds so true, that those who were deported recognise themselves there, recognise their companions, and neighbours. But the detention goes on, we then arrive in Dora, where the young author takes us to the very limit of life. Those pages are in my opinion remarkable, when we see men gradually sinking in darkness, from which some will miraculously emerge, but nobody had yet told us of this dreadful trip. In Belsen we are taken to the area of summary executions, where the injections of benzene were carried out, and it is at that point that the young author reaches the acme. The anguish he is generating lingers long after the reader has closed the book. Not a sentence, not a word digress from a terrifying reality. At last the liberation comes about, stunning the detenees in a way that it will take several months for them to recover, this astonishment is described in a few lines with the same simplicity and strength, and those lines are not followed by any comments, thus conferring to this book all its value as a testimony. I think that "Pour delit d'esperance" (Guilty of hope), through its extreme simplicity is one of the best books that has been published on the camps.

In this testimony that Michel Fliecx wrote in 1945, right after coming back from the Nazi camps, we have the spirit of Resistance blowing all the way through, it is revolt at its most. It is also through the first, second, third and fourth real, an agonising descent to hell, with its increasingly pitiable lines of tortured people bound for the inferno. The extraordinary physical strength of Michel Fliecx, his will power, his ability to cope, enable Michel Fliecx to put up with this life, to survive to come back from Nazi inferno. His testimony full of real authenticity, of an exceptional precision, is not one among all the documents on the K.L. It is a direct and rich source of informations on the channels, the methods, the rhythms used by the hitlerian regime to eliminate its opponents, and all those it regarded as unworthy of living, it is kind of inventory, a living proof of the strengths and weaknesses of the system.

What a peculiar story is that of Pierre Beuvelet, a studious and pious young man getting ready to take holy orders and teach, sitting down for the housework to help his father raise his sisters: a casual post office assistant, soldier during the "phoney war", "mole" introduced in the militia on the request of his superiors in the Brutus network, finally he got betrayed and denounced to the Gestapo, ending up after going through Compiègne and Auschwitz to the concentration camp of Flossenburg, released by the American forces, repatriated, going back and carrying on his military career, at the point where he had left it before his arrest. His testimony has only one goal, and he explains it in the epilogue, that of preventing memory from fading away, to ward off oblivion ! The account that Pierre Beuvelet make of his life as a resistant and a deportee is astonishingly human. The hero rubs shoulders with the traitor and the victim, the torturer, in his continuous fight which takes us to the origins of mankind, and of the great religions: It is the struggle between good and evil, between darkness and light, it is the Taoist yin and yan closely intertwined.