TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/090489/09048900.007

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 9.0 KB | 206 lines

                                                                                WORLD WAR II, Page 46

REMEMBRANCE


"I Heard the Sound of Planes"

By Genevra Willey

    Now 83, Willey was living with her husband Jim, an Army
captain, ten miles from Pearl Harbor.

    It was a quiet morning, and we were lying in bed, talking
about what the day would bring. Suddenly I heard the sound of
planes, and I said, "Those aren't our planes." Jim called his
base and asked if he should come down. They said no.

    The sound got louder, and he called back. "Get the hell down
here," they told him. By then there was no doubt we were being
attacked. They were machine-gunning the road -- dirt splashing
all over. A bomb dropped about 600 yds. from our house. I went
out on the back porch, and the planes were swooping so low I
could see the pilots inside.

    The next day friends moved in with us. Their house had been
riddled with machine-gun fire. We blacked out the house and had
seven kids sleeping on cots in the living room.


    "The Soldiers Behaved Well"      By ARLETTY

    Born in 1898, Arletty was France's most famous actress when
war broke out. With such other French artists as Maurice
Chevalier, Jean Marais and Sacha Guitry, she performed through
the Nazi Occupation. After Paris was liberated, she was
imprisoned for consorting with a German officer.

    The Occupation was really very peaceful. The soldiers
behaved well. After a while, we ceased to notice them. The poor
people suffered terribly, but we artists always found ways to
buy coal or wood. As for food, we didn't eat a lot because we
were all looking after our figures. Makeup was hard to come by,
as were silk stockings. We used to wear Pan-Cake makeup on our
legs, so it would seem as if we were wearing stockings. As an
artist, I was committed only to my art, so it made sense for me
to work. But people were jealous of my success and were only
too glad to arrest me for a love affair that was none of their
business.


    A "Very Polite" Hitler     By EDDA MUSSOLINI CIANO

    Ciano, 78, is the eldest daughter of Mussolini, who had her
husband Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italy's wartime Foreign Minister,
executed for treason in January 1944. Her Rome flat is decorated
with plaques bearing the likeness of her father, who was shot
dead by partisans in 1945.

    I was at a hotel in Turin when it was first bombed (by the
British) in June 1940. We all went downstairs to take shelter in
the cellars. Beniamino Gigli (a famous operatic tenor) was there
with his family, and so was Gianni Agnelli (now Fiat's
chairman). Gigli was terrified of the bombs and exclaimed, "Oh,
my God, I'm going to lose my voice!"

    I didn't see the Fuhrer as the caricature he has since been
made out to be. He was very polite and had a soft spot for me. I
maintain that it was not the Fuhrer who wanted things to happen
the way they did.


    Life in the Resistance     By JACQUES CHABAN-DELMAS

    Premier of France from 1969 to 1972, Chaban-Delmas, now 74,
headed a spy network in Paris for the Resistance, filching
economic secrets. He was the only leader to stay in France
throughout the war.

    Most men in the field worked an average of 40 days before
they were arrested, but I managed to keep going for 3 1/2
years. I must have changed addresses at least 20 times, and I
changed my name so often I would momentarily forget which alias
I was using. I would drop my information in "mailboxes" around
Paris manned by the Resistance. It could be a restaurant, even
a rock near a tree -- the places kept changing from week to week
to keep ahead of the Germans.


    "It Was Incredibly Macabre"      By OTTO VON HABSBURG

    The son of Karl, Austria's last Emperor (1916-19), Habsburg
is now 76.

    The evening the government fled Paris, former U.S.
Ambassador to Belgium Hugh Gibson invited us to a dinner at the
Ritz with Clare Boothe Luce and a collaborator of Polish
General Vladislav Sikorski. It was incredibly macabre: the city
was two-thirds surrounded by German troops, the sky was lit up
with artillery fire, and there, at the Ritz, everything was as
it had always been: waiters in tails, the food, the wine. The
proprietor asked us to sign his guest book. Years later, I
learned from Field Marshal Rommel's chief of staff that he and
Rommel were the next ones to sign, a few days later.

    We left Paris the next day for Bordeaux, where we arranged
for Portuguese visas for as many Austrians as we could. By that
time I was on a list of 49 persons the Nazis had asked the
French to hand over. When we arrived at the Spanish frontier, it
was closed on order of the Germans. I thought this was the end.
But a customs official gave me a sign to follow him, led me
behind the customs shed and said, "I know exactly who you are.
Have you heard that resistance will continue? A certain General
de Gaulle has called on us to continue. I shall leave for
England tonight, and I could not care less how many of you I let
pass." And so we reached Spain.


    The Unsated Ogre     By JEAN LACOUTURE

    The French historian and De Gaulle biographer, now 68,
thought that after swallowing Czechoslovakia and Poland, the
Nazis would stop.

    People thought the ogre had eaten and would be sated. Sooner
or later there would be some sort of American mediation, Under
Secretary of State Sumner Welles would come to Europe and say,
Be reasonable, stop. "The white Marne," they called it (an
allusion to the World War I battle) -- a battle that would shed
no blood.

    When I got to Bordeaux (after the Germans had attacked and
were nearing Paris), my parents had heard De Gaulle's June 18
broadcast and were already Gaullists. I had just been through
this cataclysm -- a debacle, the country slipping away -- and I
thought, This guy is crazy. I was for an armistice. What else
could we do?

    My greatest shock during the Occupation was the day I
encountered an old lady I knew in Bordeaux. I didn't know she
was Jewish, and I saw her walking down the street, feigning not
to recognize me and trying to hide the yellow star sewn to her
coat. I was filled with absolute shame. And I knew we were
living in a terrible world.


    "Treated Like Pariahs"      By ELISABETH DE MIRIBEL

    Now 74, De Miribel was an aide to General Charles de Gaulle
in London when he led the Free French forces.

    When I first arrived in London, there were 800 Frenchmen.
After France capitulated to Germany six months later, there
were 20. Most returned to join the Vichy government since they
knew the English were going to fight. Those who were about to
return to France treated us like pariahs. They would cross the
street to avoid running into us. They thought we were fools. I
received a letter from my father prohibiting me from using my
name in the service of the "Judeo-Communist-Gaullist
conspiracy." He was very Petainist until the Germans marched
into Paris; then he joined the Resistance.


    ". . . It Was Awful"      By ROBERT MERLE

    Merle, 81, was a French army interpreter for the British
forces when captured at Dunkirk. He is the author of the novel
Weekend at Dunkirk.

    The British sent all kinds of boats. Big ones, little ones,
paddle steamers, yachts, everything. It was gorgeous weather,
hot and beautiful. Guys were lying on the dunes, shirts off,
watching the combat between the British and German fighters.
When they'd see a German fighter go down, they'd applaud.

    The most extraordinary thing was that the Germans did not
machine-gun the thousands of men on the beach. The Stukas did
attack the boats, and I remember one in particular, a paddleboat
that had been bombed and caught fire. There were maybe 100 to
200 men grouped in the back of the boat because the front was
in flames. But the wind kept whipping the fire back on them, and
the men were crying. It was a kind of moan, but a collective
moan, an inhuman moan. I tried to drag a man out of the water
and up onto the beach, but there was an obstacle. It was half
a human body. The head and shoulders were gone, the torso cut
right away . . . Ah, it was awful.


    Living with the Blitz     By BRENDA SCOTT

    The wife of a London physician, Scott was 17 and living with
her family on the city's outskirts during the blitz.

    My father had an air-raid shelter built in the garden. It
was very claustrophobic, like a small ship's cabin with four
bunks. We had some books, some torches, emergency rations and
some sort of electrical supply. We slept in siren suits, which
were like jump suits; mine was air-force blue, and my mother's
was burgundy.

    You could always hear the Germans coming because their
planes had such a distinctive engine noise. It wasn't so bad if I
could be outside and see, but it was this feeling of being
almost in a tomb. The awful thing was not to be doing anything.
But we all knitted things for the armed forces, and so we would
take our knitting out to the shelter.