Read Online Andrée's War by Francelle Bradford White - Free Book Online Page B

young twenty-year-old who had given up officer training at Saint-Cyr to enrol as a law student. His thick, wavy blond hair and blue eyes lent him a somewhat Nordic appearance and, being a little older than his fellow students, his confident and authoritative manner endeared him to many of his contemporaries. Noël gathered his new friends around him and rallied them to resist the occupation. It was not long before Alain was attending his impromptu lectures, followed by many hours of heavy drinking in the smoky atmosphere of the Café Harcourt (whose previous patrons included Oscar Wilde) on the boulevard Saint-Michel. The two students became firm friends and Alain’s plan for his underground news-sheet evolved into a joint venture.
    With a heavily censored press and no broadcast media, news travelled very slowly. Listening to the BBC, a lifeline to the outside world, was forbidden and owning a radio could lead to immediate arrest; despite this, Edmond owned a radio, which he kept in the cellar but brought up regularly to listen to BBC broadcasts. In search of assistance, Alain asked his brother-in-law to introduce him to Henri Jeanson, the editor of
Aujourd’hui
– later to become one of France’s most prominent newspapers. Jeanson, now in his early forties, had become friendly with Steve Passeur back in the 1920s when working as a film critic. In December 1939, Jeanson had been sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for his published pacifist reports but was later released by the Minister of the Interior, Monsieur Campinchi. He had been appointed editor of
Aujourd’hui
in August 1940 and the first issue was released in September. * Alain and Noël were allowed to make regularvisits to Jeanson’s office, listening out for any scraps of information that might be helpful in compiling
La France
. On one occasion, pushed for time, the pair met at the Café Harcourt to draft a forthcoming article. Just as they finished writing, a group of Nazi soldiers walked into the café and began a search of the customers, demanding to see their ID cards. Alain and Noël managed to move to the back of the café and escape through a window, but they vowed to be more cautious in future. *
    By September 1940, Andrée had been working at Police Headquarters for just under a year. Efficient, hard-working and unassuming, she was popular among her colleagues, had made several friends and moved along the corridors of her office easily without attracting attention. Indeed, her discreet personality was one of her most important assets as a member of the Resistance.
    As plans for the first edition of
La France
continued, Alain and Noël recruited two more students from the Sorbonne: Yves de Kermoal, a fun-loving, tall, fair aristocrat (whose father, a retired marine superintendent, would later record and pass on details of the German police watch along the ‘forbidden zone’ of Brittany’s coastline), and Pascal Arrighi, an intensely intellectual law student. †
    The close friendship these four men developed would last well over sixty years and their respective skillsets created the basis on which Alain’s Resistance network could move forward. Eager to ensure the first edition was a success, Alain invited his sister out to dinner to discuss how best to go about printing and copying the paper in the quantities they needed. Walking into a restaurant near the Champs-Élysées, brother and sister sat down and Alain watched his sister look at the menu as he thought about the enormous risks he was about to ask her to undertake.
    The restaurant owner, who knew Andrée and Alain’s family well, smiled sadly as he approached their table and began explaining the difficulties he had had since the occupation of Paris. Only yesterday several German officers in uniform had walked into his restaurant and asked for a table; their behaviour had been impeccable and they showed great appreciation