The Sorrow and the Pity Page #4

asking the people to stand up and fight,

to resist,

to remain free.

The owner of this anti-defeatist paper,

Pierre Laval,

a deputy for uvergne, was,

at the same time, preparing for surrender.

The last government of the Third Republic

slowly moved southwards.

Paul Reynaud wanted to keep fighting,

but Philippe Ptain was already

taking charge.

In Briare,

Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden

met with their allies for the last time.

I've always felt

that Reynaud wanted to continue,

that he remained calm and firm.

Everyone was

in a very difficult position then.

I also believe, and this is something

he told both Churchill and me,

that he wasn't very happy

having Ptain as a part of his government.

-He'd foreseen the difficulties?

-Yes, already in Briare.

Now, I was a young soldier in World War l,

and for me, Ptain was the hero of Verdun.

But his character had changed.

That's to be expected with age.

I'm sure he was opposed to the idea

of your cities being destroyed,

because he spoke of it at dinner,

saying, "It's awful seeing

our lovely cities destroyed."

and I had to answer, "Yes, I understand.

"It's hard for an Englishman to say this,

but there are worse things

"than the destruction of cities."

But I don't think he was convinced.

We flew over France at a very low altitude.

-Hedgehopping?

-Yes.

In June, there's nothing quite like

the Norman and Breton countryside.

and I remember,

as if it only happened yesterday,

I remember thinking it was lovely,

but would I ever see it again?

and it seemed rather unlikely that I would.

Then the political climate changed

and became unbearable in Bordeaux.

Suddenly, treason was everywhere.

There was a will to surrender,

and a desire to get along

with the victors at any price.

Anglophobia, ever-present in France,

resurfaced with new vigor.

and all this went hand in hand

with a horrible kind of cynicism.

The military leaders, the ones who had

messed up, weren't even mentioned.

Instead, people blamed

absolutely everything on Lon Blum,

the Front Populaire and so forth.

and so we consoled ourselves

for the downfall of our nation

by getting petty revenge

in matters of internal affairs,

a trend which, as you know,

continued long afterwards.

On June 16,

the government met in Bordeaux.

Paul Reynaud was defeated by

the deputies who refused to leave France

and Ptain became

the head of government.

Adolf Hitler's elite S.S. troops

have invaded Vichy.

I felt terribly humiliated,

as I had been sent on a mission

on an English motorcycle

and was heading to Paris, when I saw

the Germans going the other way.

Now, being rather absent-minded,

I saw there were some people

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