Love in a Time of War

          The German army marched into Chilon on June 24, 1940. Josette Lafleur was among hundreds of people who watched the soldiers hang the Nazi flag from the balcony of the town hall. The German commander, with the mayor and police chief of Chilon standing uncomfortably at his side, addressed the assembled crowd in poor French. He promised a fair occupation -- but the plaza was ringed by dozens of German soldiers, rifles and sub-machine guns at the ready.

Josette walked home with her friend Lise. "What of our husbands?" Neither of them had news of their husbands who were conscripted soldiers.

"They will return soon," answered Lise confidently, not daring to mention what both feared -- that their husbands were dead or prisoners of the Germans. "But until then, how will we live?"

"I have food in my cellar and my garden grows well. The children and I can endure the summer."

"By fall surely everything will be normal again."

Josette's house was at the edge of the village. It was of stone, two stories in height, ancient and faded in grandeur, surrounded by well-tended gardens of flowers and vegetables. Her husband Antoine had inherited the house. His salary as a schoolteacher was inadequate for its upkeep. Josette, of modest parentage, loved the house despite its primitive discomforts.

Her children, Marie, ten years old, and Claude, eight years old, were waiting on the front porch. She had told them to stay inside. They were excited rather than frightened by the arrival of the Germans. "Mama," asked Marie, "Did you see the motorcycles?"

"And the tanks and the machine guns?" added Claude. "Will we go to school now that the Germans are here?"

"Yes, of course," answered Josette. "We must continue our lives as normal."

"When will Papa come home?" asked Marie.

"Soon, I hope." She was most worried about the loss of the monthly stipend paid her by the French army as the wife of a soldier. She hardly missed her husband, but she had no income of her own. Married at age 17, a mother at 18, she had never had a job.

An insistent knock at the door came the next morning. Josette was dressed in her gardening clothes, a sleeveless, wrap-around dress of faded gray and white stripes printed on thin cotton cloth. It fell to just below her knees and had a loose, v-shaped neck that revealed the hint of a cleft between her breasts. Her hair was tied into a pony tail and hung loosely down her back.

She rushed to the door, brushing from her face a wayward lock of light brown hair and pulled the heavy wooden door open, expecting Lise or another of her friends. Instead three German soldiers in uniform stood on her stone porch. One of them held a submachine gun in his hands; the other two had pistols holstered on their hips.

"Madame," said the oldest of the three, clicking his heels together and saying in heavily accented French, "Lieutenant Albert Krueger will be staying with you in this house."

"What?" Josette asked in astonishment. "What is this?"

"Our German soldiers need housing. You have a large house. You may easily accommodate the Lieutenant."

"But," she began, flustered, a nervous hand tightening the loose cloth of her dress against her throat.

"He will take meals with you when he is not on duty."

"I have no food to share. I must feed my children and I have no money."

"It is decided," the soldier said, and the three pushed their way through the door. They looked around the house. "The Lieutenant will need a room of his own. You will have that."