CALLASSA. Vichy France. Mai. 1944

CALLASSA

Vichy La France. Mai. 1944

“Les alliés nous sauveront, mon amour, oui, ils le feront.”

“Non, pas à temps, mais pour l’espoir.”

Written by Callassa for her sweet darling Philip Hurd-Wood

“The allies will save us. My love, yes they will.”

“No, not in time, but for hope.”

Translated from French

I wanted to write about the last thing anyone would. But for a mere hour I leave most unsaid, regarding the menace that besieged these five years. This is about Calla, therefore it is about everything.

Calla was very heavily pregnant, overdue, and it was our grand misfortune that we hadn’t reached the arranged point of meeting for the cell of the Maquis and with instructors of the British SOE. There was to be a medical nurse waiting there, it had been arranged, but unfortunately we wouldn’t make it. She couldn’t walk and was to give birth at any moment during this, no less than time of Hellish torture.

We were hiding beneath the floorboards of a derelict house that we had used during activities of sabotage staged against the Nazi occupiers. The space, used to hide explosives, was unable to accommodate us and I knew we were being closely pursued and I had not told her how close, though she knew well the reason why we were here. We had no food and only a single bottle of water I had found above. If they came and went away we could get out and I could deliver our child. Heaven forbid if they arrived with dogs and at the very same time I had to assist the delivery, with a hand upon her mouth and for there not to be the hint of cry. I say the latter was increasingly likely. Allegiance to the partisans or even a suspicion of being such, the resistance movements, as most know through experience, invites only cruelty and certain death. This was why I had joined the movement. While at Le Paradis I was witness to many British soldiers being executed by German troops. I saw them, almost one hundred, all being shot to death and I still hear the sound of the shooting and the terror. I saw the Nazis up close, the maniacally evil killers, yes and I still do, all the time. I feel that same terror brought, but that said, though I can destroy railway tracks and blow up ammunition trains I cannot place a gun at someone’s head and pull the trigger. It’s the way I am made. I have told it so countless times. I have destroyed tracks of trains transporting people away to the death camps. Yes, some managed to escape but not as many as ideally could have. Firefights with the Germans results in partisan casualties. Petain and Laval have everything to answer for.

I knew vaguely through the lines of intelligence that there was expected to be an allied landing on the coast at June month and though it was the news we had fought for it was of no assistance to Calla and I at this time. If we had been elsewhere there would perhaps be a mood of optimism but here, our confine was devoid of air and dark in the extreme and I, made blind to the woman I dearly loved. She had instructed me on the delivery, the procedure, but I couldn’t see to do, only feel and because of my position barely able to do that.

I met Calla during late 1939, when I was barely eighteen and on my way to becoming a teacher of arithmetic in the Pas-de-Calais. It is so vivid in my mind, almost as I might step out from here and continue in that paradisiacal time we shared together. It was during an afternoon that she drew my attention while standing in the street with a woman I was later informed was her mother. I took to walking close and saw the sweetest girl ever, with her dark hair, brown eyes and smile that set me alight. She was always with her mother so I had little opportunity to converse but eventually I did, by chance, while she was alone hurrying with bread in a basket. Now I knew her name; Calla. Both she and her mother baked bread and sold it to the locals. The first time we sat together she held a croissant to my lips and it had a smear of her red lip-stick upon the crust. Calla, I was of a mind, meant contagious in the most beautiful of ways. How perfect those moments of our innocence were than these, now, so quickly it seems the years have passed by us, through these, what has been the most cruel time.

She was gripping my hands tightly and whispering almost inaudibly into my hair.

“Are you there?” she had asked me.

“Of course I am,” was my reply and I was concerned by the question.

“My darling, my love, I jest with you but I must tell you I am . . . . oh, I am hurting awfully and . . . I haven’t washed for days . . . Whatever must you think of me? What?”

“You are the most beautiful woman,” I told her. “It is of no matter.”

And she began again, her words forced and distorted, “We are going to live in England, at Burnham, in county Essex and . . . among the free and sit close to the river you told me all about with the swans.”

She was confused, likely feverish. It wasn’t me but an English soldier who had told us both. I was more concerned for her now.

The aroma of her body in the enclosure was not an issue, my delivering the baby silently and safely was. I could feel she was soaking wet with perspiration but much more than that, it was time. I had a soft blanket at my feet and managed to draw it toward us so the baby would have something clean. In our extreme urgency it was all I’d been able to muster and I felt completely inadequate and I hated feeling this way.

” Calla.” I whispered to her and immediately she was shaking my hands.“You must not utter a sound.”

“Oh . . .Oh . . . place the baby against my breast. That way . . .there, there . . . there will be no cries.”

“Shhhhhhh. Say nothing now.”

I hoped that she was right about the baby being silent but I had grave doubts. I was sure I could deliver in my blind but determined way but what if the Nazis were walking above us, their footsteps and voices pounding into her muffled cries? The sniff of a dog or the hint of a sound and they would know we were here and shoot into the floor. It was likely they would do so anyway and leave. My heart was pounding and pounding. I had to care for her. I had to. She had no one else.

When the baby’s tiny head began to appear I could feel it in the palm of my hand. What a feeling. My mind was better occupied now. The sac she had told me to feel for had already broken and so the baby’s head was free, so it appeared to me. I was desperately trying to position myself so be better able but as all the attempts prior, I was left to lie by her side and perform my very, very best. I was to allow the baby to slide gently and not to pull. That was her instruction. Not to pull. When it arrived into my hands the baby felt very slippery and then I realised my attention was away from her. She hadn’t uttered a single sound. Awkwardly I reached to her head and touched her face, terribly hot. I would deal with the umbilical cord as it came and had a washed clean knife in my pocket.

Then I could hear heavy sounds above us. Walking, talking and there was a muffled tap at the same place above my head.

“Ich weiß. Ich weiß. Hier sind sie hingegangen. Du hast das behauptet. DUMMKOPF. “

”ACHTUNG. SIE KONNEN FALLEN SEIN!”

They were dragging away the rug but the floor was made to appear untouched. I knew very well about masking and disguise, the room made quickly to appear that any occupants had fled. Now the tapping above my head was more distinct. Tap. Tap. Tap. I knew they would have a dog trained to sniff for people so I had left urine on the walls and also smeared what little food we had left outside the door and at the window.

The lull was so very intense I was almost losing consciousness and I knew the baby was suckling his mother. I knew it was a boy, yes, but had done nothing more than acknowledge the utterly miraculous fact of the living being. I wanted everything for my beauty and could give her nothing.

“FEUERN UND GEHEN. GEHEN. EILE! EILE! EILE!“

“EILE!”

Suddenly, with the baby she began moving and much to my consternation and terror, the attempt to roll herself on top of me failed and the baby was beneath her throat. I didn’t prevent her. I should have done the very same thing. I knew why she had. Yes, I did.

The bullets came searing through and into her body, missing me but for two that passed through my hand. I could hear the firing continuing at the walls, the ceilings and the floors of the other rooms.

When the worst sound of all stopped I placed an arm around her and I knew she was dead. There was her warm blood I didn’t want to touch upon the back of her head. I could tell the baby was alive because of a murmer and inclination to want his mother’s breast, and found it when, distraut, helpless, I managed to gently move her. What I felt I have no way of describing, I know there is none, so shall not make the attempt. I would have died there with her, yes most certainly if for the fragility and expectation of our baby for life.

Now to sit together on a summer’s day, here with the swans and the lake, in safety and in peace and not to think of the past years so much, no because I can say categorically; that beauty did not pass away, when her life became mine.

re-read MMXXI

CALLASSA

Vichy La France. Mai. 1944

Invicta Veritate