In what was then a heavily male-dominated society, it is unsurprising that women generally played less of a role in the Resistance movement, making up some 15 to 20 per cent of all résistants. Only one woman was ever recognised as the leader of a Resistance group: Marie Madeleine Fourcade, head of the réseau Alliance. Of the eighteen official agents registered as members of Orion, only two were women (Andrée Griotteray White and Margit Ehrart Hutton), though others did contribute.
After the war, 250,000 cartes de combattants were issued. These testified that the bearer had been an official member of a recognised Resistance group, although many fighters joined up only after the Normandy landings in June 1944. The total number of 250,000 may well have been exaggerated – with many saying they were involved in Resistance activity despite having done nothing – but de Gaulle was on a mission to revitalise and heal France, and was perhaps inclined to be generous.
Between 7 January 1944 and 31 March 1945, over 45,000 Médailles de la Résistance were awarded (15,000 posthumously). The black and red ribbon each medal hung from was a reminder of the grief France suffered and the blood spilt on her behalf during the Second World War. Despite France’s humiliation and all that the people suffered during the occupation, it was perhaps through the achievements of the Resistance movement that France was able to find her honour and her pride again.
Bibliography and Sources
I would like to express my great appreciation to Alain Gandy for his extremely useful book La jeunesse et la Résistance: réseau Orion, 1940–1944. Much of what he says I had already learnt about through conversations with my mother, my uncle Alain and Yves de Kermoal, but his book helped me confirm the memories of conversations which took place many years ago.
Jean-Marc Berlière’s book Les policiers français sous l’Occupation has been a very useful source in helping me understand some of the work my mother was doing at Police Headquarters throughout the war.
My uncle’s book, 1940: Qui étaient les premiers résistants?, and his memoirs, have also helped reconfirm the conversations I had with him over the years – during which he sometimes got quite annoyed at my lack of understanding of what they had all been up to.
I am enormously grateful to Matthew Cobb for The Resistance and Eleven Days in August, both of which helped me understand better the circumstances in which my mother and her family lived during the Second World War.
Adler, Laure, Marguerite Duras: A Life (Phoenix, 2001).
Amoureux, Henri, Quarante millions de pétainistes, Juin 1940–Juin 1941, (Robert Laffont, 1977).
Beevor, Anthony and Cooper, Artemis, Paris After The Liberation (Hamish Hamilton, 1994).
Berlière, Jean-Marc, Les policiers français sous l’Occupation (Éditions Perrin, 2001).
Berr, Hélène, Journal, (MacLehose Press, 2009).
Bailey, Rosemary, Love and War in the Pyrenees (Phoenix, 2008).
Burns, Michael, Dreyfus: A Family Affair (Harper Collins, 1991)
Cobb, Matthew, Eleven Days in August (Simon & Shuster, 2013).
Cobb, Matthew, The Resistance (Pocket Books, 2010).
de Chambrun, René, Pierre Laval devant l’histoire (Éditions France-Empire, 1983).
du Jonchay, R. (dir.), The Sorrow and the Pity (Arrow Films, 2004).
Fenby, Jonathan, The General: Charles de Gaulle and the France He Saved (Simon & Shuster 2011).
Foot, M. R. D., SOE: The Special Operations Executive 1940–46 (Pimlico, 1999).
Gandy, Alain, La jeunesse et la Résistance: réseau Orion, 1940–1944 (Presses de la Cité, 1992).
Griotteray, Alain, 1940: La naissance de la résistance (Fernand Lanore, 2008).
Griotteray, Alain, 1940: Qui étaient les premiers résistants? (L’Age d’homme, 1999).
Griotteray, Alain, Mémoires (Éditions du Rocher, 2004).
Harris Smith, Richard, OSS: Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency (University of California Press, 1972).
Hastings, Max, All Hell Let Loose (HarperPress, 2012).
Hourmilougué, André, Liberté, Liberté (self published, 2009).
Humbert, Agnes, Resistance (Bloomsbury, 2009).
Jobelot, Jean-Pierre, Henri d’Astier de la Vigerie, 1897–1952 (NSA Bastille, 2008).
Joly, Laurent, L’antisémitisme de bureau (Grasset & Fasquelles, 2011).
Kladstrup, Don and Kladstrup, Petie, Wine and War (Hodder, 2002).
Longuet, Stéphane and Genet-Rouffiac, Nathalie, Les réseaux de Résistance de la France combattante (Economica, 2013).
Lormier, Dominique, La Gestapo et les Français (Pygmalion, 2013).
Masson, Madeleine, Christine (Hamish Hamilton, 1975).
Mulley, Clare, The Spy Who Loved (Macmillan, 2012).
Némirovsky, Irène, Suite Française (Denoël, 2004).
Norwich, John Julius (ed), The Duff Cooper Diaries (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005).
Schoenbrun, David, Soldiers of the Night (Robert Hale, 1981).
Shakespeare, Nicholas, Priscilla (Harvill Secker, 2013).
Tcheky, Keryo and Nick, Cristophe (dirs.), La résistance (France Télévisions Distribution, 2008).
Williams, Charles, The Last Great Frenchman (Little Brown, 1993).
Williams, Charles, Pétain (Little Brown, 2005).
Notes
1. Matthew Cobb, The Resistance (Pocket Books, 2010), page 18.
2. http://www.theguardian.com/century/1940-1949/Story/0,,128218,00.html
3. Cobb, The Resistance, page 43.
4. Cobb, The Resistance, page 44.
5. Cobb, The Resistance, page 45.
6. Alain Griotteray, Mémoires (Éditions du Rocher, 2004), page 32.
7. Alain Griotteray, Qui étaient les premiers résistants? (L’Age d’homme, 1999), page 206.
8. Griotteray, Mémoires, page 32.
9. Gandy, La jeunesse et la Résistance, page 38.
10. Cobb, The Resistance, page 144.
11. Alain Gandy, La jeunesse et la Résistance: réseau Orion, 1940–1944 (Presses de la Cité, 1992), page 88.
12. Gandy, La jeunesse et la Résistance.
13. Gandy, La jeunesse et la Résistance, page 127.
14. Gandy, La jeunesse et la Résistance, page 106.
15. Griotteray, Mémoires, page 60.
16. Gandy, La jeunesse et la Résistance.
17. Gandy, La jeunesse et la Résistance, page 148.
18. Gandy, La jeunesse et la Résistance.
19. Griotteray, Les premiérs résistants, page 247.
20. Matthew Cobb, Eleven Days in August, page 319.
21. Griotteray, Les premiérs résistants.
22. M. R. D. Foot, SOE: The Special Operations Executive 1940–46 (Pimlico, 1999), page 18.
23. Foot, SOE, page 73.
24. Foot, SOE, page 150.
25. Dominique Lormier, La Gestapo et les Français (Pygmalion, 2013).
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my husband Martin for his enormous encouragement, my son Alexander and my daughter Chantal for their continual support and interest from the conception of this project until its end, and also my close friend Jill Burton, whose good humour and technological prowess helped this book make its way to my publisher’s desk.
Andrée’s War could not have been written without the long interviews I had with François Clerc and le comte Yves de Kermoal, both members of the Orion Resistance group, who shared with me many memories of their exploits in occupied France and to whom I am greatly indebted.
I am grateful to my grandmother, my mother, my aunt and my uncle for telling me so many stories about the French Resistance from an early age, and also to Alain for the various Resistance reunions he organised between 1985 and 2000, many of which I was able to attend and where I learned so much.
I want to thank my brother, Patrick, for giving me our mother’s diaries and journals, from which I have quoted liberally, and I hope our mother will forgive me for publishing what was written, at the time, a
s a private record of her life in Paris during the years of its occupation.
La comtesse Patricia de Kermoal has provided much support in explaining the small details of some of the issues described in the story and I have warm and lasting memories of our stay at the Domaine de Rateau with her and her husband Yves.
I am grateful to Jean Pierre Jobelot, grandson of Henri d’Astier de la Vigerie, for his tireless checking and rechecking of my version of the political events unfolding in French North Africa in 1942 and 1943, in which his grandfather played such an important part.
I thank Frau Elke Jeanrond-Premauer for her warm welcome when I stayed at the Château d’Orion and for introducing me to Madame Jean (Marguerite) Labbé, who was a source of much information (passed on to her by her mother-in-law Madame Marie Labbé) about the events in the area surrounding the château in the early 1940s.
I spent many hours with my neighbour and friend in Ramatuelle, Madame Jeanine Nouveau, who told me about life in Paris during the Second World War, including her participation in the city’s exodus as the Germans arrived in the city in 1940. Jeanine’s unstinting interest in my book encouraged me to ask her questions I had never dared ask my mother or my uncle.
Jean Paul Gay checked many historical points and Irina Hands explained and translated several words and German expressions used at the time.
Dr Garry Savin checked my description of the symptoms of scarlet fever and André de Clermont explained the term Louis d’or.
Clyde Kent of Eos Operating Systems Ltd helped me fix any technical difficulties I had in recording my interviews and Erica Donnellan reread the whole manuscript several times at different stages; I would like to thank her for her ongoing encouragement and support.
Sarah Burton, my tutor on the life writing course I attended at the University of Oxford department for continuing education, encouraged me to tell my story in writing. And I would also like to thank the Society of Authors for reviewing my contract.
I would like to thank the Service Historique de la Défence for sourcing copies of the information registered by Alain Griotteray and the Centre des Archives du Personnel Militaire in Pau for obtaining copies of the certificates relating to the medals awarded to several members of the Orion group. The staff of the Service des Archives of the Préfecture de Police in Paris, the Mémorial de la Shoah and of the Musée du Général Leclerc de Hautecloque et de la Libération de Paris-Musée Jean Moulin were all very helpful with my numerous enquiries.
It is difficult to know how to thank my editor Olivia Bays for helping me turn a fascinating story into such a readable, understandable and enjoyable one.
Edmond Griotteray, Andrée’s father.
Yvonne Stoquart Griotteray, Andrée’s Belgian mother.
Alain and Andrée Griotteray, ca 1936/7.
(top) Andrée’s French ID card, front and back, and (bottom left) her police headquarters ID card.
The Griotteray children on the steps of their house on the Promenade des Anglais, Nice, 1930. From front to back: Claude, Andrée, Alain and Yvette.
Henri d’Astier de la Vigerie, one of the heads of the resistance movement in North Africa.
Le château d’Orion; (inset) Yves de Kermoal, a member of the Orion group.
Andrée Griotteray aged approximately twenty-six.
Margit Erhart, one of the Orion agents, holding Andrée’s baby daughter Francelle, 1951.
Dance at the British Officers Club, Place Vendôme, 1945 – the night Andrée met her future husband, Frank White.
Andrée and Frank, Promenade des Anglais, Nice, 1947.
The author with her aunt and godmother Yvette Griotteray Leclair.
Andrée after she had been given the Ordre national du Mérite, Le ruban bleue, 1972.
The Croix de guerre 1939–45 citation Andrée received in 1945, describing the details of her arrest.
Two of the medals that Andrée was awarded for her actions, the Croix de guerre (left) and the Légion d’honneur (right).
Translation of the citation: ‘While undertaking an important assignment as an agent in occupied France, Andrée Griotteray was arrested in Bordeaux on 17 July 1944 by police officers of the occupying forces and questioned for several hours. Displaying an enormous degree of sangfroid and exceptional skill, she managed to talk her way out of the charges being levelled against her and to extract from her accusers information which allowed her to work out the exact reasons behind her arrest and why her Resistance group had been targeted. Her mission accomplished, she immediately alerted the head of her group who put the appropriate security measures in place. Andrée Griotteray continued to carry out her underground activities uninterrupted until the liberation. This citation confirms the granting of a Croix de guerre with a Silver Star.’
The unveiling of a statue of General de Gaulle at Carlton House Terrace, London, by Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, 23 June 1993. Left to right: former French Prime Minister Pierre Messmer, Alain Griotteray, Andrée Griotteray White and Jacques Chirac.
The memorial to the Orion resistance group, which lies at the entrance to the village of Orion.
Alain and Andrée in front of the memorial to the casualties of both World Wars, in Charenton-le-Pont, Paris, after Andrée had been given the Légion d’honneur, 8 May 1995.
Index
Aboulker, José 125
Abwehr 133
Algeria xiv, 65, 67, 68, 83, 86, 96, 97, 121–25, 129, 132, 134, 139, 211
Algiers 68, 86, 121, 125, 126, 130–33
Alibi 66
Alliance 211, 222, 225
Allies 67, 80, 124, 127, 129, 179, 187, 199, 203, 204, 214; see also Normandy: landings; North Africa: Allied landings
Alliot, Michel 95, 149, 150, 152, 165, 167, 177–78
Alliot-Marie, Michèle 213
Alsace-Lorraine 5, 139
Amiens 65–66
Angoulême 178
Antwerp 19
Ardennes 19
Armistice Day 51, 53, 54, 61
Arnould, Claude 165
Arrighi, Pascal 48, 138, 139
Attlee, Clement 20
Auschwitz 118
Austria, Anchluss 11
ausweiss 82, 83, 90, 94, 99, 102, 113, 133, 168
B., Madame 148–51
Bacquias, Madame 80, 81
Bagneux-sur-Loing 33
Bailey, Rosemary 137
Barbier, Jean 11, 18, 19, 24, 29, 38, 55, 117
Barcelona 138
Barthélemy, Jean 85
Bavaria 65
Bear, Monsieur 36
Béarn 93, 100
Belgium 7, 9, 24, 35, 62, 80, 98
Berlière, Jean-Marc xii, 23, 33
Bernstein family 10, 18, 49, 106, 210
Biaggi, Jean-Baptiste 84–86, 92, 95–96, 133–34, 142, 147–52, 167–68, 186, 196, 200
Biarritz xiv, 171, 173
Bichelonne, Jean 165
Bidault, General 200
Bigard family 11, 210
Bigard, Serge 12, 106, 107, 210
Bigorre 83
Bilbao 157
Billotte, General 198
Blanc, Monsieur 37, 41, 43
Bletchley Park 219
Blida 126, 153
Bordeaux xv, 13, 31, 99, 157, 160, 164, 166, 175, 178–80, 187, 214
Boulogne 68
Bourgurail 76
Bournemouth 9, 17
Britain xii, 10, 20, 31, 46, 67, 121, 144, 214, 217; Battle of 42
Brittany 17, 48, 135
Brussels 7, 9, 19, 24, 30, 40, 41, 61–64, 82, 98, 109, 115, 166
Buchenwald 150, 168, 186, 188, 189, 194, 196, 203
Caillé, Madame 71, 72
Campinchi, Monsieur 11, 47
Caroff, Monsieur 111–12
Casablanca 138
Casey, William 153–54
Castiglione 126
Cauderon 166, 175
Chaban-Delmas, Jacques xiv, 211
Châlon-sur-Marne 212
Chambord 159
Chantebout, Madame 17, 19–21, 36, 41, 43, 51
Charenton-le-Pont 2
Chaville 107
Cherchell 125, 129
China 148
Chirac, Jacques xi, 2, 119–20, 212
Choisy-le-Roi 20
Choltitz, General von 198
Chrétien, Colonel 126
Churchill, Winston 20, 32, 121, 124, 200, 214
Clark, General Mark 124–25
Clerc, François xii, 13, 55, 70, 72, 87–89, 91, 153, 159, 165, 183, 204, 207, 214–15, 222, 224
Clermont-Ferrand 85
Cobb, Matthew 54, 56, 198–99
Cogny, Captain 223
Colmar 19, 139
Cologne 68, 144
commandos de France, Les 139
Compiègne 152
Confrérie Notre Dame 222
Coole 212
Cordier, abbé Louis 123, 130–32
Coventry xvi, 206
Croix de guerre xi, 166, 183, 205, 211
cyanide pills 165–69, 180
Czechoslovakia 10
d’Astier, Jean Bernard 131
d’Astier de la Vigerie, Emmanuel 65
d’Astier de la Vigerie, François 65, 130–31
d’Astier de la Vigerie, Henri 59, 64, 65–68, 83, 86, 94, 96, 121–23, 124–27, 129–32, 134, 139, 153, 165, 213, 218, 222
Dalton, Dr Hugh 217
Dannecker, Theodor 118
Darlan, Admiral 85, 121, 123–27, 129–32
de Gaulle, Charles 63, 65, 106, 124, 129–32, 138, 139, 140, 149, 197–200, 203, 204, 214, 217, 222–25