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GENERAL |
| was certainly not as good
as her home cooking, and I stayed with the Souliers for many a meal.
After the meal, however, I had to make my way to the manse or to the home
of a parishioner on whom I wanted to call.
One afternoon in May, therefore, I left the Soulier home about two and walked the empty stretch of road toward the town, only two hundred yards away. Suddenly I was overtaken by a black Citroën 11s, Traction Avant, followed by three identical Citroëns. The lead car stopped with screeching brakes right next to me and the back door opened. A large German machine pistol was shoved into my stomach, and I was unceremoniously invited to get into the car. As I took my place between two men in civilian clothes the older of the two asked me to take them to Monsieur Pujol's house. I certainly knew where he lived, but I had no intention of taking these Gestapo types to his house. So I told them the truth, namely that I had arrived in Lasalle only a few weeks ago and I did not know many people and could not show them any particular address. Whereupon the German insisted, "But you know where the Gendarmerie is located?" I could not deny this, since it was at the first bend of the road, just inside the town, not far from where they had picked me up. When the Gendarmerie came into view I showed them the sign and they stopped their cars. Pushing the door open with his machine pistol, the German waved it at me, indicating that I was to get out. As I extricated myself from the back seat, the younger man even dropped a "merci." I walked off toward the center of town. This second visit from the Germans was, from their point of view, not nearly so successful as the first. They apparently knew that Crespy had flown the coop, and did not visit the manse. They hoped to catch the rest of the Résistants whom the prisoners had fingered under torture. But everyone had gone underground, most joining the Maquis. The others had dispersed and were living under false identities with relatives. The Gestapo found nobody in the homes they visited and went off empty-handed. For me, though, the ride in the Gestapo car almost ended in tragedy, as I had been seen alighting from the German vehicle. The Maquis assumed that I had accompanied the Gestapo all the way from Alès, and that I must be one of their agents. They wanted to "get me" immediately. I found out only later that my position as minister kept them from doing so without an inquiry. This gave Soulier the time to intervene via a circuitous route and tell them about my kidnapping by the Gestapo only a few feet away from his house, where I had been minutes before. Rash decisions by the Maquis were common in those days. So narrowly did I escape execution as a "traitor"! Another one of these rash decisions by our defenders was destined to pit my lonely self, cast somehow as the collective conscience of the town, against the Maquis, in a sharp confrontation only a few weeks later. It was the case of Maquis vs. Monsieur Denis, acted out in the town's square. At the end of May, even
before the Normandy invasion, the gendarmes of Lasalle had decided to join
the Maquis and to put their arms at its disposal. This left the town
without a legal authority and made necessary a declaration by the Maquis |
