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APPENDIX 9 |
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René
GUITTARD
152 Rue d'Hesdin
62270 FREVENT
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Avril
1984
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8
APRIL 1944
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MY
MOTHER IS ARRESTED
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To
her memory
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| "NINI" is Sidonie GUITTARD (née LEFEBVRE) who, from 1919 to 1944, managed l'Estaminet (the Café) at 33 Rue de Doullens in FREVENT. |
| I, her son, Rene GUITTARD alias "Banjo" was 21 years old and a very young groom when, in September 1942, through my young wife, I was contacted by Raymond HETROY, a dentist at FREVENT, and invited to join the "Resistance". I engaged in this big adventure with the enthusiasm of youth. From the middle of 1943 I was fully employed, by the successive arrests, and the heavy responsibilities of such a large and active centre as FREVENT, as assistant to Maurice BERTOUX alias "Le Marin", reponsable (responsible person) for the OCM resistance movement, then as the responsable for the escape network "Bordeaux-Loupiac" of the Forces Françaises Combattantes. |
| The position of Ternois, at the center of German activity building V1 launch sites, resulted in high priority allied bombing action, and a tough enemy response of DCA (Flak). From December 1943 hardly a day went by without us witnessing, either closely or far away, a bombing raid and the parachutes from the many allied aircraft. Which explains the intense activity of recovery, assistance and escape of those allied airmen saved either by their parachute, or more rarely, by a difficult crash landing: 53 airmen were helped the activities of the network. |
| Quite naturally the "Café Guittard" became an important point de concentration in the sector: "boîte aux lettres" (message drop), discussion centre, meeting place, gathering point. Nini carried on with her job with her usual good-naturedness to all these résistants, all true friends. She not only knew all the team leaders of the sector, but also the people in charge of the departmental and even the regional sectors. In fact Jean DELVALLEZ alias "Boulanger" or "Menu", the responsable, gathered all the officers of the sector together several times in the back room of the estaminet (café) to distribute directives, to organize the clandestine action, and to liase with the responsables from the Somme. |
| In March and April 1944, we actively prepared for the invasion of France by allied troops. We were all convinced, and the Allies made sure of that, that the landings would take place on the coasts of the Pas-de-Calais or the Somme (Operation FORTITUDE). The plans for the sabotage of road bridges, railways, stores of fuel and military materiel, were developed and the "messages personnels" were all arranged. |
| We were all impatient to act but also conscious that there would be a violent response by the Gestapo, who were well established in the area. It was obvious that the presence of a dozen allied airmen lodged clandestinely for nearly a month in Frévent and the immediate surroundings, constituted a huge risk in the event of a search. "Menu" was alerted. |
| At the end of March 1944, during a secret meeting at 33 Rue de Doullens, he told me that contacts were established with the escape network and that he would arrange to send these airmen to Great Britain via Spain soon. The contact message would be: "I come on behalf of Duval No 315". I was the sole contact for the sector. |
| On 7 April 1944, towards 6 pm, in the café where many of the customers, on their way home from work, were having a drink and discussing the latest news of the Russian and Italian fronts, a stranger sitting by the counter said quietly to my mother: |
"Can I see "Banjo"?
- I'm sorry but he's not here.
- Can you contact him quickly because I come on behalf of Duval No 315."
What - I don't understand, replied the astonished Nini, because I had forgotten to tell her about the contact message. "Banjo" won't be here for another hour and a half, she continued.
"Then you must give him this piece of paper. I cannot wait. I have another meeting and must return to Arras to organise the journey. Goodbye - and please don't forget!" |
| I went to the café at about 18h30. Nini gave me a torn-off page from a notebook on which I read: "I come on behalf of Duval N° 315. I bring 10 here, tomorrow morning 8 April between 6h30 and 7h". I only had to obey and act quickly. |
| As an aside, my father, with Paul LEMAIRE, a wines and spirits dealer in Frévent, drove his truck, complete with a legal Ausweis, and collected the airmen from the south of the sector. I took the van from the "Mercier" garage, which was also authorized to circulate and drove with Roger, son of the mechanic, to collect those lodged in the northern part of sector. At 9 am, the ten airmen, English, American, Canadian and New Zealand, were gathered in the back kitchen of Nini's house: checking their forged identity papers, reminding them to be careful, and distributing them among the "landlords fréventins" to spend the night of 7/8 April: two to stay with Nini, two to go to Mrs Alice COQUIDE, two with Suzanne LOUIS, two with Robert MONCOMBLE, and the last two with Nini's brother, Julien LEFEBVRE whose 17 year old daughter Pierrette, gave up her bed to occupy a very small room above the café. |
| On 8 April, from 6 o'clock in the morning, eight of the airmen were gathered in the same back room of the café. The other two airmen, who were lodged opposite with Mrs. COQUIDE, would only come out as we left. There was one last drink before leaving thanks to some bottles being skilfully withdrawn from the "Contrôle de Ravitaillement" (supply control) by Paul LEMAIRE, our wine and spirits merchant, and kind convoyeur. |
| At 6h40, a truck belonging to "Etablissements Dreux" of ARRAS pulled up to the kerb. The convoyeur quickly got out. From the kitchen where she was doing the washing up, Nini recognized the man from the day before. He entered the café and said to my father, who had already gathered the eight airmen for a quick loading. |
"Hello! It is ready? Very good! You did good work, let's get on with it.
- Would you like something to drink? asked my father
- No! I am in a hurry. Help me to get them on board!" |
| The back of the truck was lowered: 3 benches were installed; 8 airmen got into the truck. |
| "There are two missing" remarked the conveyor as he began closing the back of the truck. At that moment the last two, who had been staying with Mrs COQUIDE, arrived with her without it being seen exactly where they came from. A few seconds to settle down and the truck started up the Rue de Doullens, carrying ten allied airmen excited by the hope of soon being able to get back to the fight for freedom. |
| Nini then got back to business in the house while her husband took advantage of the early hour to go and give Paul LEMAIRE a hand to reload his truck which, the previous evening, had had its racks removed and been used to transport the airmen. Half an hour later and everything was back in place. Hardly had the last racks been replaced when they were amazed to see the same "Etablissements Dreux" truck, preceded by a black "traction-avant", coming slowly back down the Rue de Doullens: Gestapo and Feldgendarmes stopped at number 33 and immediately surround the house. Some entered the café and went into the kitchen, surprising Nini who, finished with the washing up, was getting herself ready for the day. |
"Go quickly! Get some clothes and personal things. The so-called hard-man résistant, the contact from the day before, was in fact a Gestapo agent.
- Where is your husband? Where is "Banjo"?
- I don't know, I haven't seen him since yesterday evening". |
| Rather carelessly, the Germans searched all over the house, fortunately without finding the indentity cards, the work permits or the seal of the town hall of VAULX, used for finishing off the forged identity papers, which were all carefully hidden in one of the stairs of the attic. |
| Pierrette, drawn roughly from bed by a Feldgendarme, broke down in tears. |
"What are you doing here?
- I work in the factory and I sleep here. Can I get dressed to go to work? she asked while still crying.
- Go on, hurry up!"
Ouf ! (sic) Pierrette was free. |
| For Nini the business was more serious. Bullied roughly on several occasions, savagely knocked about and with her face injured from a violent shove against a cupboard door, she was taken, her bloody face framed by two Gestapo agents, and immediately put into the traction-avant. |
"And now, tell us where your husband works
- The "Routes et Bâtiments du Nord" shop in Rue Briand, she whispered". She wasn't worried though because she knew for sure that my father had gone to Mr Paul LEMAIRE's house. Which is how he miraculously escaped arrest. |
| Unable to leave immediately from 82 Rue de Doullens, where my young wife and I were staying at the time, we hastily gathered all the documents and compromising things and hid them in a place in Frévent where they would be safe from the Gestapo for a while. In spite of the Germans blocking all the exits from the town, we managed to leave Frévent at about 11 am and get to a secure hiding place (une planque sûre) at Bouquemaison, hidden in the back of the small truck belonging to my brother-in-law Joseph RAIMBAULT, who managed to leave town by a side road, but was later stopped by two German soldiers. |
| As for Nini, after having once again denied knowing where her husband and son were, she joined the ten allied airmen at the German camp of Bonnières-Beauvoir. They were all taken, securely guarded, in the same German truck, by the Lille Gestapo and put into the German section of LOOS-les-Lille prison. Confronted with Nini, the ten airmen immediately claimed absolutely not to know her. A little later during an air raid of the prison they all managed to escape, several of groups of them even succeeded in returning to the homes which had sheltered them. |
| As the only person held by the Gestapo at Lille, Nini, resisted the tough physical and mental abuses inflicted by the torturers during four terrible interrogations, without revealing anything about the résistant activities of the sector. She restricted herself to a very simple defense of including the German agent who had come to the café as witness, and who worked with the interrogators. |
| "I do not know anything of all that. For a long time now I haven't concerned myself with what my husband and my son do. I have to work hard enough to serve my customers and maintain the house. This man can tell you: I did not understand anything that he told me and I had just got up when your police arrested me". The Gestapo asked in vain, despite the methods used, to get from her the exact address of the house opposite where the last two airmen had come from. |
| During the 4th interrogation, by now exhausted, she was knocked down by a kick, perhaps a little more violent than the others, which burst the scar left by an operation undergone a few years earlier for an extra-uterine pregnancy. Sent to the infirmary she was surprisingly well cared for by a surgeon and nurse from the German medical branch of the prison. |
| Convalescing and somewhat forgotten in the infirmary, with her torturers by then more concerned by the rout of the German army in Normandy, Nini was released just before the arrival of the English army liberators, to find that 33 Rue de Doullens in FREVENT was a cluster of rubble and that her house and "estaminet" had been destroyed in the air raids of July 1944. |
| Rehoused in the "grand baraquement provisoire" (provisional housing) at the Place du Marché, Nini died at 52 years old in 1950, victim of cancer of the womb. The blows received in 1944 probably didn't help. |
Thank you mother! from us all, and more particularly from my wife and me, to have kept silent. |
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A
Frévent le 30 Avril 1984
René GUITTARD
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