Smile, Smile!

Coming out of his first military campaign at the age of twenty-two, Jean-Claude seems to have found the answer. He had forged for himself a way of being whose characteristics I discover in the Journal of Marches; not in the official part relating the battles, but in those inked dedications, words of friendship inscribed by his comrades in arms. I can make out the signatures of General Dubois de Beauchesne, Lieutenant de Vendières, and Captain Henry.

“With fond memories of my brave little liaison officer,” the general has written, underlining heavily the word “brave.”

“I don’t know what should be admired in you most—your profound disdain for danger or your sincere cheerfulness in the face of harsh blows….” Lieutenant de la Morsanglière wondered.

And here, an entire poem! Lieutenant Ville, in an impromptu balladry, had penned the following:

Write a thought for that kid, what’s there to say?

Except that one evening, he arrived back at camp

Laughing just like a little enfant!

One morning in spring, it’s raining iron but

Still he laughs, like a young tyke!

One day the border of France lights up,

We have to be everywhere that’s burning and strike, strike,

And he’s crying out to the old warriors: “Smile, smile!”

A dark and red sunset. Behind us, the sea.

Over our heads and in front of us, hell.

He makes light of it, coming out with jokes like a tiny bird!

Back on the beautiful soil of France.

Alas, all is lost. What does it matter,

For we are still trekking for honor.

The kid is still there, smiling and fearless.

Such was the response of this “kid,” of this “young tyke” in the face of the hell created by men. Was it some innate playfulness? The bantering humor of a reckless young boy? No, more like a survival technique, the art of overcoming fear, of not contaminating the others with his anxiety, of not letting himself be swept up by their despair, of helping to keep his comrades from sinking into denial. Yes, laugh and sing to hide his tears. Long before Lieutenant Ville’s poem, the stanzas of Petrarch sang the praises of this kind of attitude.

This saving lightness has determined the demeanor Jean-Claude adopts today when he talks about his past as a soldier: smiling detachment, no grandiloquence, and not a shadow of the boasting that is common among certain veterans.

Nor is it a false modesty. In agreement with the Journal of Marches, he very precisely defines his role during his first war in May–June 1940: chief of his regiment’s guide platoon. At the head of forty motorcyclists, he led reconnaissance on the ground to make the tanks’ movements easier, to find the best combat position, or to mark out the least dangerous path. And, very often, to reestablish a link with other combat units, the means of communication being most inadequate.

“From one tank to the next, we were supposed to communicate using flags,” Jean-Claude admits with an amused sigh.

He observes, summarizes, and lists the names of the towns his platoon passed through. And we sense in his account the fear he has of taking center stage, of attributing too much courage to himself. “No, my mission was simple,” he repeats from time to time.

Such as the day the commander of the regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Poupel, asked him to find a lost tank squadron. He mounted his all-terrain motorcycle (a Terrot RATT) and left.

“All by yourself?”

“That’s what happened, yes….”

“Were you armed?”

“A pistol … an old Ruby with nine shots.”

“But as you rode, you must have passed close to German positions.”

“The fact is that … well, I passed behind their lines several times. But no, not one shot in my direction. A stroke of luck, probably….”

On his motorcycle he encountered Germans and successfully escaped them, skirted them once again, and crossed through occupied villages, coming so close to the enemy that at one bend in the road, he heard soldiers’ conversations and intercepted an officer’s stunned gaze.

A stroke of luck, he says, so as not to admit what truly saved him: an audacious folly, an impudence that Teutonic logic had not included in its tactical calculations. Yes, the same panache that, in the past, in the books he read as a child, he had always admired in French fighters like Bayard and Cyrano.

Seeing my reaction, he guesses that I might see in these “simple missions” an act of bravery, a gesture of abnegation. He is quick to specify: “What helped me most of all was my raincoat. From far away, it looked like the hoods the German noncommissioned officers wore. In fact, I used to tell myself that what I was risking most by being dressed like that was getting shot down by a French patrol.”

He laughs softly, becoming once more that “kid” who, even under barrages of enemy fire, could still put his comrades in a good mood.

In his voice, I also detect a kind of sheepish regret: no, he cannot talk about the war except in this smiling, sincere tone, one that is too light for the pedantic works of history.