Final Rounds

We met again with Jean-Claude a few days after that date. On the table in his living room, I noticed several typed and handwritten sheets.

“I’m trying to put my affairs in order a bit,” he explained to me, a little hesitantly.

He was dressed as if he were getting ready to go out: a navy blue blazer, gray pants, a tie, well-polished shoes.

Suddenly, I realized that ever since the book had come out, he had taken particular care with his appearance. “He must be expecting them to come to him!” I said to myself, with a brief clenching of pain. But of course, during those six weeks between May 8 and June 18, he had hoped for visits, interviews, meetings, and questions about what that short string of days in the spring of 1940 had held for him and for his comrades. Those six weeks reminded him of the dates registered in the Journal of Marches: battles in Flanders, in the pocket of Dunkirk, in Normandy, in Deux-Sèvres, the death of comrades, the tank on fire whose “crew could not be pulled out.”

Yes, every morning he had been preparing to tell about the life and death of the men thanks to whom his homeland had survived: Lieutenant-Colonel Poupel, Captain de Segonzac, Lieutenant Ville, Sub-lieutenant Guillien, Officer Cadet Aussel. In the leaflet of the Journal, their names were inscribed this way, according to their ranking, squadron by squadron. And in pencil, Lieutenant Schreiber had added, here and there, two symbols: a “p” for “taken prisoner” and a cross for the dead.

He certainly did not want to look like a rambling little old man hunched in his armchair in front of any potential journalists. He brushed his silvered hair, dressing himself as if for an official ceremony, and stood up straight, wanting to be worthy of the memory of his comrades from the regiment.

That night, a few days after June 18, he was wearing his “media combat outfit” and seemed to be mobilized to confront a salvo of questions. His state of mind was already different, though, emancipated from the tension he had imposed on himself for weeks. He began showing me pages from his archives, letters from friends, the one from clergyman André Carette, the regiment’s chaplain, with whom he had remained very close. And also a copy of the letter he had sent de Gaulle on December 12, 1965, that began with these sentences: “Do I have a chance of being heard by you, even though I am neither a man of letters, nor a savant, nor a great manufacturer, nor a top civil servant? I am just a humble soldier in your combat forces, and as a result I am someone who has lost infinitely more than he has gained on the individual level. I am only desperately in love with my France, with our France.”

Behind this writing—whose momentary blunders are easily noticeable to stylists and purists—is expressed the single prayer that Lieutenant Schreiber had always addressed to his compatriots: despite my origins, I am one of you, I love this country, I spilled my blood so that it might live, I would like to still be useful to it, give me the chance to be heard! He was saying it in January 1941, trying to remain in the army despite the status given to Jews. He repeated it in the sixties, writing to de Gaulle.

And he was saying it once again now, in the present, a few days after June 18, 2010.

The general had received him on several occasions, the last time on July 5, 1968. A long conversation, an inspiring exchange, even a clash of opinions (they spoke about the “mess” in May, strikes, disloyal politicians, relations with Israel); it was a frank and friendly discussion, the happy “chance to be heard,” and at the end, a judgment on which our current ruler would do well to reflect: “During each of those interviews, I always felt transformed by his presence and his affectionate way of letting me speak. I experienced a feeling of being stronger and freer. That is probably a characteristic of truly great men. Not only do they not make you feel that they are superior, but they allow you to believe that you are their equal!”

That evening, as often happened during our meetings, Jean-Claude’s story would change trajectories, going back toward the war years, to that day in November 1944 when, in the village of Cercy-la-Tour, in the middle of the Nivernais, he had marched his tank platoon in front of General de Gaulle before being introduced to him.

Listening to him, I noticed a new chord resonating in his voice, one that was a little bitter, less tinged with irony than usual. His hands were mechanically touching and moving around the letters scattered on the table. This movement and his slightly halting voice seemed to be trying to conquer the indifference of those who had so pitifully ignored his book. The archives he was showing me represented, in fact, even if he was not entirely aware of it, the final proof of what he had lived, the modest exhibits of a destiny, the last possibility of attracting other people’s attention, of obtaining the chance to be heard.

The chance to bring Lieutenant Schreiber back to life.