Childhood War Memories: An Interview with Annie Thill-Back

Childhood War Memories: An Interview with Annie Thill-Back, November 1999
This document is the property of the Back family and their descendants. No reproduction by any means electronic or mechanical may be made without their express consent.

P R E F A C E
This interview was done Thursday, 11 November 1999 (Armistice Day) in the village of Pagny-la-Blanche-Côte in the department of Meuse (France). Annie was visited at that time by her grandsons who had come from the United States to spend two weeks. On that day and thanks to an arrangement based on a slight misconception, the family were able to visit and photograph the former family domain in Abainville without entering the manor itself at a time when the property was up for sale. Present that day were Victor Back, husband, her grandsons, Russell Victor and Thierry Daniel Bateman, the Back's daughter, Francine and her husband Bruno. Also present was Russell Bateman, father of the grandsons and ex son-in-law. He conducted this interview for the benefit of the Back family and Bateman grandchildren.

The real estate listing for the property and house:

South Meuse. 60km from Nancy and Vittel. Beautiful walled estate of 45 acres: manor dating to end of XIXth century with 1500 sq. ft. on each of three stories including all amenities. 4/5 bedroom lodge (custodial gate house) with all amenities. Miscellaneous out buildings converted to garage and storage. Gardens, ponds and woods. 3,327,000 francs or 507,198 Euros (about $500,000 US in 1999) including all closings costs. Contact Jean-Louis Vallette, notary."

Note: Maps and directions to placed named in this interview may be found at the end.

It may be useful to understand that Annie and her family spoke mostly Luxemburgish for her father was from that country. Her mother was Alsatian. Both spoke germanic tongues therefore as well as, indeed in preference to, French. Although she would later marry a Luxemburger, the language was never taught to the children. Luxemburgish became extinct also among the children of her husband's many siblings. The language literally died out in these families. Some say it just sort of died by itself, but others that it was because of the war, because it was too much like German.

Before getting started, it seems appropriate also to point out that Annie knows many Germans today and that she harbors no ill feelings for the countless people who did no wrong to her people in the war.

And now, Annie's story as told to Russell Bateman. . .

I was born on the 18th of January 1933. So I was six years old when one morning I awakened to the sound of my mother weeping and crying, "They are calling them out. All my brothers are going to war!" At this time, we lived in the Ornain valley in Abainville. I was a carefree little girl of six. We had a beautiful house on a large piece of land. My father took me boating [on the Ornain where it crossed our land] and I had a horse named Narcissus.

	This is the front of the manor which faces away from the bulk of the land around it toward a stone wall enclosure. Because the wall is nearly six feet tall, it is difficult to see the house from the road outside.
This is the rear of the house facing the pastures, pond, woods and river. The basement isn't counted in the house by the real estate listing.

Suddenly, everything changed. My uncles went off to war. People were anxious and spoke of things I didn't understand because, when it started, I didn't even know what war meant. Everybody around me spoke of its horrors.

At first, it was dearth that set in bit by bit but then quickly, everything changed. The Germans and Italians began bombing and I began to understand what this word war meant.

Refugees passed by our place with wagons full of bundles, boxes and things packed for traveling. When my father asked them where they were going, they didn't know, just that they had to leave and hadn't made any plans.

Then, things began to change for us and my father too decided to leave. He hitched up some horses and we loaded up some furniture. A few elderly persons from the neighborhood joined us and we left.

On the road, we were machine-gunned by Italian aircraft that dived right on us—right on the refugees. On the sides of the road already were corpses of bloated cattle, horses, dogs and there were people that had been wounded. There were no doctors at all to help the wounded.

My pregnant aunt had come along with us, but became wounded and began losing—oh my—a lot of blood. At that point, my father said, "I'm turning around. There's no sense going on. I would rather die at home than on the road." So we went back.

At that time, we didn't even return to our manor, but used the building that housed our mushroom beds which was very big. Some of the nearby townsfolk came to hide with us too. I remember that my parents set up my bed with its [fancy] metal bars and I slept in this little bed there in the mushroom shed.

We were hungry, though. We were very hungry and had very little to eat.

Bombs rained down all around us. Twenty-four bombs fell around our land, but the Germans were never able to hit their target which was a strategic line of defense that crossed our land.

Interviewer: Do you mean the Maginot Line?

Annie: I don't know. People just called it the strategic line of defense and I didn't know what that meant. I still don't know today and one can see it even now. There is no more railroad today, but it is still there. They wanted to destroy this line that they called the strategic line of defense and they never succeeded.

Interviewer's later note: Abainville is far from the famous Maginot Line. After seeing it for myself, I think this defense must be in fact a sunken railway that the French Army built to carry supplies in support of the lines further east.

I remember being so hungry. One day, during a bombing raid, I remember running out of the mushroom shed into the garden for strawberries. I heard my mother screaming and calling me everywhere, but I didn't answer. I just ate the strawberries and the bombs fell, but I still ate the strawberries because I was hungry. I've always remembered this incident because I heard her crying out, screaming, calling me, but I was so hungry that I just kept eating the strawberries.

Then one day, the Germans arrived. We went, [well] I went with my father to the village. The village's refugees weren't back yet. The houses were empty and the Germans looted them. I saw Germans throwing furniture out of the windows and in the midst of all this uproar of broken boards, furniture and broken windows, some soldiers were running all around shouting out words that I didn't understand very well. I saw one soldier riding on the tiny bicycle of my best school chum and he was having fun playing the clown. This really struck me because I liked this friend and had played with him on this bicycle a lot. Now, [instead of my friend,] there was this German soldier acting like a clown.

Quickly, the Germans settled in and they sought out and requisitioned all the food people had set aside to eat whether canned or bottled food, dry goods like wheat or animals. They requisitioned all our herds and flocks and these were all slaughtered to feed the German army.

So, we saw it all go and, before the war, my father had always kept about seven hundred sheep on average, but they were all gone, not all at once, but the Germans came regularly to get them and we were forbidden to kill any—all were accounted for.

This is how, progressively, all our herds were lost. In the end, two old horses were left, but both were very old. One day at noon, when everyone had finished eating though still at the table, I left to go outside. At the end of the alley I saw some Germans with these two horses. So I went back in the house and told my parents, "Hey, they're just taking the last two horses." So my mother, who was near the door, ran outside in front of them and said, "Come on, they're all that's left and you're going to take them too? We don't even have an egg left in the house!" One of them took out his side arm and put it up to her temple. So she said in German, "If you've got the courage to cut down a defenseless woman, then go ahead and kill me." Well, he put the pistol back in its holster. But I was mortified with terror because I was standing next to her!

We lived in the East where there were a lot of SS. There were many more than anywhere else and I don't know why; we thought it might be because we were nearer the border. There, they set out bit by bit to requisition all the nicest houses, everything that was good anywhere—all the best estates. As my father was Luxembourgish, he was targeted, as were Alsatians, more than others. So one day they came and settled in—first, it was just soldiers. . . just settling in with their traveling things on our land, not outside, but in our fenced land. Each morning when I left for school, I had to walk through these solders who were sacked out here and there. I'd have to go on a little further to get by them, these soldiers, to go to school. In the midst, against a privet hedge, there was a large portrait of Hitler. By that time, I had already begun to understand what Germans were. I told myself that these men were beasts, they were bad men. I had begun to see clearly, to understand war, to understand what was going on. So, I didn't like them and Hitler, well, my father had told me about him. So there was this big portrait. One day, one of them caught me and said, "Do you know this man here?"

      I said, "No." (I knew who he was, but I was facing them down.)

      He said, "Don't you know him?"

      "No!" came my response.

Three times he asked me the question and each time I said, "No, I don't know him."

      "Well, you're going to know him; he's Adolf Hitler, our Fuhrer."

      Well, I sort of gave him a look as if to say, "What's this guy to me?"

A bit further on, one of the soldiers took me upon his knee—this was when I was going to school—he took me on his knee, looked at me and said, "I've got a little girl like you at home too!" So, this soldier wasn't a bad German.

After that, they left and went to tell my father, "So, it's like this. You are going to work on one of our farms because we're going to set up our headquarters here." My father rebelled at this idea and said, "No! This can't be. This is my home. . ." I don't know what all he said to them, but they told him, "Well, if you refuse, we'll send you off with twenty-five kilos of supplies and you can live in Siberia." So that is how we came to be forced out of our house. They sent us to Amanty—it's not far from there—to live on a starch producing farm where there were Germans and Poles who had come by train from Poland. They all worked there.

I can still see in my mind's eye, at the end of the alley, our wagon with furniture loaded on it ready to leave for Amanty. I can still see this.

After six weeks at Amanty, they sent us to live on a farm at Vacon that they had requisitioned from a Jew. The herds were still intact. There were at least two hundred Poles that had come from Poland in the trains—barefoot—including an old grandmother of ninety-six whom they had obliged to go every day into the fields with all the others. She passed by our house everyday. There was also a Polish family named Marchevka with many children. The Germans brought this family to Hérouville by train. The Poles were so numerous that they made them walk on the tracks rather than go by the tunnel [to avoid interrupting road travel?] This woman, her eight children and her husband didn't want to go that way. My father saw what happened. A German soldier said, "Go on, go on!" then he caught them and pushed them and at the same time a train came and took the man's hand off. My father saw this. This woman and her family, Marchevka, came to Vacon amid the SS and the Germans. She was now without a husband or anything left to her name and they had to stay in a place with four or five other families because they put four or five families together in those circumstances.

I remember there in Vacon that my father gradually began to have ideas of vengeance on the Germans: really perfectly normal. But, he wasn't stupid, so he and my uncle, Henri, began plotting something. He succeeded, since he spoke German well—in fact both of them spoke German well—in obtaining the confidence of the Germans that were there. One of them, I remember especially well, was named Eichmeyer and wore a feather on his hat. We children always called him "featherhead." My father succeeded in gaining his confidence and so, instead of working the farm, worked in the office with him and distributed food to the Polish workers on the farm. He always gave a little more to the Marchevka family. He helped them, but he took risks because (and he never told me and I never knew this until afterwards when my mother told me) he became part of the Resistance with my uncle.

So, at night—I didn't understand why my father wasn't ever there—he was out in the woods and then in the day, he was at the farm with the Germans. He had two lives. By night he and my uncle blew up railroads, bridges and did other things—I never knew just what.

Outside Abainville, going north toward Rosières, is a railroad viaduct that Annie's father and uncle dynamited during the Occupation. Annie's father believed that the Nazis transported Jews and others toward concentration camps on this line.

Once, I remember that I was with him at night—and I showed Papa [her husband, Victor Back] not long ago the attic window at the Vacon farm and I said to him, "See there, that's where I was with my father." It was an attic window that opened and looked out down a road. So I was there with my father who treated me like a boy sometimes since he didn't have a boy. And there was this rifle with a scope. He said to me, "Look in the scope, you'll see someone come down the road." (The Germans didn't know he had this weapon.) So I looked in the scope and I saw a German up the road there. I already hated Germans then, so I said, "I see him. He's a German. What do you want me to do now, should I shoot?" "Oh no, don't do that!" he said. Why was he there? Why was he watching this German soldier? I didn't know, but surely he had a reason. I probably frightened him because I could have pulled the trigger—I already hated Germans by then.

So, my father was never home at night. Eichmeyer trusted him and he often came to our home. He'd bring whatever my mother needed to make him waffles so well had my father succeeded in getting him to trust him. You see, in France there was the Resistance that really worked for the good of France, and then there was a group, a lot of them around here, called the Maquis [because they ambushed Germans from the maquis or "bushes"]. These maquisards went into the brush with a shotgun. If [the butchery of] Oradour-sur-Glâne happened, if Rozières here was burned down, it was thanks to them. When the Germans pulled back, they should have let them go peacefully. Instead, they'd ambush them from behind hedges and, in the case of Rozières, a convoy was retreating. On the last truck there was a platform with a soldier just sitting on it waiting to leave. A man named Degant, from Vacon, shot at him. So the convoy stopped in the next village and burned it to the ground. This wasn't helping France; this wasn't the way to do it.

Because of these maquisards that started thinking that my father was a collaborator given that they saw him always in German graces without knowing what was really going on, things started to get dangerous for us too. One day this Degant showed up at our front door with another and said, "We want to talk to you, come out here." My father replied, "No, I don't know you two. If you want, we'll call the police to come and then we can talk together." It was then that I learned that my father was under police protection because of this, because he had infiltrated the Germans. Well, the police went to see Degant and they calmed him down a bit. But, we were lucky, very lucky because they had come on purpose to kill my father. Years later, well after the war, I came across Degant one day, I think it must have been at a village festival in Voids, I was probably sixteen or seventeen then. He came up to me and kissed me and said, "Annie, I hope that you have forgiven me because I had no idea what your father had done." I said, "Yes, but it was our whole family risking our lives." He had tears in his eyes especially since, in the meantime, he had lost his own wife. But [as you see], these maquisards were very dangerous. They made all kinds of stupid blunders.

So, the Germans pulled back. On the last day—no, it must have been two or three days before the Americans arrived, Eichmeyer came to our house and, still as confident as always that my father was on the German side, said to him, "Listen to me. You must follow us with your family. Your life is in danger here in France now that you've helped us. You must come with us to Germany and leave France forever. So my father said, "Ok, I'll see about that." On the last day, he showed up. My mother and I were alone. He said, "So, are you ready now? Are you going to follow us?" My mother told him, "Oh, no, my father has taken very ill over near Ligny-en-Barrois and [my husband] has gone to see what is the matter." Then he looked at her and said, "I get it now. [You watch out!] In six months, we'll be back. So, that was the one we called "featherhead."

Interviewer: So, Eichmeyer stayed the whole war there near you?

Annie: At Vacon, yes, all the time we were there. Yes. There was in fact another with him, but my father dealt only with [Eichmeyer]. But he really had trusted my father. After that by about three or four days, the Americans showed up. They stopped right in front of our house. My father went out and he happened to know three or four words in American. Of course, there were some villagers there too. So my father starts saying his three or four words in American and some of the people turned around astonished and said, "So, this can't be! You speak American too?" (He didn't speak more than a few words, but he said to them, "Well, what do you think?") I had gone and gathered a big bouquet of flowers from the garden. I went up to the Americans and gave them the flowers. They kissed me and gave me some chocolate. It had been years since I had even tasted chocolate. It was good. So there is the story.

Interviewer: Tell the story of the little Jewess.

Annie: Yes, the little Jewish girl. It was in the middle of the war. We were no longer in the valley of the Ornain (Abainville), but at Vacon. I went to elementary school in [nearby] Voids. She was my best friend, a school chum and she was my age.

Interviewer: What was her name?

Annie: I think her name was Sarah or Sabrina. It was one of the two—I just don't remember any more.

Interviewer: And you didn't know the name of her family?

Annie: Yes, it was Kenel. And her sister's name was Sabrina. No, no, then, her [the friend's] name must have indeed been Sarah. At the time, Thursday was our free day from school so we spent every Thursday together, the three of us. Either we got together at one girl's house or at another's; each had a turn. Our other friend lived just across from the Jews' apartment. That day, we were at that third girl's place. Her name was Claudine. So we were all three at Claudine's across from the Jews' apartment. We were playing and then all of a sudden we heard German boots coming up the stairway. (A sound we always recognized was German boots in the street or anywhere.) We peeked out and saw them ringing at the apartment across. Claudine's mother who was there beside us understood right away what was happening. She kept the little girl inside with us. She waited. But when the two SS agents came out with the parents, brother and sister of little Sarah, she [meaning Sarah] opened the door and started to say, "Mama." This was a natural reflex on the part of a young child, but the neighbor lady put her hand over Sarah's mouth. The first SS agent had already gone down with one or both the parents, but the second was still in the doorway and saw Sarah and Claudine's mother. As he went by and saw the child's reflex and the neighbor lady's hand, he shook his finger at the lady as if to say, "You better watch yourself!" So afterwards, we figured that this wasn't a real SS agent. They were always in twos, probably a real devoted sort of officer with another who hadn't proved himself to his superiors yet. Well, this little girl never saw her parents again, she never saw her brother again and she never saw her sister again. She was adopted by the whole village and left her home. I used to see her all the time there until I married and moved away. I met her often. All her medical school costs were paid by the village school director, Mr. Vachet. Yes, her name was Sarah, I remember now.

Interviewer: So how did school go; didn't the Germans impose schooling in German in Lorrain?

Annie: No, we stayed French.

Interviewer: The inhabitants of Lorraine remained French, but the Alsatians became German?

Annie: Yes, with them, yes, Alsace always [passed back], but here, that never happened like that. We always stayed French.

Interviewer: Even though some villages were given a German name here, at least, many of them were.

Annie: Yes, but we stayed French. There was a problem I had once time at the elementary school in Vacon. There was a crucifix above the teacher's desk. One day, [the Germans] came, took it down and replaced it with a portrait of Hitler instead. I was always a bit bigger than the other children—and unfortunately was in the front row. The German put up Hitler's portrait, turned around and, since I was in front, he asked me, "Who is that?" So I started reciting what I had already said back at the manor. I said, "I dunno."

      "What's the name of this man? You know him?"

      "No, I don't."

      "You don't know him?"

      "No!"

Bang; I got slapped a couple of times and I cried, but I never admitted that it was Adolf Hitler even in my tears. I just hated that treatment.

So, they left with the usual sound of boots in the stairway. The teacher came to me, hugged me and said, "Well, you were brave." [Can you imagine] a little school girl facing down a big SS with his medaled collar and black overcoat. If they had killed me, I still wouldn't ever had admitted it!

Interviewer: In general, did they leave the elected city councils, the mayor and so on?

Annie: Yes, except for the mayor because, nine times out of ten, he had the nicest house in town and so they requisitioned it. All the nice houses everywhere in the villages—everywhere—were requisitioned for officers. At Vacon, the nicest house was requisitioned. I don't remember who it was that got it, but it was some officer who lived in it.

Not far from there was a young woman who had been engaged when the war broke out and happened to be pregnant then. Her fiancé had gone to war, was captured and left her and her little boy. She was forced to become this officer's mistress at the mayor's house. She was forced to do this.

Interviewer: Did [Catholic] church life change: the mass, the services; did they leave the village priests alone?

Abainville has a small, but magnificent country church that has well withstood the ravages of the centuries. Today, it is well-kept and beautiful. Annie's first three children were baptized in this church.

Annie: Yes, I even did my first communion normally at Vacon. Nothing changed with respect to the Church—the [Germans] didn't change anything, but we had food ration coupons. There were men forced to work. The children got less [than the adults]. I was categorized J1 then, by the end of the war, J3 so each time I got a hundred grams of bread more per ration. [Note: J for junger?]

But, for example, to clothe us, my mother would set aside a couple of hundred grams of butter now and then. When she had enough to make a pound, she'd give it away to get a pair of shoes. Then we found beef lard to replace it in our diet. Soap was the same, no one had any. So my father killed otters, animals that lived in water and had a lot of fat, and with their fat [and lye], we made soap that burned the hands a bit, but it worked.

There was also what we called coffee, it was little packet of roasted barley but with five or six coffee beans in the packet. Well, she took the five or six coffee beans out and set them aside in a bottle. When she had enough, she'd give them away in exchange for fabric, for socks or something else we needed.

Later, on the farm, the Germans got some sheep. When shearing time came, my father succeeded in setting aside fleeces. My mother washed them and had a spinning wheel made so she could spin the wool and I would knit so we had something to wear. He had to take this wool in secret and in this way we got wool for our own use.

Interviewer: And how did you get around.

Annie: On bicycle.

Interviewer: Every member of the family had a bicycle?

Annie: Yes, yes. We had bicycles made during the war. We, in fact, had had our own buggy at Val d'Ornain. It was a pretty buggy drawn by horses. There, too, they took it away from us. And I'm certain they took it back to Germany because anything that was pretty, they sent it back there, you know?

But there during the war, we had some bicycles with wooden wheels made. There was someone in the village that made bicycles, but with wooden wheels. And so we got around that way.

Interviewer: What sort of relations with the Germans did the village merchants have? In each village, a baker, a butcher, etc. were needed.

Annie: Yes, they had bread. In fact, sometimes it was my father who had to go get the bread for Eichmeyer and all his band. But everything was watched, everything was under the control of the Germans. The flour that came in was counted and they knew round about how much bread it would make. So, it was hard. We could get some bread from time to time. (My father was able to get bread [from the Germans] from time to time. But this wasn't easy because we were too close to the Germans. For example, my father-in-law told me that there weren't any Germans living where he was, that is, there were [Germans] everywhere, but none living in his village. So there, my father-in-law was able to glean a bit of flour here and a bit of flour there or other things [and] he made bread himself. But we could never have done it like that, right?

One day a German inspector came to our house and started searching the whole house even though we had so very little. They went through everything, they turned everything inside out. Then at last my father said to them, "So are you going to tell me what you're looking for?"

"Well, you've been denounced by a Frenchman who said you've got alcohol in the house."

"What? Listen to me, if you find one glass of wine in my home, you can shoot me because I know there isn't any. I come from a generation of Luxembourgish that never learned to drink."

So, they certainly didn't find anything. They went back to that Frenchman and shot him because he had made a false accusation.

Interviewer: And the corn that came in from the fields, farmers produced the grain themselves, they thrashed it, removed the chaff and so on. . .

Annie: We don't know where that went.

Interviewer: It obviously went through German hands before making it to the mill and from the mill to the baker.

Annie: Sure, everything was being watched. There were a couple of farmers that I didn't know well—my father knew them well—who tried once to slaughter a pig because they were hungry. A pig squeals loud, right? So they turned on the thrashing machine to cover the pig's squealing and that's how they killed it. It worked that one time for the one farmer, but the other didn't succeed. They had an inspection in the meantime and they found meat in the salting tub so [the farmer] was shot right in his cow barn. They shot people right off, of course, there wasn't any judgment, there was no appeal. This was a farm above Abainville in that area and my father knew them before this happened. Now that I remember, I think his name was Mr. Walter, this man. Yes, I remember it well I think.

Interviewer: Did you know or did the villagers know any collaborators? There were some in the village?

Annie: Oh, yes certainly, there were some. And that was a great danger.

Interviewer: And those, before the war, was there any reason to suppose that they would be different from any others? Did everyone run the risk of becoming a collaborator depending on his resistance of or ability to resist temptation?

Annie: Those that my father knew who became collaborators—he spoke a lot to me of this and told me about all these things after the war because at the time I was too young—those who became German collaborators did it for gain. It was all in the money. Because the Germans asked for Jews and those who didn't think the way they thought to be delivered up to them. Now when they gave up the Jews, usually—and this worked just as it did in Paris, they were animal merchants. So they gave up the Jews and at that time—it's true that we knew country people who were poor before the war and who were wealthy afterwards. They had recuperated the stock of the Jews they sent to the concentration camps. There was one here in Gondrecourt near Abainville that my father knew quite well. He worked with my father. He bought horses, he bought sheep, he bought any kind of stock from my father. I knew him well; I was young, but he came almost twice a week. His name was Salomon. He had a great deal of goods at Gondrecourt with a lot of stock and many acres of property. Well, in the end, it was a little peasant that ended up with it all. And Solomon disappeared with his family into the camps. He never came back. So the collaborators, nine times out of ten, were in it for the money. They got rich during the war when the rest of us became poor: we lost everything, they became wealthy.

I also remember a grandmother who was very poor. She had only one cow. She lived alone in Abainville and she only had one cow. Instead of helping her, the Germans came one day and took her cow away for slaughter. She came to see my father. She cried and said, "What is to become of me?" This cow was her milk, it was her cheese and [when] she had a little extra, she sold it for a little money. She lived like that.

My father said to her, "Don't worry about it." Well, that got him angry. He went to a farm that belonged to a Jew and took a cow. Then he led the cow to the old woman. To her he said, "The farmer won't be any poorer and this will help you. Anyway, all these cows will be slaughtered by the Germans."

She hid her cow during the whole war. She sneaked grass away to feed it where it was—she would never again let her cow out.

Interviewer: Did you know any collaborators that were condemned to death? Neighbors? Do you know any names?

Annie: No.

Interviewer: You didn't see that up close?

Annie: No. Oh of course, my father, certainly he knew some, but my father was in danger of his life with the maquisards even after the war. When the Americans were there, there were still some [maquisards] out looking for my father to shoot him. It got to the point where the constabulary placed my father in protective custody at Ecrouves. He remained there for three months in Ecrouves in a barracks. He had a little room and everything. So the constables had to dot the i's and cross the t's with these maquisards telling them that if anything happened to him, it would mean trouble for them. Even after the war, we were in danger. Afterwards, though, things settled down, but my father became ill and never recovered. He never go over the war. He lived a long time still, but was ill, right?

Interviewer: So, tell me about the servant girl.

Annie: The one that broke my finger? Well, it was a young girl that had been raised by her grandmother. In fact, I don't know if she knew her parents, but I never knew them. I always remembered seeing her with her brother; she and her brother lived with their grandmother in Abainville. My parents hired her to do housework, to take care of me a little bit and she also took care of the fowl.

Interviewer: Chicken coops and the like.

Annie: Yes, that's it. She really liked to go out on the river in the boat, but in one place there was a sink hole eleven meters deep and my father forbade her to go out. So, to go boating, she'd use me. When I went with her, she'd say to my father that I had wanted to go. So I got scolded without having anything to do with it. One day, I fought back and refused. There was a tree nearby. [I wrapped my arms around it.] I don't know what she did, but she caught my finger and broke it. I have remembered that all my life.

Photo taken of the Thill family maid with a German soldier during the time of occupation. Her fate after the war is unknown to the family.

Later, she began frequenting German soldiers. I don't know what went on between her and the Germans, but she, well in the end, from what we see in the photo, um well in my opinion something must have happened and I wonder if she wasn't done in after the war because we never saw her again—she disappeared. She disappeared and even we, after we. . . I had a opportunity to return to our estate. I don't know what my father did with it, but since he had lost all his herds—lost everything—he could no longer maintain such a big holding as that.

Interviewer: Thirty-six acres. . .

Annie: That's it, yes and there were even more. He had fifty and still more outside (the enclosure). I know we went after the war and while my parents chatted downstairs with some people that had come along, I went upstairs in the manor and, on a window sill, found a stick of nougatine that the Germans must have left there. I took the stick and I started to eat it and came back down. I said, "Look at this! I found some nougatine." My mother went out of her mind; she said, "Don't eat that! Maybe they poisoned it!" Obviously, it wasn't poisoned because I'm still here today. But she went straight out of her mind. That was the last time I ever set foot in that house or even on the estate.

I don't know what happened after. My father had a brother that was with him there [he lived in a house just outside the estate walls before the war]. His older brother died on the estate felling trees. He was crushed by a tree. This was in. . . oh, I can't remember exactly when it was.

Interviewer: Late 40s or early 50s?

Annie: Perhaps, yes. And this brother had a lot of debts. He was a difficult man. He came back then to the estate where there were trees that needed to be removed along the road to Gondrecourt, but they were very close to high tension electrical wires. Some experts came to see and refused to chop them down. It was too dangerous because there was every possibility a tree might fall on someone. The trees were on a steep incline with the power lines running right along them. So, since my father's brother was something of a daredevil, he said, "Well, I'm going to go do it." My father said to him, "No, you aren't an expert and the experts refuse to do it." I remember even today my father saying it. But he went anyway with a Mr. Petit. [Later] All of a sudden Mr. Petit came running—I was there—and he said, "Come quickly, come quickly. Your brother lies buried under a tree."

The tree had turned over and fallen on him. He had wanted to fell it the opposite direction and, thinking it would fall one way, [he went to the other] then the tree turned and fell on him. He had multiple fractures. When I saw him brought to the house, I was sad. I cried because only the evening before I was on his knees and he made me some little paper pots and pans. I still had these pots and pans. He died in Commercy hospital. So this brother there, well in fact, I think my father must have paid some of his debts after the war. I have a tiny memory of that.

Interviewer: So, after the war, you left Voids-Vacon?

Annie: Oh, yes, right away. We went to Neuville where my father bought sheep and there we raised lots of sheep again.

Interviewer: So you moved to Neuville for economic reasons or to get away from the old neighborhood where some still thought your father was a collaborator?

Annie: No, afterwards, no. No one was left with the idea he had been a collaborator.

Interviewer: So, that business was finished?

Annie: Yes, it was over because word got around afterward. Everything was out in the open, everything became known bit by bit.

Interviewer: So, there was some financial advantage to going to Neuville. . .

Annie: Yes, of course. There we got into a house. he bought more sheep—not as many as before because we didn't have enough land to run them. Then he bought some cows and we had horses. And from there we moved to another place in Vaux-la-Grande near Ligny-en-Barrois. It was going back to our beginnings for us because I was born in Ligny. But, it was there that my father fell gravely ill and there that I married.

But, my uncle was the same; he risked his life too, the one that was in the Resistance with my father. He was a dare-devil too this guy and his problem was. . . [Well] my father knew how to shut up: he listened, but he never replied. He thought what he wanted to think; he said what he wanted to say afterward, but he was a rather calm man who listened a lot more than he spoke whereas my uncle, for his part, well whenever a German soldier said something to him, he just talked back to him saying whatever he wanted. One day—we thought we'd never see him again—my uncle Henri got at off the Bar-le-Duc train station. There were always armed German soldiers on the station platform. My uncle never took the underground passage to cross the rails; he always crossed on top which he wasn't supposed to do. A soldier called out to him, "Halt!" then said, "It is forbidden to cross there." To which he replied, "What? I'll be crossing there long after you've gone back to the other side of the Rhine." Well they caught him there, my uncle, there were two soldiers and they hauled him off to the station commander's office. His work companion came immediately to alert us—I don't know how—he said, "I don't think we'll be seeing him again this time around. He's gone too far." In the station office, [they asked him,] "Where are you from?"

      "Alsace."

      "Oh!"

Obviously, he was tall, blond and had very blue eyes—the archetypal, pure Aryan.

Interviewer: (Even though he was Luxembourgish—

Annie:—No, not him, he was my mother's brother.)

      "What are you doing here? Why aren't you in the German army?

      "I'll never go into the German army, for sure never! I am an Alsatian."

      So, he argued with them. . .

      "Why do you say that?"

      "I'm in my country here. If our roles were reversed, what would you do?"

So he said exactly what he thought. Then, the Kraut had had enough, he got up and said, "Alright, alright. Get out of here now!" There was a soldier near the door on the way out. When my uncle was on his way down from the office, he gave him a big kick in the behind, so angry was this soldier standing near the door. A big kick in the behind! When he got home that evening, he said, "This kick in the behind, well it's going to cost them plenty!" And he continued as a member of the Resistance. Luckily, they didn't know it and they never had any inkling, not the slightest suspicion because if they had, he would never have come back. So, that was Henri. How many times we told him to keep his mouth shut, but he wouldn't!

I'm often reminded of little stories like that.

Interviewer: Do you have others?

Annie: Well, there is my aunt who died— the one I said had been strafed by the Italians. That was when my father made a U-turn on the road. She delivered her baby. Later, she lost so much blood and we had no way to take care of her to save her. She could have been saved, but the hospitals didn't have what they needed; there was nothing. Physicians were rare. Sometimes you could find an army doctor. So she died and we raised the baby until my uncle Henri remarried. That was many years later. The baby was named Pierrot.

Here is Abainville's monument to its fallen sons.

So, in the end, just what is war? It's hunger, it's misery, it's horrors, crime, murder— war is all that. People take years to get over it when they succeed because some never do. It's important to know this.
- End -

The Meuse is a rich agricultural area of the Lorraine region of France. Abainville-Gondrecourt is in the extreme south of the Meuse.

Key to Place Names
The map of France illustrates the departments that break up the country politically. In black is the department of the Meuse (the Meuse is a river that flows to Holland where it meets the North Sea). This is the heart of the region of France historically named Lorraine after the grandson of Charlemagne whose brothers' claims to rule the (Holy Roman) Empire split Europe into France, Germany and Lotharingia. Luther's brother Pepin would inherit France and Ludovic (Louis) would take Germany; Lorraine passes to Luther II. This region will be henceforth contested between the two greater kingdoms, solidly German from 925 to 1300, French from 1766 on with a period of German occupation after the 1870 war until 1918. Many towns in Lorraine have alternate German names and birth certificates of children born before 1914 often reflect this.

The accounts given in the interview all take place in Meuse department of south central Lorraine.

Abainvile and Gondrecourt are at the circle marked Gondrecourt in the blue oval as labeled.
Amanty is just past the blue 33 on the yellow road southeast from Gondrecourt to Domrémy.
Voids and Vacon are on National Highway 4 (red road) northeast of Abainville.
Ligny-en-Barrois is on National Highway 4 northwest of Abainville.
Bar-le-Duc, the capital of Meuse department, is northwest of Ligny.
Ecrouves is next to Toul northeast of Abainville. It is not noted on the map.
Pagny-la-blanche-côte, where Annie lives today, is roughly covered by the first u of Vaucouleurs, a town east-northeast of Abainville.