Wine And War: The French, The Nazis And The Battle For France's Greatest Treasure Part 8

What Bernard did not know was that Abbe Pierre, who was to become one of France's leading humanitarian crusaders, had been part of the Resistance from the very beginning. He was one of its original organizers, plotting strategy, working to get people out of the country and recruiting new members.

"Look, I don't mean to discourage you," the priest said, "but you should understand that we need you more here in France. There's a lot of work to do and we need young men like you."

It was a disheartening moment for Bernard. He felt the dream he had been nurturing since de Gaulle's speech from London was being shattered, but finally he nodded. "Okay, what do you want me to do?" he asked.

"That's simple," the abbot replied. "Fight Germans. We're going to train you to become a commando."

SIX.

Wolves at the Door ONCE UPON A TIME IN BURGUNDY, THE WOLVES ran free. They prowled the forests and, in times of famine, roamed the streets of towns and villages. In the tenth century, it is said, their packs were so enormous and so vicious that they drove the Dukes of Burgundy from their windswept capital in Auxerre to the safer climes of Dijon. It was the curse of the wolves, the Dukes declared; evil lurked wherever the beasts were found.

Nowadays, many scoff at such stories but old-timers swear the tales are true. Monsieur Le Brun, who lived in Auxerre just before World War II, said, "The wolves used to bother us a great deal. It has always been so in the winegrowing districts. The wild animals learn to eat the food that is available, and so we have had to guard the grapes."

That was especially true during times of famine. Over the centuries, the rocky winegrowing regions of France, whose soil was unsuited for other sorts of agriculture, were a frequent prey to famine and a prime attraction for hungry wolves that survived by eating the grapes. But people noticed something strange. According to Monsieur Le Brun, the grapes had an "exhilarating effect" on the wolves. "I suspect the stomach of the wolf is so constructed that the fermentation of the fruit juices proceeds rapidly after the animal has eaten the grapes. At any rate, intoxication is frequently the result."

Such sights are rarely seen anymore since most of the wolves have been exterminated, but Monsieur Le Brun says he recalls seeing a drunken pack running by his home. "They came right up this very street," he said, pointing to the cobblestone lane that ran through the middle of the town. "Few who saw that sight will forget it.

"The wolves were all intoxicated. That was what caused them to come into the town in the first place, and it was also what saved the townsfolk after they had come in. They were too drunk to remember that they were wolves."

Residents, cowering in their cottages, watched in utter amazement as the beasts raced through the streets, howling and drooling, before collapsing in a stupor.

"They just lay down in the street, stupidly drunk," Monsieur Le Brun said.

Then the townsfolk, hunting knives in hand, stepped cautiously out of their doors. When the wolves did not move, they killed them all. That, according to Le Brun, was the last wolf scare in Burgundy.

Except, perhaps, on stormy nights when rain walks across rooftops and the wind howls down chimneys. That is when older folk say they can still hear the howling of wolves as they creep ever closer to the gates of the cities and to the doors of those living there.

The door at 7, rue d'Enfer in Beaune shuddered. It was not yet six in the morning and the Drouhin family was asleep. When the pounding began, everyone came instantly awake; they knew who it was.

Maurice did not hesitate. Reaching under his bed, he grabbed a small suitcase. It had been packed two years earlier in fear of this very moment. There was no time for goodbyes. Maurice mouthed "I love you" to his wife, who gave a quick nod, and then he fled from the room. He slipped quietly down the stairs, through the cold house and into the wine cellar.

His wife, Pauline, went to the window, threw open the panes and looked toward the street below. Several officers from the Gestapo accompanied by about a dozen soldiers were standing in front of the door. "What is it?" she asked.

"We want to talk to your husband," one of them shouted back. "Open the door!"

"He's not here," Pauline replied in all honesty.

"Well then, where is he? We need to see him immediately."

"He's away on business. I think he said something about going to Paris," Pauline said, trying to buy as much time as possible for her husband to escape. The Germans did not believe her and demanded again that she open the door.

Eight-year-old Robert, who had been sleeping in his parents' room, was listening to every word. When he heard what his mother had said, he crawled out of bed and, on hands and knees, edged his way along the wall of the bedroom, out the door and into his sisters' room next door.

The girls were already awake and straining to hear what was happening. Robert hurriedly related what had transpired. "Mama told the Gestapo Papa has gone to Paris on business," he told them breathlessly. Then, once again on hands and knees, he scurried back to his parents' bedroom and crawled into bed.

By this time, his mother had finally agreed to go downstairs and let the Gestapo in so they could search the house. "Stay in bed," she cautioned Robert.

The Gestapo marched through the house, searching every room, opening every armoire, pus.h.i.+ng aside the clothes, tossing out linens, looking under beds and behind doors. When they got to the bedroom of the Drouhin daughters, they asked them where their father was. "Gone to Paris," they answered nervously.

Then they invaded the next bedroom, where Robert was pretending to be asleep. "Where's your father?" one of them demanded, shaking his shoulder.

Robert sat up, rubbed his eyes and looked up at the men towering above him. In a small voice, he replied, "He's gone to Paris on business." The Gestapo were taken aback. A sleepy little boy just awakened surely would be telling the truth, they thought. The chagrined officer jerked his head toward the door. "We're wasting our time, let's get out of here," he said.

Downstairs, beneath the house, Maurice lit a candle and began navigating the labyrinth of tunnels that made up his wine cellar. Centuries earlier, this huge underground maze, carved out of solid rock, held the wines of the Dukes of Burgundy and the Kings of France. Now, Maurice hoped, it would provide a way for him to escape. Ever since his release from a German prison in 1941, Maurice had been sure it was just a matter of time before the Germans, who were convinced he belonged to the Resistance, would come for him again.

Driven by the awful certainty that he would be killed if he were caught, Maurice searched frantically for a small wooden door that would lead him to safety. Even with a candle and his knowledge of the vast cellars, the darkness made it difficult for him to find his way. On one of the four levels of pa.s.sageways that made up his cellar, he finally found what he was looking for. Maurice brushed away the cobwebs and eased himself behind the wine racks; then he gripped the handle of the door and pulled. It opened easily. Stooping slightly as he went through, Maurice quickly made his way up several steps that led to the street outside, the rue de Paradis, or Street of Paradise.

He paused for several seconds, watching and listening intently. Nothing moved. No Germans were in sight. Just the faint glimmer of dawn as the first rays of light brushed the ancient tiled roofs of the sleeping town. Maurice disappeared into the still of the early morning.

The Miailhes shuddered to think what would happen if the Jews they had hidden at Chteau Palmer were discovered. They knew all too well that the Germans had set up a transit camp at Merignac on the edge of Bordeaux, and that trains packed with Jews of all ages and nationalities were now running out of the Gare St. Jean directly to Auschwitz.

They knew something else as well: time had run out. With German soldiers occupying the main part of Palmer, they had to get their friends out of the annex where they had hidden them just before the Germans moved in.

Like most Bordelais, the Miailhes had hoped things would work out differently. They were relieved when Marshal Petain took over as head of state and were comforted by his grandfatherly a.s.surances that he would protect them by serving as a buffer between the French and the worst excesses of the Germans. Their feelings began to change, however, when they saw Bordeaux's 5,000 Jews being forced to wear yellow Stars of David. They were further dismayed when Petain's government stripped immigrant and refugee Jews of their rights and property and began deporting them.

But it was an incident in 1942 that convinced the Miailhes they had no time to lose. That July, the Germans, with help from the French police, launched their first ma.s.sive roundup of Jews in Paris. Four thousand Jewish children were s.n.a.t.c.hed from their parents and herded into a sports stadium in Paris, the Velodrome d'Hiver. They were left there for five days without water, adequate food or sanitation. When church leaders, for the first time, protested Vichy's collaboration and begged Prime Minister Laval to intervene, he refused. The children's suffering had no effect on him. "They all must go," he said.

The children were deported from the transit camp at Drancy along with 70,000 other Jewish victims.

Thus far, the Miailhes and their Jewish friends had been lucky. The Germans had never suspected that just on the other side of Chteau Palmer's kitchen wall were two families, four adults and three children, in hiding.

Arrangements for their escape fell to Edouard and Louis Miailhe. The two brothers were a familiar sight to the Germans, especially Louis, who visited the property nearly every day to check on the wine and oversee work in the vineyards.

Now, however, they stepped up the visits and varied their times, ostensibly to check on the vineyard. In reality, it was to make sure the Germans became used to their comings and goings.

Often, Louis would walk up and down the rows with his secateurs pretending to prune the vines, stopping now and then to pick off caterpillars or check the grapes for signs of mildew. Edouard was usually close by, holding what German sentries presumed was a basket of vineyard tools. Under the tools, however, were food, clothing and other necessities for their Jewish friends. When the Germans were out of sight, Louis and Edouard would sneak through the hedge to the annex and slip the provisions to the Jews through a trapdoor.

They would also relay the latest news, and lately most of it had been bad. They explained what was happening to other Jews in Bordeaux and warned their friends to be extra careful, not to make a sound. The slightest cry from one of the children could give them all away. Edouard a.s.sured them that they were working on a plan to get them out of France but it would take some time. Try to hold on, he said.

Finally, one day, the Miailhe brothers had some good news. They had found someone to forge identification papers for their friends. They also had secured pa.s.sage for them on a s.h.i.+p out of the country.

It had been arranged through the help of a neighbor, a helpless old man whose arthritis confined him to a wheelchair. Or at least that is what he wanted the Germans to think. In reality, General Brutinel, a retired French-Canadian army officer, was operating an escape network out of his home at Chteau Las...o...b..s, helping British airmen whose planes had been shot down get back to England.

Edouard Miailhe had become acquainted with Brutinel shortly after the general acquired Las...o...b..s in the early 1930s. Their mutual interest in wine soon led to a close friends.h.i.+p. Many evenings, the two would get together in the great library of Chteau Las...o...b..s to compare wine notes and great vintages they had drunk. Almost always it was done over a special bottle of wine.

Often, however, their discussions ranged far beyond wine to include such subjects as art, politics, war and the latest news from the BBC. On many of those occasions, Edouard was accompanied by his daughter May-Eliane. She remembers listening with awe as General Brutinel, "this brilliant highly cultured man," described his philosophy of life and the cruelty with which human beings sometimes treat each other. "Man often behaves like a wolf toward other men," she recalls him saying.

"Can this be true?" May-Eliane whispered to her father. "Yes," he replied sadly.

The escape of the Italian Jews from Chteau Palmer took place at night. Louis, who lived at Chteau Coufran, met Edouard at Chteau Siran, where the rest of the Miailhe family was then living. Taking two cars, the brothers drove the three kilometers to Palmer and parked in the shadows some distance away from the chteau. The Miailhes then crept across the grounds to the annex and tapped on the trapdoor. The two families were ready. Quickly and quietly, they began pa.s.sing their luggage out through the small opening before crawling out themselves.

Although German guards patrolled the perimeter of the property, none was in sight. With hand signals and whispers, the Miailhes guided the Italians across the grounds and through the vineyards to where the cars were parked. Speaking in hushed tones, the brothers quickly told their friends that their destination was the port of Bayonne near the Spanish border, where arrangements had been made for them to board the last boat to Argentina.

And then they were off, moving slowly and without headlights down a dirt path through the vineyard, away from Chteau Palmer.

"I'll always remember those two cars leaving, and disappearing into the night," May-Eliane said. "We thought they might not make it, that there was an eighty percent chance that Daddy and Uncle Louis would be caught and put in a camp."

By the end of 1943, the "wolves" were again edging closer. The Germans, realizing that the Resistance was becoming more militant, were determined to crush it.

Unnerved by ambushes which seemed to lurk around every corner, they retaliated without mercy, not only against the Resistance but against anyone suspected of supporting it. The war that France had managed to avoid in 1940 had now come to the country. Farms were burned, villages were razed and thousands were executed by firing squad.

Even the vineyards were no longer safe. "Every day as we tended our vines, we listened for the click of the rifle," said Andre Foreau of Vouvray. Vignerons like Foreau, and most in the countryside, had become thoroughly disillusioned with Petain's government and its broken promises. It had failed to ease the harsh conditions imposed by the occupation and had done little to control requisitions by an increasingly predatory German army. The "heroic patience of the peasant" which Marshal Petain once praised had run out.

Winegrowers stepped up their a.s.sistance to the Resistance by allowing their property to be used for nighttime parachute drops of money, arms and supplies, items that became vitally important as more and more Frenchmen refused to report for STO. Between April and December 1943, about 150,000 men were on the run from STO. Within the next six months, that number more than doubled.

Many sought refuge with the Maquis, hiding in the forests and hills. Many others were taken in by winegrowers and farmers who hid them in their barns and cellars.

As the Resistance became more entrenched in the countryside, the Germans began sending patrols into towns and villages that had barely been touched by the occupation.

Jean-Michel Chevreau, the Loire Valley winegrower from Chanay, noticed it immediately. In 1940 when the occupation first began, the Germans rarely came through his village. When they did, Jean-Michel and his friends would treat it like a game, sneaking out after curfew and siphoning wine from trains bound for Germany. "We loved trying to stay one step ahead of them," Jean-Michel said. "Every time they thought they had us, we'd come up with something new."

By 1943, however, everything had changed. Heavily armed patrols now regularly descended on Chanay and villages like it. "These were not the same Germans we knew in 1940," Jean-Michel said. "They were ruthless, unpredictable." Nearly every Frenchman knew someone who had suffered at the hands of the Germans, and a deep-seated fear entered their lives.

The French finally realized that they were facing an all-pervading authority which was prepared to crush what it could not control. According to historian H. R. Kedward, "With every week that pa.s.sed, the reality of being a defeated and occupied country forced the French to reappraise their initial reactions to the Germans. Where it had been common to acknowledge that the Germans were well-behaved, the phrase expressing the fact, 'les Allemands sont correct,' rapidly became a joke in poor taste, and sullen resentment took its place."

Resentment, and much more. There was now the conviction that one mistake, one false step, could result in torture or even death.

"We tried to live in the shadows," Jean-Michel said.

That year, in the darkness of a December night, a solitary truck wound its way carefully over Champagne's Montagne de Reims (Mountain of Reims) toward the city of Reims. The driver, who knew the route well, relied on his darkened headlights as little as possible. It was well after curfew.

Suddenly, a light flashed in front of him. He blinked several times to see what was happening but the light was leveled directly at him. Then there came a shout in heavily accented French ordering him to stop. He slammed on his brakes.

A German soldier yanked open the door and pulled the driver out. Where are you going? What are you doing? The questions came fast and furious as other soldiers converged on the truck and began searching it. Before the driver could say anything, there was a shout from the rear of the vehicle. A soldier jumped down, holding an armful of weapons.

"What's all this?" the officer demanded. The terrified driver refused to talk. Slamming his fist into the driver's stomach, the German repeated his question. The driver, held upright by two other soldiers, said he did not know anything about the weapons. They dragged him to another vehicle and drove him to Gestapo headquarters in Reims. Other soldiers followed in the truck he had been driving.

Under torture, the driver said he did not know anything about the weapons but confessed that he had been sent by his boss "to make a pickup" and that he was just following orders. His boss was the Marquis Suarez d'Aulan, who ran Piper-Heidsieck Champagne. The pickup consisted of a huge cache of arms, including rifles, pistols and grenades, that had been parachuted in for the Resistance. The weapons had been dropped into a vineyard Piper owned near Avize on the Cte des Blancs, about twenty miles south of Reims.

Like many other champagne producers, the marquis had turned his vast cellar into a place of refuge for the Resistance. He also had created an arms depot there, stockpiling weapons that were flown into Champagne by the Allies and which were to be handed out to the Maquis when the battle for the liberation of France began.

The Germans had long suspected what was going on but had never been able to prove it, thanks largely to the disciplined and highly secretive nature of Resistance organizations in Champagne. With the arrest and confession of the driver from Piper-Heidsieck, the Germans now had the evidence they needed.

Early the next morning, a convoy of vehicles carrying soldiers and the Gestapo descended on the headquarters of Piper-Heidsieck. They did not bother to knock; they pushed straight in, demanding to know where Monsieur Suarez d'Aulan was. A Piper employee replied that the marquis was not there, that he had gone mountain climbing in the Alps. The Germans began searching the premises. They discovered a huge quant.i.ty of weapons hidden in the cellars, but no sign of Suarez d'Aulan.

Furious, the Gestapo sped to his home, hoping to catch other members of the family, but someone else from Piper had gotten there ten minutes earlier and warned the family what was happening. By the time the Germans arrived, everyone, including the marquis's wife Yolande was gone.

The Germans, however, were not about to give up. A few days later, when Yolande's mother died, the Germans sensed another opportunity. They decided to surround the church during the funeral service and arrest the family when they came out.

The service began as planned. As prayers were recited, soldiers took up positions around the church, guarding all the doors. When the service ended, however, only one member of the family emerged. It was Suarez d'Aulan's fifteen-year-old daughter, Ghislaine. The rest of the family had stayed away, suspecting the Gestapo might try something but believing they would not bother a young girl.

The Gestapo, however, was so angry that it grabbed Ghislaine as a hostage, warning that she would only be released in exchange for her parents. Ghislaine insisted she had no idea where they were. The officer said they would wait. The girl was thrown into the prison at Chlons-sur-Marne, where other Resistance figures from Champagne were being held.

The entire Champagne community was outraged. They besieged the Germans with letters of protest. Some braved immediate punishment and possible imprisonment by going to the Gestapo and voicing their complaints in person. Even the mayor of Paris, Pierre Taittinger, became involved by calling on the King of Sweden to intervene.

Three weeks later, in the face of increasing protests and with no sign of Ghislaine's family, the Germans finally let her go.

By then, her father, an experienced pilot, had made his way to Algiers and joined a French fighter squadron. Her mother found refuge with the Maquis in the Vercours region of eastern France.

Their champagne house, however, was placed under direct German control. The person charged with running it was weinfhrer Otto Klaebisch.

Even small producers like Henri Billiot were feeling the pressure. Billiot owned about five acres of vines near Ambonnay, selling his grapes to the major champagne houses. With his father in ill health and his grandfather partially paralyzed by a stroke, Henri, who was seventeen years old, had to take care of the entire family. That included his five younger brothers and sisters, his parents, two sets of elderly grandparents and his aunt and her three children. His uncle, an officer in the French army, had been sent to a camp in Germany after refusing to work for the Germans.

"My youth was not a time of fun," Henri said. "I worked twenty-four hours a day trying to feed the family. I never had holidays or weekends."

But he did have a horse. That was more than most champagne producers had, because most horses had been requisitioned by the Germans. The Billiots still had theirs only because of Henri's partially paralyzed grandfather. When the Germans came to requisition it, Grandfather Billiot had parked himself and his wheelchair in front of the stable and refused to move. Shaking his cane in the face of the German officer, Grandpa Billiot bellowed, "You can't have my horse. Get the h.e.l.l out of here!" The outburst startled the officer, who snarled back, "You're too French!" Turning on his heels, he and the other Germans stomped angrily across the courtyard and slammed the big wooden door as they left.

Thanks to his grandfather's obstinacy, Henri was able to pool his resources with a neighbor who also had managed to keep one horse. With two horses, vineyard work became easier. Other parts of Henri's life, however, were becoming much more complicated.

The Germans, who had opened an officers' training school near Ambonnay, announced they were requisitioning part of Billiot's house to quarter some of their soldiers.

About the same time, Henri's sister Denise came to him and revealed that she had been working with the Resistance. Now, she said, the Resistance was wondering if Henri would be willing to get involved by joining the Service des Renseignements, or Information Service. In other words, become a spy. Denise told Henri the Resistance felt he was well suited, that he knew the vineyards and had spent long hours each day working in them or biking up and down the paths to check on the vines. It would be a simple matter, Denise suggested, for Henri to go just a bit further and also check on German comings and goings, and then, once a week, bike up the slopes of the Montagne de Reims and relay his information to a contact.

It sounded exciting. Like many of his friends, Henri wanted to become involved in the war and do something to help his country. Unlike them, he had not been able to run off to join the Free French Forces because of his obligations at home. The spy job seemed perfect. Henri eagerly accepted.

All went well until the winter of 1944. Heavy snows confined nearly everyone to their homes and prevented Henri from venturing outside to monitor German troops or meet with his contact. To make matters worse, four German soldiers had moved into Billiot's house.

Henri struggled to bide his time and concentrate on his champagne business. Like other growers, he had been thinking about making his own champagne. His grapes were of high quality and had always commanded a good price, so why not?

Before he could experiment, however, his sister appeared with another message from the Resistance. "Go to Bouzy immediately," she said. "Your contact wants to see you."

Despite the darkness and the deep snow, Henri got on his bike and pedaled several kilometers to the rendezvous point, a windswept patch of ground in the middle of a vineyard. There, he was met by his contact, a truck and a small mountain of burlap bags filled with potatoes. Nearby stood four American airmen whose planes had been shot down. Each of them was holding an empty bag.

Before Henri could ask what was going on, his contact pointed to the Americans and said, "Get those guys into their sacks and let's get loaded up before anyone sees us." The four Americans climbed onto the truck and, with help from Henri, crawled into their bags. Henri and his contact then lugged the sacks containing potatoes over to the truck and piled them on top of the airmen until they were completely hidden from view.

Henri was instructed to drive them to Ambonnay and hide them for two days. Someone else from the Resistance would then arrive and help them escape to Spain.

Henri threw his bike into the truck and started the engine. It had stopped snowing and was becoming light. As the truck moved slowly down an icy hill, a German encampment came into view. This was the most dangerous part of the journey. If there was any place Henri would be stopped, this was where it would happen. Despite an overwhelming urge to speed up to get past the Germans, he knew he did not dare. He held his breath and continued on. Two minutes later, Henri breathed a sigh of relief. The German camp was behind him.

Henri drove straight to his grandfather's house on the outskirts of Ambonnay and explained the situation. "It's just for a couple of days," he said. His grandfather allowed two of the airmen to stay in his house.

Henri's next stop was a cafe run by a friend, who agreed to hide another of the Americans in a room just above the establishment.

By now, it was midmorning and German soldiers would be about, but Henri still had another airman to hide, a bombardier named Edmund Bairstow. Henri decided to take a chance. Turning his truck, he headed straight for home. His mother was there when he arrived. "Are any of the Germans around?" he asked, quickly explaining that an American flier was hidden in his truck. When she a.s.sured him they were out, Henri rushed back to the truck, helped Bairstow out of the bag and ushered him into the house. He put Bairstow in his bedroom, warning him to be quiet because German soldiers were living in the next room. At first, Bairstow did not understand. "There was no one in Ambonnay who spoke English and Bairstow didn't speak French," recalled Henri, "so I was a little worried but I figured we could manage for two days."

Henri's worries, however, had only begun. Two days later, someone from the Resistance arrived at his house to say that the person who was supposed to spirit the Americans away had been captured by the Germans and sent to a concentration camp. Henri was told he would have to take care of the airmen until other arrangements could be made.