Back from Bondage

The steady stream of Frenchmen returning from German bondage became a torrent. In a single day last week 20,000 repatriated prisoners poured through the Government's reception centers. They were tired men, smiling out of their fatigue, longing fiercely for home. Fiercely longing women met them.*

One gaunt Parisian, gone five years, hurried unannounced to his home. He was too spent to climb the five flights to his door, so the janitor went up to tell his wife the good news. When she came down, her husband lay dead of a heart attack.

Another returned with a cooing blond baby in his arms. His wife rushed to greet him, drew back in dismay. But Jacques, with French common sense, spoke firmly to his Jacqueline: "I worked on a German farm. The farmer's daughter and I--well, you understand--in fact, you see. She and her parents were killed by Allied artillery. So here we are, both of us. I love you very much. I want to take up our old life together. But you'll have to accept little Jacques. I adore you, but on this subject no nonsense, see?" Jacqueline and the two Jacques went home together.

The first Frenchwomen also came home last week from the prisons of Germany. There were about 200 of them, prematurely aged, pitifully thin and tattered, some on stretchers, some barely able to walk. Charles de Gaulle greeted them. All Paris honored them with tears, tossed lilacs and lilies of the valley at their feet. Most of them were wives and daughters of executed resistance leaders.

*At the Gare d'Orsay reception center, a bas-relief of women with arms flung wide illustrates the legend Salut les copains (Welcome, Pals). Under a so-foot-high triumphal arch of crossed Allied flags are other bas-reliefs, each with a two-word legend illustrating the new-found (and realistically French) freedoms; the second word in each case is librement (freely) and the verbs are: jouer, travailler, parler, aimer, dormir, manger, boire and respirer (play, work, speak, love, sleep, eat, drink and breathe).

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