I met Paule-Edile Faivre d’Arcier in 2016 at a village coffee morning in the gardens of Virginia Woolf’s former house, now a National Trust property, in Rodmell, Sussex. She shared stories of her youth in Forges-les-Eaux, near Dieppe, France, where during WWII she volunteered with the ‘Croix-Rouge Française’, the French Red Cross. She told me that while cycling between villages, she occasionally passed on messages for the Resistance. Sadly, Paule-Edile passed away in 2022 aged 100.
Born in 1921 in her grandmother’s chateau, she was 18 when war broke out. Her father, a soldier, was captured at Saumur in 1940. He resented the British for evacuating their own troops first at Dunkirk in May 1940, leaving tens of thousands of both British and French soldiers under bombardment.
After his release, the family reunited in Pau before returning to Normandy – only to find their home occupied by German troops. Eventually allowed back, they were given limited space while German forces lived in the rest of the house.
German occupation
Her grandmother’s chateau had been taken over by Luftwaffe officers. Given only a small room and barred from the main staircase, her grandmother endured her exile with quiet dignity. Meanwhile, Paule-Edile regularly cycled the five miles between her grandmother’s and her father’s homes. She was able to do this because the German authorities had issued her with permit to travel called an ‘Ausweiß’, due to her Red Cross role.
She recalled vividly one day when Marshal Goering visited the chateau. Officers introduced her, on the steps of the chateau, as the daughter of the house, and she exchanged pleasantries with him in fractured French and German. She said he looked magnificent in his beautiful uniform and glistening medals, and he was surprisingly courteous.
Despite the occupation, village life carried on. Food was scarce, but local farmers secretly slaughtered livestock and shared supplies. Life in the countryside, while constrained, was less dire than in the cities.
Paule-Edile’s father joined the Resistance, warning the family to avoid conflict with German soldiers to protect their covert activities. Resistance meetings were held in fields to avoid detection, especially during Allied supply drops. The danger was constant – Germans sometimes disguised themselves as downed Allied pilots to root out the Resistance!
The Gestapo posed a particular threat. Their surprise visits sparked fear even among the German Army officers. Despite this, she recalls an amusing incident at her father’s chateau during a visit by the Gestapo. As their car entered the courtyard, it was forced to crawl behind a tame goose, Josephine, who strutted sedately toward the kitchen for her mealtime, delaying the feared officers and amusing the watching troops.
SS troops were another dark presence. When they came in 1941, they seized all the village’s horses for the Eastern Front, including those belonging to the estate. Fortunately, they didn’t stay long.
Important acts of kindness
Yet, even amid fear and anxiety of war, moments of humanity surfaced. A young German interpreter, once a law student, befriended a French Prisoner Of War (POW) while home on leave in Germany. POWs had been working on his parents’ farm. Upon returning to France, the young German begged Paule-Edile to post a letter to the POW’s family, fearing arrest if found with it. She took her bicycle and posted it in a distant village. “There are some human things, even in war,” she reflected.
They listened to BBC French radio broadcasts under blankets. In that way, the family kept themselves informed of the D-Day landings in early June 1945. In their area, German panzers (tanks) were preparing for an Allied invasion in the Calais area. Four tanks parked in front of their chateau. They had knocked the wall and gates down to get them in. They were relieved when the German tank group left. They were replaced with German staff officers which was altogether quieter.
Eventually, the war reached their part of Normandy. As her village was liberated, she was asked to help in a nearby still-occupied village where her uncle lived. A forest lay between them, where SS paratroopers hid. Though terrified, she obeyed her father’s stern reminder: “When one has to do something, one does not ‘wonder’, one does it.” She cycled through the forest and managed to avoid the SS.
At her uncle’s, she found seven captured SS troops. They wished to surrender only to British – not Canadian – soldiers, due to fear of reprisals. She assured them the arriving troops were English, easing their surrender. She remembered the British officer’s irritated response when she asked if he was truly English: “Of course I’m English!”
Authors note: The failed Dieppe Raid of 1942 saw heavy Canadian losses, and many were taken prisoner. Some Canadians tried to escape, and they were shot. Perhaps the SS troopers were thinking of this and the ‘Normandy massacres’ which were a series of killings in which approximately 156 Canadian (POWs) were murdered by the SS.
Life after war
Towards the end of the war Paule-Edile entered the French Army Cadet School and served as part of the Army Reserve as an officer. Now part of the military she marched in the Paris Victory Parade in August 1944.
It was in Paris that she met her future husband, Captain Wallerstein of the British Royal Tank Regiment, at an afternoon tea dance in the officers’ mess. She recounted the meeting saying that as soon as he walked into the room she said, “That’s the one I’m going to marry.”
Postscript:
My thanks to Isabella Wallerstein, Paule-Edile’s daughter, and Isabella’s brother (France) and sister (England) for helping me with this tribute to their mother.
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