Day of Victory

The fascination with the Second World War does not wane. In Europe, we are still finding the bombs, grenades, weapons, helmets, tanks, trucks, planes,… in swamps, in lakes, in the ground, under houses or in the sea. It is still beneath our feet. Walk around our cities, try and spot the walls hit by shrapnel and bullets. True, the US, Russia, Japan, Asia, are just as fascinated with the period. Maybe it is its titanic scale of death and destruction. There is that. 

The First World War had been a gruesome slog, an individual fight against another poor sap, death random and cheap. Everyone wrote about this, be it Remarque, Jünger or Dorgelès. The enemy was a shade briefly met in hand-to-hand combat. Else, some vague idea an unreachable 100 meters away. The mirage of chivalric codes, honour and heroism ground to paste by artillery. It had been so obviously absurd that we parked it. 

Not WWII. The Second World War is a tale beyond war, annihilation, technologies, ideologies and villains. It is not about me, but about us. What drips from WWII is hatred. It was a war of loathing, which could and did only end one way: total annihilation. 

This is what we still try to fathom: how, and what, and whom, and if. Because we are not sure about what we could have done differently. The right thing, of course, but which?

Let’s imagine ourselves then. 

The guns shut up, armistices are signed. Silence. The boarded windows open. Sandbags are removed. No-one checks nervously the skies anymore, trying to guess the roar of an engine, or a whistling bomb. Peace! Spontaneous rejoicing in London, New York – these pictures are now famous worldwide. Winston Churchill will forever wave from the balcony of Kensington Hall. New York dances. Paris? Already too much to think about. The true delirium had been spent on the 26 August 1944, a year earlier. 

There were official parades organised around the world. Even Jadotville had one, with flags and floats. 

Only France, and the USSR, kept the 8^th of May as a National holiday. A day of victory.

WWII is not a closed topic across France. Not a day passes without that decree, that law, that history being weaponised. Anything to signal where you sat on during WWII: on the side of Good, of course. 

Belgium chose the exact opposite tactic: to forget the whole thing. Who wants to talk Resistance when it would re-open the discussions about the SS Wallonia, SS Vlaanderen… And oh, some may still be alive. Somewhere. 

Katanga in Congo had its own true victory parade, with little flags waved, marches and even a French float. Union Minière had one as well, and the USSR flag was displayed. After all, they were also amongst the victors. Even the local and tribal authorities paraded. Congolese troops of the Force Publique were of course part of it: they had conducted themselves very well during the war, annihilating the Italians in East Africa, capturing 9 generals and thousands of troops, even before the Brits turned the Afrika Korps around. That one was for the History books. 

My family history? Childhoods lived in the middle of the lush savannah, singing It’s a Long Way to Tipperary, away from the bombing raids, starvation and police raids. One of the grandfathers had been part of the colonial volunteers, possibly a bush scout given his skills. A few pictures survived. Nothing to be ashamed of, nor particularly proud of. The rest of my family had a “better war” as France would later call it: one grandfather, with the mountain artillery, wounded kicking the Italians back across the border –  something of a theme during WWII. 

And so, the 8^th of May, Day of Victory, was more than victory, dances, parades.

They had survived where others did not. 

And, because we live by now by procuration in Claviers, that history lives next door. Because the area is so rough, isolated and poor, the region was the perfect bolthole for the Resistance: Jean Moulin himself, De Gaulle representative in France, organised meetings in the village next door, Bargemon. History walked the streets. Here, François Manzone, created the regional maquis (armed groups).  There in Bargemon, the village had been a rear base until the numbers outgrew it. Even 30 years later, in the Cercle de la Fraternité, the local social club, heated conversations were still going on about who did what when, who hid, who joined. The stories never really matched, but, on the 8^th of May, all the men of the village would join the remembrance. 

Headcounts and visual checks would be made discreetly: were you there? Not attending was an ultimate and fatal political statement.

WWII is still pretty much alive in the fabric of France and lingers, even if it is not walking the streets anymore. 

Because WWII has lessons for the whole of humankind – not only for History. 

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