A Troubled Peace (18 page)

 

One thing Americans were reluctant to discuss following WWII was the emotional trauma many veterans faced. Back then readjustment issues we now know as symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were simply called “battle fatigue” or being “flak-happy.” Often such troubles were dismissed as something veterans would get over with time and their return to normal, civilian life.

Coping was perhaps easier for WWII veterans than it would be later for Vietnam soldiers, who came home to war protests condemning their actions and who ended up suffering staggering rates of substance abuse, violence, and failed relationships. By comparison, WWII vets were hailed as heroes, the economy boomed, and they found jobs. Even so, the National Center for PTSD now estimates
that one in twenty WWII vets suffered PTSD symptoms such as bad dreams, extreme irritability, and flashbacks. Those who did struggle with readjustment often masked their distress by becoming workaholics or drinking heavily at before-dinner cocktail hours—behaviors that were accepted norms during the 1950s and '60s.

Sadly, many of our surviving and elderly WWII veterans experience delayed onset of PTSD as their memory falters in general. Their ability to suppress disturbing images or flashbacks has eroded. Some are experiencing combat nightmares or violent reactions when awakened by spouses or caretakers. It is disturbing proof of how long lasting the impact of war is, that decades later, self-defense reflexes are still so ingrained in the subconscious of 80-year-old retirees.

The longer a person serves in combat situations, the more vulnerable he or she is to PTSD. In 2008, a Defense Department study found one in six soldiers and marines returning from Iraq suffered PTSD or depression. Many of these individuals had to serve multiple tours of duty.

PTSD symptoms include: nightmares and difficulty sleeping; flashbacks; memories intruding into present-day situations; hypervigilance, jumpiness, or persistent anxiety; sudden, overreactive rage or violence; feelings of profound guilt; and an inability to relate properly to others.

These are feelings and disturbances Henry combats as
he fights to negotiate his own internal peace.

 

Before writing this novel, I read memoirs by Resistance fighters, Ravensbruck prisoners, U.S. soldiers, American diplomats, and writers like Simone de Beauvoir and Marguerite Duras. I wept through many. Their pain and their phenomenal triumph of spirit cut clear through me. These journals also provided palpable day-to-day details—things like Paris's euphoric celebration of VE Day; the staggering price of eggs; being rationed to one hour of electricity a day; riots over strawberries and butter; people jailed for fighting over matches because replacement boxes could not be found; catchphrases such as “suitcase bearers” and “absents;” the lilacs dropped in puddles at the sight of returning deportees; the degradation of deportees being sprayed with DDT to remove lice; or the heartbreaking pleas of starved deportees to taste cherries.

Pamphlets like “112 Gripes about the French,” issued in 1945 by the Information and Educational Division of the U.S. Occupational Forces, highlighted the era's lingo and misunderstandings between French civilians and American GIs. (Tragically, some deportees did die after our troops liberated concentration camps because, in pity and shock, GIs would hand whatever candy or K-rations they had in their pockets to the starving prisoners. Their stomachs were not ready for real food.)
Newspaper articles told of German POWs carving swastikas into peaches; Parisians wearing “lampshade” skirts fashioned from strips of any material they could find; elderly Frenchmen pulling out Jazz Age cigarette holders to smoke discarded butts down to their very last centimeter of nicotine; and the extraordinary efforts to evacuate and hide 400,000 Louvre treasures before Hitler marched into Paris. Photos taken by photojournalists like Lee Miller sparked scenes such as the girl selling milk from a dog-drawn cart, sweat-soaked men madly pedaling bicycles to generate electricity for hair dryers in Parisian salons; and children taking shelter in cardboard and bench teepees.

Two lines in the preface to the French edition of
Suite Française
spawned the time frame and many of the plot twists of this novel.
Suite Française
is a bestselling novel about the German occupation written by Irene Némirovsky, a well-known Jewish author of the time. She was deported and died in Auschwitz before she could finish. Her two young daughters managed to carry the manuscript with them as their governess and a succession of nuns willing to protect them moved them from one hiding place to the next. It was published 60 years later. The two lines had to do with the daughters standing at the Gare de l'Est holding name signs, hoping Irene or their father would be among the thousands of returning “absents”
stumbling off those trains. That image of Némirovsky's children was haunting. Henry needed to find Pierre at that train station or the Hotel Lutetia.

That required the novel to take place between April and September 1945, while the Lutetia's center operated. Getting Henry into France in early 1945, not through the Air Force, was tricky. There was an outpouring of generosity from Americans in late 1945, as organizations (such as UNICEF) formed to ship over food, clothes, and livestock to replenish decimated farms. But they were just getting started in the spring of that year. I am grateful to Peggy Reiff Miller (www.seagoingcowboys.com) for sharing her research of “seagoing cowboys” and the boatloads of cows and horses organized by the Church of the Brethren and what became Heifer International. Trafford Doherty, director of New York's Glenn H. Curtiss Museum, helped clarify the mechanics of flying a Curtiss Jenny biplane. Macs Smith did quick, smart research into little-known organizations like the Union de Femmes Françaises, which helped pinpoint historic events to include.

My main thanks go to my family for their tremendous help with
A Troubled Peace
. My then 18-year-old daughter, Megan, traveled with me to Paris as my translator and coresearcher. In a whirlwind four days, we stayed at the Hotel Lutetia, visited war memorials and exhibits, and collected obscure writings about the return of
the deportees. It took persistent digging, as information about that disturbing time is not readily advertised. She continued to translate websites and memoirs as I wrote. Without her fluent French and her astute, compassionate, and comprehensive questions, this novel would not be as complete a portrait as it is. My son, Peter, then 14, fielded constant hypothetical questions from me as I made choices regarding plot, themes, scenes, and characters. He is a wonderful first-read editor, insightful about history and people, a manuscript's pacing, and the clarity of its themes. Both he and his sister have a profound influence on my characters and the challenges I choose to hurl at them. And enduring thanks go to my husband, John, who has encouraged and advised me since college, patiently waiting through hundreds of deadlines and the emotional weight I carry when researching stories like this one. He reminds me of what truly matters in such stories and helps me find it in myself to write them.

Finally, to my editors: Katherine Tegen trusted that a magazine journalist could write a compelling novel. Her nurturing and shrewd sense of story brought about
Under a War-Torn Sky
, the precursor tale of Henry's survival behind the lines, and now
A Troubled Peace
. Thanks as well to Julie Lansky, who has added her deft editing strokes to Katherine's in guiding this novel. My long-time editor at the
Washingtonian
magazine, Jack Limpert, wisely told
me that the two hardest and most important things to do in writing are to make people laugh and to make them cry; to be sure to include elements of both where possible; and to let the inherent ironies of day-to-day life speak for themselves.

 

Today, the Gare de l'Est still bustles. Its platforms are covered with vaulted glass ceilings supported by a lacy Art Deco latticework of green iron beams, creating a sense of airiness and light. The floor vibrates slightly as trains pull in and out. Short blasts of brakes and ringing bells signal arrivals and departures. Parisians and business travelers leaving the city for country and weekend holidays pass youths coming off the trains carrying overstuffed backpacks and excited expressions. They are greeted by the scent of just-out-of-the-oven rolls, warmed milk and coffee, and spring flowers in the booths along the tracks.

Only a few notice the four stone plaques on the floor by the exit, crowned with fresh wreaths of flowers and red, white, and blue banners. The plaques commemorate the POWs, the political deportees, the forced laborers, and the Jews who left France through Gare de l'Est “in a tragic voyage to prisons and torture camps and to death at the hands of the German Nazis.” One honors the efforts of the railway workers to speed the return of those who somehow survived.

The handful of travelers who do notice these small memorials stop, café au lait or croissant in hand. A few look back to the trains behind them, perhaps imagining very different smells and sounds and voices. They draw in a deep breath or shake their heads before moving on, reminded of how lucky they are, and that thanks to the brave people who fought against such odds and such cruelty, we are free to enjoy and build a safe life the “absents” could only remember in their dreams.

Let us never forget their struggle toward the heights.