Henri to Yvette.

650 Gen Tpt Coy
Italy

8 June 1944

What wonderful news darling! Rome liberated, the German lines in Italy completely penetrated, the second front begun and the Red Army which will soon add its strength to that of the Allies is thus to strike the mortal blow to the Nazi beast. For the last two days, like you and the rest of the world I can only think of those who are now fighting Nazism on French soil.

Oh darling, my little Yvette, you are a French woman, France is where you were born, it is the Fatherland, and you love the Fatherland. And I know, I understand, I feel all the painful contradiction, all the anguish, which for the last two days has entered your heart. And I know, as you wrote me one day that though a mother well understands the necessity of sending her child to a just war, can still not accept the idea of the death of her son.

And it is a Dantesque inferno that is beating now on France. On your France, on mine, on the France loved by all people. All the familiar horrors of war now begin to fill the communiques and we know what that represents…. But all the pain and anguish don’t contradict the immense joy, the powerful hope the certitude of victory… I know. You dream of beautiful Normandy ravaged by the shocking war machine. You see the large field of wheat change colour, change to the colour of blood. You see the old castles and the little houses destroyed by bombs… But in your heart you also know that all that is happening so that France exists. You know that all the harvests destroyed are necessary before the fruits of labour of the French peasant belong again to him. For you know that every Frenchman, every man who dies now, dies in order that the French nation exists…For you know that the war which is now ravaging France is much more sweet than the perfidious peace of Hitler and Petain, a bloody peace, a cruel peace a peace made to subjugate and destroy the French people….

For me, it’s not a hope; it’s a certainty. The people of 89, the people of the Commune, those of        1934- the worker with the velvet pantaloons. With the casquette, with a Gauloises hanging out of the corner of his mouth, the people of Paris, of the General Strike to save the lives of two men Sacco and Vanzettie- this people will say its word when the day of reckoning arrives.

France is so beautiful! And how much more beautiful after the formidable sweep of the broom that its people are preparing to give it. A broom in the hand of the good, the beautiful, of the young of the woman with noble heart, of the Faubourg de Belleville. A sweep of the broom which will sweep away the Petains, the Lavals the Doriots before giving way to a new laughing happy 14^th July. A sweep of the broom which will make the square clean for the new France, for the France of Peri, of Barbusse of Jules, my comrade from Spain, for the France of Colas-Breugnon too, the France with the spirit of the family “Fafa” also, the France which will see the reunion of Helene and Yvette.

Courage, darling, it’s not long now.

Henri

Circumstances have changed and I am no longer in that green paradise I described to you in my last letters. So much better, darling. I am full of new energy. “C’est la lutte finale” darling. For a better world….