Andrée's War by Francelle Bradford White Page B

from outside Paris were sent home while those living in the capital had to find work to stay on. Thanks to the help of his brother-in-law, Alain managed to find aposition working at the ministry responsible for managing food supplies across France.
    The demonstration may have been broken up by the Nazis, but many of those involved would go on to become the founding members of the French Resistance. It gave people the confidence they needed to believe that the Nazis could and would be defeated, though the Germans’ retaliation and brutality towards the student protestors had been frightening to behold. As Alain would later be told by his new mentor, Henri d’Astier de la Vigerie: ‘Your demonstration on the Champs-Élysées was perfect… Now you must start thinking about even more important things. It is revenge we must aim for.’ 6

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    * ‘Resist the invader. The Étoile around 4 p.m.’

8
Fighting Back
    G eorges Piron was restless. His train was due to arrive in Paris late morning, but as with most wartime trains it had been heavily delayed. It was late afternoon as the engine noisily steamed into La Gare du Nord.
    In Brussels everyone had heard of the success of the student demonstration at the Étoile on 11 November 1940, Armistice Day, and Piron knew the time was ripe to recruit younger members into his fold.
    During the First World War Piron, while a serving officer in the Belgian Army, had been a successful British intelligence agent. After the war ended, he became President of the Belgian War Veterans’ Association and also of the Belgium Reservists’ Association. Now with Belgium and Germany again at war, Piron was once more working for the British intelligence services. Piron and Yvonne Griotteray were old friends: through her brother-in-law Major Auguste Geno, a close friend and fellow officer, Piron had met Yvonne Stocquart as a young woman, and was impressed by her language skills and assured confidence. She went on to work for him as an intelligence messenger on British ships, taking information from Belgium via Holland to England.
    Following the German occupation, Piron went home to his family in Parmiers, near the French/Belgian border, where, over the next twelve months, he recruited thirty members into a Resistance group he had created after the fall of France. Piron and his team had been stockpiling arms left by the retreating forces in the area surrounding Parmiers, in the Ariège region of France, and over the next few months had conducted acts of sabotage with these weapons whenever the opportunity arose.
    Protecting himself from the cold, damp December weather, Georges stepped off the train onto the platform wearing a heavy raincoat and his favourite check-patterned hat. In his hand he carried a brown overnightbag, out of which was hanging a copy of Belgium’s national newspaper. He walked down the platform and out onto the Place Napoleon. He sensed the change in atmosphere since his last visit to Paris, before the fall of the city. As he turned towards the Place Roubaix, he decided to walk down to the Place de la Madeleine. It would take him over an hour, but the exercise would do him good. Arriving at the rue la Fayette, he turned into the boulevard Haussman and thought back to Paris at the end of the 1914–1918 war; the empty shops, the look of sadness on the faces of so many Parisians who had lost their sons in the Great War. History was repeating itself.
    It was close to six o’clock as Piron left the Place de la Madeleine and continued the few hundred yards to the rue Godot de Mauroy. Between the two wars the Pirons and the Griotterays had seen little of each other, but they had kept in touch and only a couple of years previously the Griotterays had stayed with the Pirons in Parmiers on their annual trip to Brussels to visit Yvonne’s parents. During their visit Piron had been impressed by Alain and Andrée’s youthful