Literature

Malcolm Cockburn, Sherborne Literary Society

Victoire: A Wartime Story of Resistance, Collaboration and Betrayal by Roland Philipps, (Vintage Publishing) £20 (Hardback)

Sherborne Times Reader Offer Price of £18 from Winstone’s Books

‘E very choice made by the inhabitants of an occupied country will eventually be a bad choice.’ – J. P. Sartre

This, undoubtedly, was the fate of

Mathilde Carré, who took the Resistance code name ‘Victoire’. The author tells of her hopes, disappointments and final imprisonment; he describes a messy conflict of personalities in the French

Resistance and German counter-

Resistance. At times, the book reads like an episode of the sitcom, ‘Allo ‘Allo!

Born Marie Belard in the Jura region of France in 1908, her parents moved to Paris when Mathilde was sixteen; there she went to a lycée and the Sorbonne.

The book is much concerned with her introspective mind and her visions of emulating Joan of Arc. It is not apparent, until the end of the book, as to how the author became aware of these feelings.

When France declares war on Germany in

September 1939, Mathilde flees to Paris; she is thrilled at the prospect of a life of adventure and danger when she joins with a Polish refugee, Roman Czerniawski.

They plan a Resistance network. Mathilde takes the name ‘La Chatte’ and Roman re-names himself

Armand Borni; they become lovers.

By the end of 1940, a Resistance network, Interallié, is in place with agents covering all of occupied France.

Communication with London could only be by dangerous night flights to remote fields or by small boats crossing the Channel. When radio contact with London is achieved by the autumn of 1941, a highly successful network of espionage and consequent sabotage is in place. Then comes catastrophe. The Abwehr traps ‘La Chatte’ entering a cafe in Paris and soon, many of Interallié personnel are uncovered. Roman is imprisoned and likely to be shot, while Mathilde is kept by Abwehr sergeant Bleicher, who seems to be the most intelligent of the rather incompetent local intelligence. She willingly becomes his lover.

Bleicher encourages Mathilde (renamed ‘Victoire’) to become a double agent and arranges for her to go to England along with a French Resistance captive, Pierre de Vomécourt. A crazy journey to Brittany is followed by a cold, wet Channel crossing to Dartmouth by motor torpedo boat. Mathilde spends the next year living in a London flat provided by MI5. ‘Victoire’ makes the most of her social life in London until a disillusioned MI5 decides to intern her in Holloway Prison. ‘Victoire’ was repatriated after the war and remained in French prisons until 1953. She died in 2007 aged ninety-nine.

The author’s undoubted deep research is led by Mathilde Carré’s personal journals – written during those years in prison. Philipps’ resulting book brought to me an entirely new view of French wartime Resistance.

sherborneliterarysociety.com

'Independent Bookseller of the Year 2016’