There were no photos of the parents, none of a brother or sister or in-law. The couple, it appeared, had had only themselves. ‘You weren’t from Lille or any of the other textile cities and towns in the northeast, as the colonel stated. You lived in Paris, in Issy-les-Moulineaux, an industrial suburb in the southwest of the city. Chemicals, leather, bronze, copper and aluminium, the National tobacco factory that employs 3,000 to make the crap they ration. The giant Renault Works is also nearby, in Boulogne-Billancourt on the Ile Seguin. It’s the one that makes things for the Wehrmacht, like a lot of other such concerns.’
A flat on the suburb’s avenue de la Paix, at numero 43, wouldn’t be up-market, but was within a short walk of the old Fort d’Issy and the school on the rue du Fort. A good choice, one would think. Oh for sure, things hadn’t been easy in the thirties for chemists like this and millions of others. They had picked up in ’38, possibly a little before that, but the couple would have married in hard times, the baby coming right away, so in late ’37 probably. There weren’t more recent photos, even those that must have been taken just before the Blitzkrieg, but perhaps they were still pinned up beside his bunk. ‘You didn’t tear them, too, did you?’ he asked.
Thomas would likely have received a few photos in relief parcels from home and would, most probably, have been made aware by the camp’s administration that the Renault Works had been bombed by the RAF on the night of 3 March last year. Five hundred dead; 1,500 wounded, but had Paulette Thomas been terrified or had she been elsewhere on that night, having left their little son in the care of a neighbour as so many unlicenced filles de joie were now doing?
‘Let’s face it, mon ami, the pay of a private is next to nothing and as the wife of a common soldier, conscripted in ’39, all she can hope for are the allowances Vichy doles out per child and per wife or dependent parent. Granted, after much debate and thousands of complaints, the Marechal Petain, our illustrious Head of State, and his ministers in Vichy where the government resides, reluctantly agreed to an additional two francs per day to ease the burden POW wives suffer when sending parcels to their husbands. After all, there are 1,500,000 of you, n’est-ce pas, and that’s one hell of a lot of unhappy wives since almost sixty percent of you are married and forty percent have children at home. She did send you parcels, didn’t she?’
They would have to find out. ‘Two lousy francs,’ he grated shy;, ‘at a time when five kilos of potatoes in Paris cost 2,000 on the marche noir, the half a kilo of sugar another 2,000. An inner tube for the bicycle of necessity everyone has to have these days, costs 250; a new tyre, 1,000 if you can get any of these items and avoid arrest, since it’s illegal to deal on that market, though the Church now says one can buy but not sell on it.’
He would toss a hand at such idiocy, would add, ‘There’s no milk available in a country that once produced so much its milk trains were a regular feature. Granted, those wives whose incomes fail to reach 5,000 francs a year, can apply for a supplement and relief from all but the land tax, and a reduction in their rent. But to get these, one has to go down on the knees, and even then, there are over 30,000 POW wives in Paris alone who must exist on less than 1,000 francs a month.’
One couldn’t do it without help and that, if not the terrible loneliness and uncertainty plus being the sole caregiver, was the problem. Two and a half years of it now.
Four hundred and seventy-one Lagermark, the ‘Lagergeld’ or Lager Gold, had been in a tight roll, in the right-hand pocket shy;. Worthless outside the camp, no doubt. Certainly the money couldn’t be sent home, although Vichy had said that if working prisoners could be allowed home on holiday-yes, on holiday!-they would be able to exchange the Lagermark for francs. There were eleven tens, six fifties, the rest being in fives, twos and ones and all with serial numbers well into their tens of millions.
A postcard, sent a good six weeks ago but only just received, had been forgotten in a back pocket. Saved from the bitter haste of the tearing, it said: “Mon cher Eugene, Each day we pray for your return, each night I long for the moment we’ll be together again.”
‘Those aren’t the words of a betrayer, Monsieur Thomas. They’re those of a wife who loved you desperately.’
There wasn’t much more on the postcard. Only seven lines were allowed and the censors had been at the rest. Those of the Petain Government first, and then those of the Lagerfuhrung. ‘One can but imagine the humility you felt at having others read your personal mail and then delete as much as they pleased, but had she had another child? One that you were unaware of until word came through from another source, an anonymous one? Please, I must ask. You see, you wouldn’t have received such a notice directly. You would have gotten the news from the Lager office, which would have received it from Vichy’s Berlin office of the Service diplomatique des prisonniers de guerre.’
There had been little else in the pockets. A rag Monsieur Thomas had been using as a handkerchief, some notes he had been scribbling on a scrap paper-chemical equations, not written words. Two rose-coloured dress buttons had been picked up but where? A megot tin had nothing in it, a last cigarette having been smoked down to its soggy end to be angrily thrust into a pocket.
‘There is rust on this rag. Earlier I had to break open your fingers to remove your wedding ring, but why the rust? A little of it is smeared on this photo, the first, I believe, that was torn. Ah! Permit me my magnet. A moment. Sacre nom de nom, did Hermann borrow it again? He never returns anything unless reminded. I tell myself it’s not that he doesn’t intend to, simply that his mind is elsewhere.’
Finding the magnet, he brushed it over the skin of the fingers, yielding little, the left palm a touch more, the rag still more.
‘Rust and iron filings,’ he called out after having gone down the aisle to stand under one of the lights.
Along with the carte d’identite, there was the Arbeitslager’s grey Kennkarte or ID. The Dienstausweise, a mud-brown card, allowed the victim to be on Wehrmacht property. An Ausweis and Vorlaufige Ausweis were passes and temporary passes, the first allowing him to be in the administrative building’s laboratory and in the cellulose plant and dye works, the second, to visit the carnival site. A Polizeitliche Bescheinigung, a police permit, authorized him to do general maintenance and paintwork there.
All of these last three pieces of paper had been signed by Colonel Rasche.
‘Eugene Andre Thomas, age thirty-two; born, Chartres, 2 February 1911; died, Kolmar, a mere three days after your last birthday. Hair brown, eyes brown, height 176 centimetres (5’9”), weight 72.6 kilos (160 lbs.) recorded after you were taken shy; prisoner. Let’s put it now at 56.7 (125 lbs.) give or take a kilo, but why the iron filings, why the torn photographs? Why commission a comrade to make such a ring unless you had loved your wife dearly and believed emphatically that she had reciprocated? Why the little bankroll-was it to have paid for the ring?’
Questions … there were always those and always far too little time.
‘In short, mon ami, everything says you took your own life out of despair. There are no bruises to indicate otherwise, no evidence of strangulation before the rope was used. Perhaps the coroner will have a different opinion, but I didn’t find any skin under your fingernails, no hairs from an assailant either, just a little dirt and grease. Oh for sure, Hermann might have something-is that what you think? Then let me tell you, with Hermann one never quite knows what he’ll come up with or how far he will go.’