The First Time I Spoke French to a Frenchman

The first time I spoke French to a Frenchman

Like many grammar schoolboys of my generation I was taught French at school. I got my General Schools Matriculation both written and oral but I never once spoke French to a Frenchman. In those far off days only a few better-off people visited France and although I liked the French language and read a few French novels after I left school, I never spoke French to a Frenchman.

The war came and I found myself in the Royal Signals . After completing my training as a wireless operator, I was sent to the Middle East and was posted to the 23rd Infantry Brigade Signals Section in the Western Desert.

Not many people know, or remember, but in the summer of 1941 we had a nasty little war with the Vichy French in Syria and Lebanon. (The German air force was using Syrian airports to supply arms to rebel regimes in Iraq and Persia.) In June 1941 British forces invaded Syria and Lebanon. The French fought back; indeed, if the French had resisted the Germans in 1940 half as strongly as they resisted us in 1941, the war might have taken a different course.

Our Brigade left the desert and joined in the war against the French. When we got there the war wasn’t going very well for us. Our brigade was in the central sector opposite a French unit consisting of two extremely formidable opponents, a battalion of the Foreign Legion and a battalion of Senegalese tirailleurs. Our forward positions were only a few miles across the frontier and for a few weeks we did not get very far. Other sectors did better and after some time the French capitulated and an armistice was arranged, to commence at midnight. By this time we were advancing up the Bekaa valley.

I was one of two wireless operators in a small pick-up truck known as the Brigadier’s Rover. Our job was to accompany the Brigadier on his various expeditions to signal his orders to the brigade. On the morning after the armistice he announced that he was going to see the French commandant to discuss the surrender arrangements. We followed him across the abandoned French positions and came to a crossroads. He decided to leave a man here so that the Brigade Major who was following would know which road he had taken. The Brigadier looked round his entourage to see who should be left behind: as the least important soldier present, I got the job and he drove off.

Within a few seconds I realised that the crossroads was the place where the French had regrouped. To the left of me were the Senegalese, to the right, the Foreign Legion. I hoped that they knew all about the armistice, and tried to look inconspicuous; difficult at a crossroads in a semi-desert.

After a few minutes a soldier from the Foreign Legion approached me. He was about 20 years older than me and built like a gorilla. In barely recognisable French he said “Ca va, mon vieux?” I noticed a sort of galon on his sleeve and replied cautiously, “Ca va bien, merci, sergeant.”
“Je ne suis pas sergeant (pointing to his sleeve) mais Legionnaire Premiere Classe.”
“Vous êtes Français?”
“Oui.”
“Combien d’ans dans la Legion?”
“Vingt cinq.”
“Et la dernière fois vous êtes à la France?”
“Dernière guerre.”

We chatted for a bit. He told me where he had served: Indo-China, Djibouti and Morocco. I then asked him what he was going to do next. The French soldiers had two options. They could be repatriated to unoccupied France in a neutral ship or they could stay in the Middle East as part of the Free French Forces.

“Je reviens à la France,” he said.
“Pourquoi? Les Allemands sont là.”

By this time he was using the second person singular “tu” either from disdain for my youth and inexperience, or perhaps from camaraderie. He said, “Ecoute, mon bleu (Legion slang for rookie), pour moi, finis la guerre! Pour toi, un deux, trois, quatre ans!” I don’t know whether he foretold his future, but he was uncannily right about my military career. I got back from Burma in the late spring of 1945.

I saw the dust of the Brigade Major’s convoy approaching and we said goodbye. This was the first time in my life that I spoke French to a Frenchman.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.