“We lack nothing”: at over 80, these seniors who experienced the Second World War speak of another “war”

Confined to the farm for some, in a city apartment for others, they are among those at risk because of their age in the face of an epidemic that has claimed tens of thousands of lives around the world.

“I am not afraid, even if it is strange, this virus. In a war, we know that there is fighting, bombs, we know where the danger comes from, it has a physical presence; there, we don’t know, we can be contaminated by going shopping, talking to someone, even a loved one “, says 84-year-old Bernadette Barateig, who lives alone in the countryside near Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône).

She was nine years old when the Second World War ended. Even though the southwest village where she lived at the time was not at the heart of the fighting, she remembers a diffuse fear, of German soldiers entering to demand the scarce food from the house.

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“It was hard to find something to eat; we were a large family and my parents had welcomed refugees who had fled from other regions. To fill our stomachs, we often ate simple pancakes of flour and water”.

I heard the balls whistle

“But we children found it delicious and others suffered so much more than we did” in this war where millions of people were exterminated, she recalls.

“Today, the word ‘war’ was probably used to convey the gravity of the situation, but it is very different”, she adds.

If the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly hammered that France was in “war”, Olga Michaudet, 88 years old, also believes that the situation she experienced as a child “had nothing to do with now” .

In his family of farmers installed only a few kilometers from the dividing line, “we mended shoes endlessly” and a piece of fabric was used to make four children’s dresses.

It’s something, this virus, but we lack nothing

“Above all, there was a much more present danger. I kept cows next to a farm where the maquisards were hiding. When the Germans machine-gunned them, I heard the bullets whistling over the cows, it was scary” .

“This is something, this virus, but we lack nothing”, says Olga, emphasizing the importance of staying at home. “A neighbor brings me shopping, I read, I talk to people by phone”, adds this lively woman who lives alone on her farm in Saône-et-Loire and continues to cultivate her vegetable garden.

Michel Bourgeat, born in 1936, lives confinement alone in an isolated farm in the Cévennes massif (Gard). He asked his home help to stop coming to protect her and his three children live elsewhere.

“I manage without any problem wishing I could last a long time … I cope”, said the man with the face framed by a white beard.

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She remembers the permanent fear in front of the soldiers

For him who made the connection between his grandfather and the leader of a resistance network “with the innocence of an eight year old kid” in 1944, the war remains in his memory “+ much worse +” with his displacement of population, its bombing.

“War is men against other men, the fight against the virus is something more glorious”, he says.

In Marseille, Jacqueline Thouvenin, a 94-year-old lady still elegant with her gray hair tied in a bun, also thinks that “the germ is scary, but less terrible than the Occupation and the bombing”.

As a teenager during the Second World War, she remembers the permanent fear in the face of soldiers, police, roundups. And then the devastating bombardment of Marseille by the Americans on May 27, 1944, which left hundreds of people dead. She was 17 years old and that day lost her father and her friend Angèle.

Today, she remains confined to her apartment. Her son supplies her.

I enjoy being able to contemplate the sky, the trees, the flowers around me

All of them are grateful to be at home and not in a retirement home, where visits have been banned and the dead number in the hundreds. They also draw comfort from nature which “brings a lot of joy” when you look at it “with children’s eyes”, says Michel.

“I appreciate being able to contemplate the sky, the trees, the flowers around me, I feel privileged”, said Bernadette, thinking of the people confined to small, unhealthy apartments, without balconies, and who has relaunched his donations to NGOs helping the poor.

In Marseille, Jacqueline has moments of anxiety, but she welcomes visits from winged creatures, little aware of confinement … the “gabians”, large seagulls that land on her balcony once a day.

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