Word: frenchmen
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...Frenchmen heard the final contrast between the leader of Vichy, Marshal Pétain, and the leader in exile, General de Gaulle. The Old Man of Vichy, magnificent only in his consistency, begged his countrymen to ignore Allied or Gaullist commands, and to obey the Germans lest Nazi reprisal fall on France. General de Gaulle, shunned until the last moment, instructed them to heed "the French Government" (i.e., his own), and said: "France, overwhelmed . . . but never conquered, is on her feet to take part. . . . The simple, sacred duty is to fight...
...sort of quiet and deserted, ruined buildings all around you, shutters banging in the breeze. By this time it was getting very hot and stuffy in the tank so we climbed out and took a smoke, cleaned the brass up in the tank and stuff. Then one of the Frenchmen comes up with a bottle of wine and we all had a smoke and drank the bottle of wine. A shell lands behind the tank and sort of makes us mad so we get back in and start shooting away again. And the people just standing there on the sidewalk...
...Frenchmen and the Future. In any event, Britons and Americans only fool themselves if they assume that they and the Frenchmen of France will necessarily judge Gaullism's deeds and plans in the same way. France, for example, does not forget the decadence of her "free" (and freely bought) prewar press, the wartime sins of the Vichy press. Nor has she forgotten the rot in the frame of her prewar democracy...
Gaullists cry out against this niggardly policy and against its chief instigator, President Roosevelt. But they are actually in Roosevelt's and Washington's debt: the more De Gaulle the symbol seems to be kicked around by the U.S., the bigger he looms to Frenchmen in France...
According to overwhelming evidence from France, the alternative to interim recognition may well be lasting distrust among the western Allies, incalculable bitterness in France itself, the killing of Frenchmen by Frenchmen who will surely act for themselves if they do not have a mid-invasion government strong enough to deal with traitors. Frenchmen will as surely reject any attempt by De Gaulle, by the U.S., by Britain, by anyone to impose upon postwar France what France does not want...