Word: habe
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...human and real as a nightmare is this first-hand account of the Fall of France by a soldier of the French Army. That enormous and intricate catastrophe might have cramped the hand of a Tolstoi. Hans Habe, previously a minor novelist, has turned it into the most vivid book World War II has yet produced. He tells nothing he did not see with his own eyes. But he saw the disintegration of a great people...
...Hungarian antifascist, Habe enlisted in France's 21st Foreign Volunteers at the outbreak of the war. In May 1940 his regiment, stationed in Alsace, was ordered west. In Ardennes they held the front entrusted to them for three weeks, then joined the general retreat. A little south of Domrémy, on June 21, they received orders to lay down their arms; France had sued for armistice. Habe was then captured by Germans, was imprisoned with 22,000 other troops at Dieuze, escaped in August into Unoccupied France...
...Enemy is Stronger." It was bad from the very beginning. The men of Habe's regiment were soft after months of misdirected idleness. Their gas masks were inadequately sealed over the eyes; they had misfit helmets, tattered shoes, antediluvian weapons (Habe used an 1891, 20-lb. Remington). The first mild night air-raid revealed their cowardice: in an inn, when the lights went on again, steel helmets peeped shamefully from beneath the tables. One of dozens of Habe tab leaux: a shamed, helmeted face, trying to laugh it off, beside the knees of a peasant woman...
They marched against an enemy hardened by years of expert training, better handled, who had much better pay, besides daily mail from home. Later, Habe saw German work-battalions dressed in cool, spotless white. Trucks carried their coats, to say nothing of their equipment...
...leaders, the confidence that is the most elementary requirement for any army that wants to win." They never had reason to regain it-except in a few true officers. The other officers liked to say they loved France better than Hitler but Hitler better than Blum. The best officer Habe knew-a Colonel de Buissy, who had served in the Foreign Legion-was sent home. His superiors felt that he took the war much too seriously. Said one, contemptuously: "He wanted to resist at any cost...