By Donna Wichelman
Over the last several months, I've reprised a series I began in the spring of 2024, when I interviewed four survivors of World War II the previous October. In this article, I mention Madame Marie-José Delage, whose story you can read in the August
4, 2026 blog.
Madame Pierrette Couillandeau and Madame Marie-José Delage were still
young children and friends in Libourne when France capitulated to Adolf
Hitler’s German Army in June 1940. Like most French families, they were uneasy
about the armistice France had signed in November 1919, ending the First World War. But
while Madame Delage’s father had been wounded during World War I and experienced Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Mme Couillandeau’s father had a different experience.
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| Madame Couillandeau and Madame Marie-José Delage Pointing at a Bullet Hole still left in the Building Where Madame Delage Lived: Donna's Gallery October 2023 |
Believing another war was inevitable, France
built the Maginot Line during the 1930s to counteract an attack by the Germans should hostilities arise. The Maginot Line was a series of concrete fortifications and weapons
installations that ran from Belfort in the south, guarding the Belfort Gap where France, Germany, and Switzerland meet, to the Longuyon in the Moselle Valley. It stopped short of the Belgian border near the dense Ardennes forest, because Belgium adopted the policy of strict neutrality, which prevented France from building fortifications. A separate extension, the Alpine Line, ran along France's southeastern border with Italy.But the German Army launched a surprise attack north of Saarbrücken in rugged
forested terrain where no one expected, allowing them to break through French
defenses, storming the country west and southward.
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German Army Shows Japanese Officials Maginot Line
Everett Collection Inc / Alamy Stock Photo |
Madame Couillandeau’s father was one of the French
troops stationed in a village along the Maginot Line. He shouldn’t have been
there. He was too old at age thirty-six and had two children to feed. He was also a baker, protected from military service by a law enacted during the French Revolution that said authorities could “commandeer bakeries and … keep the
masses in bread.” But Mme Couillandeau’s father had not declared his status and ended up being in the wrong place at the wrong time.The men in Madame Couillandeau’s father’s unit took turns watching for German soldiers from the top of a church. One day, her father and one of his buddies were on the lookout but unaware their unit had pulled out. They were left behind to be caught by the Germans and made prisoners of war.
Meanwhile, the head of the collaboratorist Vichy Government, Prime Minister Pierre Laval, developed a volunteer program called La Relève, The Relief, in June 1942 to help secure the release of French prisoners of war. Negotiating with Germany's General Plenipotentiary for Labor, Fritz Sauckel, they agreed to release one French prisoner of war for every three volunteer workers from France who would be willing to work in Germany on their war machine.
The propaganda campaign reached out to workers in skilled trades, particularly in metalworking, engineering, and construction, and offered high wages and opportunities for professional training.
But La Relève was not successful. The program couldn't provide enough volunteer workers. Estimates suggest that 80,000 to 90,000 prisoners of war out of more than a million still left in captivity were returned in exchange for 24,000 French workers. Madame Couillandeau’s father was fortunate to be one of them and returned to his family in 1943.
La Relève morphed into the compulsory work service (Service du travail obligatoire or STO) under Sauckel, requiring the forced enlistment and deportation of French men to Germany for the German war effort. As many as 650,000 men were sent to work camps from June 1942 to July 1944 to compensate for the loss of German manpower as more
and more soldiers were needed at the Eastern Front.
But even STO never achieved the numbers Sauckel wanted. The French began to evade the compulsory demands by joining the French Resistance--the Maquis. Historians estimate at least 200,000 French were actively involved in the Resistance. Broader estimates put numbers at 500,000.  |
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Members of French Resistance March in
Liberation Celebration in Libourne, France
Libourne City Archives
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Though Madame Couillandeau’s father came home because of the prisoner exchange program, war still left its indelible effect on him. He could have avoided it if he had declared himself a baker from the start. Unfortunately, he did not. So when he returned and wanted his old occupation back and to play cards with friends in a bar on the square, he discovered they'd made a lot of money in the market while he had been a prisoner of war. It was a bitter pill to swallow, so he sold his shop and went to Bordeaux. |
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Boulangerie Spécialité Pan Gascon,
Since the Reign of Louis XV in 1765
Donna’s Gallery, October 2023
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As I contemplated this real-life story, I was struck by the irony
of how the war affected Madame Couillandeau's family as much as Madame
Delage's. In different ways, both fathers had become casualties of war--Madame
Delage's father developing PTSD during the First World War and escaping to Canada, and Madame
Couillandeau's father to Adolf Hitler's war machine. In both cases, their families' lives would never be the same. It's something for all
of us to ponder as we consider whose fathers and families will be destroyed by the nations still warring in our contemporary world.
Donna is an Angel Book Award-winning author of historical romance for A Song of Deliverance. Book 2, Rhythms of the Heart, is an interconnected stand-alone set in the same Victorian mining community of Georgetown, Colorado.
Weaving history and faith into stories of intrigue and redemption grew out of Donna's love of travel, history, and literature as a young adult while attending an international college in Wales, U.K. She enjoys developing plots that show how God's love abounds even in the profoundly difficult circumstances of our lives. Her stories reflect the hunger in all of us for love, belonging, and forgiveness.Donna was a communications professional before becoming a full-time writer. Her short stories and articles have appeared in inspirational publications. Her romantic suspense novels, Light Out of Darkness and Undaunted Valor in her Waldensian Series, are available on Amazon.
Donna and her husband of forty-two years participate in ministry at their local church in Colorado. They love spending time with their grandchildren and often bike, kayak, and travel.
