September 11, 1945
Near Fritzlar, Germany
No. 50 (continued)
Dear Folksies,
Finally, one day a supposed American Officer (probably a French Liaison Officer with the American Army) arrived in search of some girl. He did not find the girl he was looking for, but agreed that there was no point in going back without anyone. The doctor at the hospital asked if he would take Paul Collette back with him and also if he would take Yvette. The officer agreed, but Yvette said that she wouldn’t go without Jacqueline and her little ward. Finally it was agreed that all would be able to go and so began the journey home. She didn’t come all the way home by that means, but with many others rode the trains, trucks, etc., finally touching French soil once again.
At present, she has been having a little revenge; for one of the female Gestapo agents, that had been in on her capture, is now a prisoner of the C.I.C. [Counter Intelligence Corps] of Paris. Yvette has been allowed to go up and see this women and to question her whenever she wants. When this woman first saw Yvette, she almost pulled all her hair out (i.e. her own), because she had never expected that Yvette would live.
Of course, when Yvette returned home she expected, or hoped, that Jean Guy would be there awaiting her. And, for some weeks she still felt that he would return; but now, of course, though her mother-in-law still clings to the idea that Jean Guy is in one of those zones that still has displaced persons in it, Yvette no longer has any hope. As they had often figured, ‘twas far harder for the person who is left behind than for the one who died.
Yvette is actually sorry that she didn’t die. It’s going to be a helluva problem to get her to change her outlook on life. It isn’t only the loss of Jean Guy, but the dreams she continually has, the pain she suffers, and her lack of overall interest even in the great work that she is doing and has been doing almost since the minute she returned to Paris. The only friends she can tolerate are those who were active in the Resistance. The others she will have nothing to do with. She doesn’t even want to see them, and for that one certainly can understand how she feels. Everything in France has changed; people are trying to get back to normal and are immediately forgetting the things they and their friends and relatives went through in the past years. That hurts!
Loads of love,
.
Although René surmised that the man who returned Yvette, her sister-in-law Jacqueline and Paul Colette to Paris in May 1945, was a French Liaison, he was in fact a Frenchman who had been made an American Officer to help with liberating the camps. His name was Abel Farnoux and on November 16, 1946 he and Yvette were married.
