It soon became evident to
him that the much-talked-about assistance the Soviets received from their
American and British allies was overrated and that the Russians and their other
fellow Soviet compatriots had managed, mostly on their own, to build a
formidable war machine and a military-industrial complex that was not only
baffling the retreating German Army in the East, but that was also intriguing
the Allied powers in the West. However, he didn’t have enough reasons to be
optimistic about the authenticity of the information he was getting from the
newspapers and journals reporting Soviet military advances in the east against
the retreating German Army, reports spelling out the recovery of territories
they had lost in Belorussia, Ukraine, and Moldavia. He learned with misgivings
that further Soviet offensives had forced German troops out of Eastern Poland
and Eastern Romania, sparking off local uprisings in Poland and Southern
Czechoslovakia, as well as coup d’états that brought down the pro-Nazi regimes
in Romania and Bulgaria. When he found out that the advance of Soviet troops
into Yugoslavia had forced the Germans to withdraw their troops from Albania, Greece, and Yugoslavia, he knew that the Soviet
Union that his patron Joseph Nana Njike had talked to him about with guarded
respect had truly arrived at the world stage as a superpower or military force
to reckon with.
The last month of the year was the time it
dawned on him that there would be a race between the Western Powers and the
Soviet Union about who would get to Berlin first. Also, he could not dispel a
gnawing feeling that the retreating German troops would likely capitulate to
the Western forces rather than surrender to the Soviets and their new Eastern
European allies. That meant one thing only—the war was virtually over for them,
and he was less likely to die from the impending campaign to overrun Germany and
kick the Nazis out of power there.
So, when news reached him
too in mid-December 1944, reporting a major German offensive through the
Ardennes region that formed the borders of Belgium, France, and Luxembourg, he was shocked, if not unprepared for it.
He followed with puzzlement the news of German advances, of Allied
counteroffensives, of German counterattacks, of the massacre the Germans
committed against Allied prisoners at Malmedy, of the retaliatory massacre of
sixty German prisoners of war by American troops close to the Belgian village
of Chenogne on New Year's Day 1945, and of the return to what were the
pre-offensive battle lines in the middle of January 1945. He kept abreast of
those developments and the halt to the German advance in the north of France,
even as he battled with the 1st Division in conjunction with other
Allied troops against the Germans in Alsace. But the fighting was low-key until
the German 19th Army launched an offensive in late January 1945, forcing them
to pay a very high price while defending the area south of Strasbourg.
It was during the battle
that he was wounded in the right shoulder and his left leg as he tried to
rescue a wounded French soldier who had been lying exposed on the ground for
several minutes while crackles of rifle fire rang in the air. The fact that he
got shot after he hefted the guy on his shoulder and started running with him
back to his former safe position behind a concrete wall, made him a war hero of
some sort that the military brass could not afford to ignore. Some members of his squad told him afterwards
that the shots were fired by a sharpshooter, probably a German sniper, but to
him, it did not matter who the person was who knocked him out of the battle.
What he found important in the whole episode was the fact that it marked the
end of the war for him since the French Army sent him to Toulouse to convalesce
in the military hospital there. When Marcel pointed out the irony of his
situation on a visit by joking that he almost died saving a communist, he did
not think it was funny at all because he thought he was only trying to save a
man who did not deserve to die at a time when all the warring parties fully
knew the war’s outcome. Marcel told him the name of the fellow he rescued, but
all he remembered afterwards was that the guy’s first name happened to be
Jean-Pierre.
So, when a young soldier
clicked his boots by his hospital bedside one late morning, snapped a military
salute, announced his name, and then told him that a certain Captain Ribery
wanted to see him, he had no idea who the person was. He acceded to the request, all the same, only to see Jean-Pierre
approach his hospital bed with slightly hesitant steps. The Frenchman thanked
him for saving his life, apologized for the fact that he almost got killed in
the process for his sake and then wished him a speedy recovery. However, he did
so with eyes and lips that were twitching in a manner that gave him a funny
appearance. All the same, the Frenchman’s strange behavior did not stop him
from accepting his kind words, even though he could not help wondering what could
be wrong with the intriguing Frenchman whose life he saved from German gunfire.
“Are you all right?” he finally
asked Jean-Pierre with dimmed eyes and a gentle voice.
“I am fine, as you can
see. I can move around, unlike you. My injuries were insignificant―just minor
wounds―I would say. I was mostly shell-shocked; that was all. Thanks again for
saving my life. The bullets you took were certainly meant for me.”
“That’s nothing. I had
your back, and I am sure you would have done the same for me.”
“You think so?”
“Uh-huh! Also, seeing the
way you twitched not long ago made me think something else was wrong.”
“Can’t you figure that
out?”
“Figure what out?”
“That I hate you?”
“You don’t hate me.”
“I hate you because I
betrayed you already.”
“No, you didn’t betray me
at all. You didn’t shoot me.”
“You don’t understand. I
betrayed you all right. I hated you before, perhaps because I subconsciously
knew you were a better person fighting a war that is not yours to fight,
risking your life to free my country, France that I love so much, and doing all
of that for no material benefits. Or perhaps I hate you because I thought you
were doing so with people whose ideology I do not share. Now, I don’t know.”
“What are you talking
about?”
“Look, I have come to see
the depth of your being, and now I know that you are truly a good person.
Still, I hate you because the deeper I
get to know you, the greater my awareness of my shortcomings. So, I try to give
a negative meaning to everything you say and do and then try to convince myself
afterwards that I was right in my impression of you when we first met or the
way I treated you afterwards. It makes me sane that way; it gives me a sense of
worthiness and convinces me that I am doing the right thing by betraying you.”
“How did you treat me?”
“Badly, I guess. One
thing for sure is that I ignored you. I think I even turned my nose up at you the
way some of our ignorant soldiers do. I was in the Resistance, but I failed to
embrace you guys from Africa. I think I even allowed myself to think like many
of the others who joined the fight recently. I behaved like an ignoramus.”
“I still don’t get what
you are talking about. I don’t see how the things you have been saying about
yourself tantamount to a betrayal of me or any of my folks from Africa.”
“I hated you Africans for
working with them.”
“Working with whom?”
“The Fascists. Why do you
serve people who don’t respect you as normal people do to other human beings;
why do you risk your lives for people who were Vichy and Nazi supporters
yesterday, but who today pretend to be supporters of universal human rights? I
can’t understand why you guys put your lives on the line; I can’t understand
why you Africans abandoned your families and dishonor your people for someone
like De Gaulle who thinks you are uncivilized and need nurturing, for someone
like him who thinks with a twisted conviction that it is our place to determine
the type of development you need. He thinks you have no right to aspire for
development out of the French empire or as an autonomous entity. Didn’t you get
the position the right-wing took during the Brazzaville Conference last
January?”
“Not really.”
“Why are you and your
people aspiring to be subservient all your lives to people who do not have your
interest at heart? I say so because my parents whose footsteps I have been
trying to follow the past couple of years worked all their lives to convince the
Right in France to pay some respect to the rights and dignity of France’s
colonial subjects.”
He was pensive for a
moment, staring sightlessly at Jean-Pierre before he finally understood where
the left-wing Frenchman was coming from. A sudden and inexplicable emotion
gripped him so that he propped up in bed
out of an impulse and gave Jean-Pierre his hand again for a shake. The
Frenchman smiled with him when he took it and brought it up and down
repeatedly.
“I see you are a good
man. I respect you for sharing your deep feelings with me. Now, this is what I
have to say about myself. I joined the war to fight against Nazism and Fascism
because I thought and still think that they are a curse to humanity. I joined
your war because I believe I am fighting for humanity. I am nobody’s lap dog. I
am nobody’s stooge. The war is over for me.”
“Are you serious?”
“Uh-huh! I want to go
home to my wife and children. I will return home to my people; I will find my
way back to Kamerun and dedicate the rest of my life to teaching young children
to improve their lot in life, to know what is right and what is wrong, and to
know what they need to do for the sake of bettering their lives and the lives
of those around them; I will return to my homeland and try to be someone like
your father and your mother.”
When Jean-Pierre bent
over and embraced him on the bed in an emotional display that he didn’t see
coming, he was truly taken aback. The Frenchman did so muttering incoherently
for a couple of seconds. Then he pulled back like a man who suddenly realized
he just acted awkwardly. He looked momentarily embarrassed, but then a smile
emerged on his face as if a clever thought just crossed his mind that he thought
would be fun to share. “You are not like the others,” he said, nodding.
“What do you mean?” he
asked Jean-Pierre with quizzical eyes.
“I mean the other
soldiers who are from Africa just like you?”
“Whom are you talking
about?”
“I mean the others who
want to go back to their homelands as evolues; I mean the others who are
prepared to serve the interest of the right-wingers for the handouts that those
men are dangling as baits to make the people of French Africa give up their
heritage; I mean compatriots of yours who are prepared to play the roles of
glorified Nazi Kapos.”
“I said I am for
humanity.”
Jean-Pierre’s response
was a nod and the dimming of his eyebrows. “Then I am glad you saved my life; I
am sorry for behaving in a disturbing manner,
and I would be honored to have someone like you as a friend. And I think
my parents too will be honored to have you as a guest. Would you mind meeting
them someday?”
He always remembered with
a smile how he told Jean-Pierre he would be happy to know his parents and then
urged him to take a seat. With amused fascination, they talked of the war,
French history, and politics. It was after a
moment of trust-building that Jean-Pierre told him the story of his family....
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