In Allier, the memory of the demarcation line

Find the trace of this inner border

Among the nearly five hundred inhabitants, two figures watch over the memory of the town: the firefighter Julien Lancelot and the former mayor Jacqueline Berthet. We gave them an appointment on the Veurdre bridge, which spans the Allier at the very place where the demarcation line passed during the Second World War. 1,200 km long, this border cut France in two, between June 25, 1940 and March 1, 1943. On one side the northern zone occupied by the German army, on the other the southern zone administered by the Vichy regime. I am trying to learn more about this limit which has upset the daily life of thousands of French people. Pages of my class books, I especially retained the call of June 18, the Shoah and the landing. The healers of the German army, painted with black, white and red chevrons, were not fixed in my mind. These guard posts, however, controlled the slightest passage and marked the line, from the Basses-Pyrénées (current Pyrénées-Atlantiques) to the Ain, preventing families and friends from meeting.

How to find the trace of this inner border? In the Allier, once cut in two, those who knew the war are no longer very numerous and there are only a few vestiges of a German hut, on private land, in the countryside. At the entrance to the Veurdre bridge, Julien Lancelot indicates an educational sign that he had installed in 2022, with the help of his association, the French memory, responsible for maintaining the memory of soldiers “dead for France”. The firefighter reminds us that the border was still not an insurmountable wall.

Live in a buffer zone

Residents had to obtain a Ausweis, Let pass granted to droppings by the German army. Most often, only cross -border workers had this precious sesame for a long time. Traders or peasants, they had to refuel in the neighboring city, in free zone, or maintain their plot on the other side. “My husband was still only a child when the Germans requisitioned part of his house in Nièvre, in the occupied area,” says Jacqueline Berthet.

Robert went to school every day to school in Veurdre, in a free zone, and a network of resistance slipped letters in his socks. He played the factors, with the intrepid character of a seven -year -old kid! Like Robert, other inhabitants of Bourbonnais – the historical name of the department – have been able to play the Germans. As early as 1940, hundreds of cross -border workers passed messages, weapons or fugitives to the southern zone. A troubled territory, where the anti -Semitic regime of Vichy tightened its noise on the Jews and where the French police tracked up opponents of Nazism. But which also offered a fallback base to resistance fighters and maquisards to organize more, sheltered from German military patrols.

In the Bourbon country, not all smugglers were heroes. Some have stripped Jewish women from their jewelry for the price of their crossing. Others denounced illegal immigrants to the occupier. But the inhabitants prefer to retain the courage of other ancestors, in particular that of François Thuriot, chase guard of the Château de la Barre, in Château-sur-Allier. Julien Lancelot takes us there and shows us a flat wooden boat which drowns on the edge of the river. “It is the traditional Bourbonnais boat of fishermen,” he teaches us. At nightfall, the gamekeeper transported prisoners and refugees from a small island to the other bank, in free zone. He made very little noise in the water thanks to his blunder, a long row with pointed end. “While we resume our journey to the city of Moulins, I realize that the resistance was not only made up of big names. She was based on hundreds of anonymous and small hands. Some acted with a crazy audacity. With his modest boat, François Thuriot saved more than two hundred people from the claws of the German army.

Jérôme and I cross the Régemortes bridge, an imposing stone structure above the Allier, which formerly constituted the line of demarcation crossing the city-prefecture. This seduces us with its medieval aspect, witness to the revolving golden age of the Duchy of the Bourbons, one of the greatest seigneuries in France. The cobbled streets and the wooden sides are swarming with stories of resistants and infiltrated agents, under the occupation. Like that of René Bouterige, lieutenant at the fire station who pretended fires in the free zone to board illegal immigrants aboard his trucks. Or from Emile Beaufils, this printer who knew the whims of the Allier well and would flare the right moment to pass the illegals to swimming, without danger.

While I blacken the pages of my notebook, I understand that the couriers of the Allier did not feel invested with a heroic mission. The occupation weighed on daily life and cut in half the cities and the fields so familiar. For some residents, it therefore seemed normal to help people in bad shape crossing the line, with the means at hand. After the release, many preferred to silence their gesture. A way to ward off this era of fear and deprivation that had stolen part of their existence. But the new generations want to know the secrets that have made their families suffer so much.

Falling asleep

On the wise advice of the Bourbonnais emulation company, I go to the brasserie de l’Entect. It is here that I attend the overwhelming meeting between Augustin Renaud and two cousins, Christelle Hermet and Sylvie Bauer. “A few years ago, we didn’t know anything about the tragic history that binds our families,” they explain. But we investigated. It all starts here in this coffee that our ancestors Marcelle and Joseph Taque held during the war. »»

At that time, the place was called the Café du Theater. The tenants had a pass that allowed them to refuel a brewery located in the free zone. Figure respected in Moulins, Marcelle knew how to fall asleep the vigilance of the Germans. She helped members of a network of resistance to pass fugitives on the other bank. “At the control points, she pretended:” It’s my cousin “or” it’s my friend “and it was walking,” continues Sylvie. My grandmother didn’t really know who she was taking. It was too risky to know the details. Augustin’s father, André Renaud, a friend of coffee makers, participated in these illegal crossings. And it was together that they were arrested, denounced by a spy who had surprised their conversations hostile to the Germans. Very quickly, Joseph, Marcelle and André were taken to the Gestapo before being deported. André survived, Marcelle too. But her husband Joseph has never returned. “My father had never told me this story,” says Augustin. From the top of his 90 meter, the 93 -year -old man cannot hold back his tears.

Break the Vichyssois taboo

Our journey could have ended here, on these stories filled with emotion. But we choose to descend the Allier’s course, about forty kilometers from the demarcation line, to Vichy. Because in the city which was once the capital of the regime led by Marshal Pétain, another border has settled over the decades, between those who prefer to turn the page of occupation and collaboration, and those who campaign to break the taboo.

Michel Promérat, a retired history professor, has chosen to confront this painful past. In 2015, he co -founded the Cierv*, an association that organizes school lectures and outings over the period 1939-1945. The pedagogue leads us to follow the guided tour it offers to college students. In the thermal district where a sumptuous gallery evokes the sources of water in the city, we observe a row of hotels with elegant facades. These buildings which received spa guests were converted into offices for the officials of the Pétain regime, between 1940 and 1944.

Some Sundays, the Marshal greeted the crowd from the balcony of the Plaza hotel and crossed the main square to go to mass to the nearby Saint-Louis church. “But Vichy was not only the city of collaboration,” recalls Michel. She also had resistance fighters who spied on the ministries and made intelligence to British services. A bronze sculpture sits in the center of the Place Charles-de-Gaulle, in tribute to this Vichy resistance. After a long period of silence, Vichy crossed a milestone by inaugurating this monument in 2024. But no museum here makes the difficult story of collaborationist France.

The tourist office certainly offers several guided tours on war, but it prefers to highlight the more positive figure of Napoleon III. In the second half of the 19th century, the emperor erected Vichy in thermal city and made a park, a casino, a luxury hotel, shapes for her. The Cité des Eaux has been celebrating this imperial favor for thirty years, during parties where women parade in dresses in Crinoline and men in the top. “These festivities are sympathetic but should not hide part of our history, insists Michel. The inhabitants and tourists expect us that we are talking about war. They no longer have the same reluctance as their elders, they are ready! »»

For many, only a lucid confrontation with the past can protect the future against a new era of war and hatred. And if the demarcation line was once a gaping wound, it is today a simple scar in the Bourbonnais bocage. She no longer provokes dramas, but history enthusiasts are fighting to keep track of it. So you never forget.

* Vichy International Center for Studies and Research.