The Train (2011)
“I suppose that everybody, depending on the place where he was at that time, his family responsibilities, his personal anxieties, has his own landmarks. Mine are all connected with the reception center, the center as we used to call it, and distinguished by the arrival of a certain train, by the fitting out of a new hut, by an apparently commonplace incident.
Without knowing it, we had been among the first to arrive, a couple of days after the trains had unloaded some Belgian refugees, so that t...he center hadn’t been broken in yet.
Had the huts, which had been put up a few weeks before and were still new, been intended for this purpose? The question never occurred to me. Probably the answer is yes, seeing that, long before the German attack, the authorities had evacuated part of Alsace.
Nobody, in any case, expected things to happen so quickly, and it was obvious that the people in charge of the camp were improvising from day to day.
On the morning we arrived, the newspapers were already talking of fighting at Monthermé and on the Semois; the next day the Germans were building bridges for their tanks at Dinant; and on May 15th, unless I am mistaken, at the same time as the withdrawal of the French government was announced, the daily papers quoted in large type the names of places in our part of the world, Montmédy, Raucourt, Rethel, which we had had so much trouble reaching.MoreLess
Without knowing it, we had been among the first to arrive, a couple of days after the trains had unloaded some Belgian refugees, so that t...he center hadn’t been broken in yet.
Had the huts, which had been put up a few weeks before and were still new, been intended for this purpose? The question never occurred to me. Probably the answer is yes, seeing that, long before the German attack, the authorities had evacuated part of Alsace.
Nobody, in any case, expected things to happen so quickly, and it was obvious that the people in charge of the camp were improvising from day to day.
On the morning we arrived, the newspapers were already talking of fighting at Monthermé and on the Semois; the next day the Germans were building bridges for their tanks at Dinant; and on May 15th, unless I am mistaken, at the same time as the withdrawal of the French government was announced, the daily papers quoted in large type the names of places in our part of the world, Montmédy, Raucourt, Rethel, which we had had so much trouble reaching.MoreLess
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