Andrée's War Read Online Free

grandparents was very strong and through them the children gained an in-depth knowledge of Brussels and the Belgian coastline.
    It was around this time that Andrée started to write a diary, which she kept right through the 1930s and 40s.
    In 1936 the Griotteray family moved back to Paris and then, three weeks after her sixteenth birthday, Andrée left for England, where she stayed for over a year to learn English, living in Bournemouth with friends her mother had made on her visits to England during the First World War. As a young sixteen-year-old, nothing could have prepared her for how different English country living was from what she had been used to in the south of France, Paris and Belgium, but she soon amassed a group of English friends who invited her to stay with their families around the country. As her language skills developed, her confidence and independence grew and she found herself working in a pre-preparatory school as a French assistant, shocked by how the British could send their children away at such a young age.
    Before her departure for England, Edmond and Yvonne gave Andrée a special handmade suitcase as a birthday gift. The case was made of soft brown kid leather with thick, dark stitching on every side. A thick leather handle was attached by a pair of tiny silver plates screwed into the leather. At the centre of the plates a silver lock had been carefully fixed. It had athick silk lining, made from silk which had belonged to her Swiss grandmother. That lining was to prove invaluable.
    While Andrée spent a year in England, gradually falling in love with the country, her fourteen-year-old brother Alain had been sent to Germany for three months during his school holidays to perfect his German. His Hitler Youth host greeted him by saying, ‘Have no doubt about this. In time we will invade and conquer France.’
    In 1938, with the hostilities between England, France and Germany gathering pace, Edmond and Yvonne decided their daughter should return home. Not quite eighteen years old and back in Paris, Andrée began her career as a sales assistant in a small antique shop. In the evenings she attended a secretarial course. Shortly before Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, her Belgian uncle and aunt, Auguste and Léa, invited their niece on a two-week touring holiday of Germany. Andrée’s diaries include extensive descriptions of the country and its people, and an awareness of the Nazi Party’s dominance over the German population. The experience left a lasting impression on Andrée and her cousin.
    Reggie Harland (one of Andrée’s English friends, later to become Air Marshal Sir Reginald Harland KBE, CB) visited Andrée in Paris with his aunt, Toddy. Just as Reggie and his family had introduced Andrée to hunt balls, meets, the English countryside and cocktail parties, Andrée showed Reggie the sights of Paris – elegant living, beautiful clothes and good food. Reggie’s visit would be her last contact with any of her English friends for the next five years. She was to be cut off from an important and influential part of her youth and in her diary she later describes with sadness both her English and French friends being called up to go to war.
    The Griotteray children retained close lifelong ties to Belgium, the land of their grandparents, as well as their native France. But Andrée’s travels as a teenager had sparked a deep love of another country: Britain.

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    * According to Griotteray family documents, including Andrée’s birth certificate, Labori was always spelled with an ‘e’ at the end, though this does not correspond with what has been written about the Dreyfus affair.
    â€  On 13 January 1898, Zola published an article in the newspaper
L’Aurore
, accusing the French government of anti-Semitism in their campaign against Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer who was infamously accused and convicted of treason,