October 2013 – Writing Between the Lines

Stories Written in Stone

No, friends, I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth. I was dropping off my daughter Bea, not quite at the ends of the earth, but at Stanford University, 858 miles from home. We left early, so Eli could check out the graduate program at the International Institute in Monterey. We decided to make a proper road trip out of it. Thom couldn’t get away, so Bea, Eli, and I kissed him goodbye, and hit the road.

Our first stop was Portland, where we dined with Cousin Bryan, talented photographer, and Friend Barb.

Then we parked on the lawn of Chapman School amidst a happily buzzing crowd. We were waiting for sunset, to witness a miracle of nature.

Every September, on their fall migration to Central America, as many as 35,000 Vaux’s Swifts stop to roost in the school’s industrial-sized chimney. It was breathtaking to watch…

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Island Time

Little pockets of Britain, such as Gibraltar, can be found in the most unexpected places.

You will know them by their breakfasts.

Their mailboxes…

Their unique signage…

And their excellent thrift stores…

…which are staffed by the friendliest most helpful people, like Thelma and Kathy with a ‘K’.

In Britain, thrift shops are centrally located, often on the high street, each dedicated to a worthy cause: for the poor, cancer research, head injuries, or mental illness. Thelma and Kathy, Hospice Shop volunteers, saw us trying on Queen Mum hats and took it upon themselves to outfit us. Each time Kathy handed a new outfit into the fitting room, she said, “My talents are wasted in the office!” And we had to agree.

Our Channel Island adventure actually began with last month’s trip to Belgium. My sister Constance and I had both enjoyed reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. While we were on that side of The Pond, we decided to visit at least one of the Channel Islands.

Jersey Island is home to the famous Jersey Cow…

…home to the famous Jersey Royal Potato…

…and home to author Roy McCarthy, who has written several books set on Jersey. He is an expert on Jersey history, a blogging buddy of mine, and he offered to show us around. Who wouldn’t pick Jersey?

But first, you may ask, how does Jersey, which is spitting distance from France, come to be so very English?

Back in 1066, after William the Duke of Normandy conquered England he changed his name to William the Conqueror and expanded his job description to include ‘King of England.’

The Channel Islands were a possession of Normandy long before England was, and remained so until 1214, when King John of England (aptly nicknamed ‘John Lackland’) lost Normandy to France. The islanders picked up their marbles, cast their lot with England rather than France, and were rewarded for their loyalty with privileges other English possessions did not enjoy. To this day they are “bailiwicks’ of England, possessions of the crown, but separate from Britain, with their own financial, legal, and judicial systems. This, BTW, is why financial business is Jersey’s main industry, and the per capita income is much higher than in most countries. And why, Thelma explained, the thrift stores have such great merchandise. They can afford to wear it once to a wedding and give it away!

Roy started our tour here. On June 28th, 1940, the Nazis preceded their occupation of the Channel Islands by bombing this harbor. He showed us bullet holes in the stone wall from machine gun strafing and, sadly, a memorial to the dead.

Signs of the German occupation remain all over the island. It was one of the most fortified German holdings in Europe, far out of proportion to its strategic value. Hitler, disappointed at his failure to conquer England, took particular satisfaction in occupying the Channel Islands, and he meant to keep them at all costs.

The Jersey War Tunnels are a huge complex of underground tunnels built by the Germans during the occupation, using slave labor. The Germans maintained a hospital there for wounded German soldiers.

The tunnels, like the history, seem to go on and on forever. The museum established in the tunnels echoes with footsteps and voices from the past.

They pull no punches, telling both the good and the bad that occurred on the island.

At first there were only a few hundred Germans, who were told to keep relations with the natives civil. Being stationed on Jersey was like a picnic to the Germans, with merchandise on the shop shelves to send home to their families, no bullets or bombs to dodge, and little resistance.

Below are just two of the museum mannequins that came to life and spoke in English with German accents, trying to engage us as they might have done to islanders in 1940. He was the enemy, the occupying army, and had the power of life and death over you, and then there were the stories of Nazi brutality that had preceded the soldiers. With all that in mind, would you respond to a German soldier if he shouted a cheery greeting to you, or could you ignore him?

Would you do his laundry if he offered you extra food rations? What if he said your child looked like his little boy at home and offered to buy him an ice cream?

As the war proceeded, conditions worsened. Thousands more soldiers came, as many as one German soldier for every two islanders. Rules tightened, food and supplies grew scarce, civility waned. Owning a radio was a crime punishable by death. One woman was shot for rejecting the advances of a German soldier. Other women had affairs with them, were judged harshly and called “Jerry bags” by the islanders. Some escapes were attempted, but few were successful; those apprehended were shot or deported to Auschwitz, where most perished. Some people sheltered fugitive slaves, shared their resources, or found other ways to resist the Nazis. Also on exhibit were letters sent anonymously by islanders to Nazi commanders betraying their neighbors’ transgressions. Why? To settle old scores or to curry favor or simply for financial gain. It happened all over Europe, but it was still sobering and sad.

Eleanor Roosevelt said that a woman is like a teabag–she never knows how strong she is until she gets into hot water. I think that’s true, and it is in times of war and desperation when your true colors show.

The occupation of Jersey is the subject of Roy’s book, Tess of Portelet Manor.

“In pre-war Jersey, Tess Picot is young and in love. Living with her mother in a cottage on idyllic Portelet Common, the days are sunny and long. But can it last? Soon the clouds of war approach and the Channel Islands are occupied by Hitler’s Nazi troops. Tess’s heart has been broken, maybe beyond repair. But like the cottage on the common Tess grows stronger as the long years go by.Follow Tess Picot as she battles through the harsh Occupation years, loses friends and tries to love again. Will she succeed? The journey is a remarkable one with an unexpected ending.”

We took a hike…

…and saw the raw beauty of the island.

…with stories to be discovered everywhere, from many different periods in history,

…or legends based on natural features, such as The Devil’s Hole.

All of it was pure gold.

Roy pointed out the places we had read about in his book. This was the beach Tess walked on, until the Germans mined it.

Here was the hotel where the Nazis set up their headquarters.

And here it is today, just around the corner from where my sister and I were staying.

I can’t remember whether Tess and her mum came to this pub for a pint, but we did. It was the perfect way to top off an incredibly full day.

As our ferry pulled away, Jersey faded into the fog, but the island’s stories and histories remain vivid, colorful, and compelling.

c2013Naomi Baltuck

Click here for more interpretations of the Weekly Photo Challenge: The Hue of You.

A Box in the Attic

In 2010 I received a mysterious email with the subject header, “Searching Family Baltuck.” The sender was Johan Lebichot. For some reason, the name rang a bell, though the bell was rusty and had long been silent. It began…

Dear Madam,

My name is Johan Lebichot, 33 years old, and I am writing you from Belgium – Europe. Perhaps this name recalls something in your memory. I am searching a family from Detroit who corresponded with my grandmother 60 years ago…If you are the right person, you are able to confirm this: Your parents are Harry and Eleanor Baltuck and your grandmother is Rose Baltuck…Your brothers and sisters are Lewis, William, Leonore, Debbie, Connie and Miriam…

No wonder his name seemed familiar! Lebichot. A missing piece of the puzzle I’d tried to put together over the years.

I am sorting the contents of my grandmother and found a letter from Mrs Rose Baltuck, two pictures of your uncle Lewis Baltuck…

…his military grave…

…and six New Year cards coming from your parents during the year Fifties.

…made from pictures with their children, you, your brothers and sisters when you were young.

Your grandmother explains in her letter that during the war your father…

…came into my grandmother’s flower shop to buy flowers for his little brother’s grave.

Johan went on to say his grandmother died in 2002 and her shop was sold, but he’d saved a box of old letters from the dust bin, transferring it from her attic to his. Eight years later, while on paternity leave, Johan remembered the box. From its contents, he pieced together the frayed threads of a story binding together our two families all the way back to 1944. It was the same story I’d heard from my grandmother’s lips.

It all began when my father visited his brother Lewis’s grave in a temporary American Military Cemetery at Fosse-la-Ville, Belgium.

He tried to buy flowers at a shop owned by Madam Jeanne Lebichot, but locals were observing their own memorial services, and the flowers were all spoken for. Already shattered by grief, my father broke down and wept, and so did the shopkeeper. She told him her little daughter had been killed in an accident the same day his brother was killed on the Siegfried Line. Jeanne Lebichot gave my father flowers, refusing payment, and adopted my uncle’s grave. She sent my Grandma Rose sprays of flowers from the bouquets she left on Lewis’s grave. Grief, gratitude, and mutual comfort blossomed into friendship. Long after my uncle’s remains had come home to Detroit, they exchanged gifts and letters.

Rose kept all of Jeanne’s letters, just as Jeanne kept Rose’s. But Jeanne spoke no English, and Rose spoke no French. For twenty-one years my father wrote to Jeanne, and translated Jeanne’s letters for my Grandma Rose. After his death in 1965, the women lost touch, and the story might’ve ended there, but for a box in Johan’s attic, and another one in mine.

Since 2010, our families have become reacquainted. We’ve exchanged gifts, stories, and letters, both old and new. We’ve learned more about our own grandmothers from the letters they wrote to a stranger on the other side of the ocean. A new generation of strangers has become friends. And I’ve had the pleasure of watching the newest Lebichot grow up, albeit from across the ocean.

Two weeks ago my sister Constance and I traveled to Liege. For the first time in sixty-nine years, the Baltucks and the Lebichots met fact to face. I was apprehensive. My French is so rusty. What if their English was too? What if we couldn’t understand each other? Worse yet, what if we met and didn’t even like each other?

Johan and Anita generously took a day off from work to drive us to the site of the American Cemetery. They picked us up outside our hotel, looking just like their photos. And they spoke very good English! We had an hour in the car to visit before we arrived at what used to be the temporary military cemetery.

At the time we made our plans, it hadn’t registered that we’d be in Belgium on the 69th anniversary of my uncle’s death, but it gave me a little shiver to realize it. The soldiers’ remains have long since been moved to permanent military cemeteries in France, or sent home to their wives and mothers. The site had been assigned happier uses–a playground, gardens, home to windmills generating new energy.

But a plaque commemorates its history.

“In proud memory of the 2199 American soldiers here buried with 96 Allied Brothers in Arms. They gave their lives to set free our country in the fights of the fall 1944 and in the Battle of the Bulge.”

While in Fosse-la-Ville, we paid our respects at Jeanne’s grave.

We visited the flower shop. Vacant and in disrepair, it holds tight to its stories, as fewer and fewer people remain who know them or even care. Really, what difference should it make that seventy years ago my father’s footsteps echoed down that very street, or that the door of that shop swung open with a push from his hand? Listen carefully, and hear no clue, not even a whisper of the sound of anguished tears spent long ago; only an autumn breeze whistling through a broken window pane.

At Johan’s childhood home in Fosse-la-Ville, I learned more about his early years, the next generation of his family stories, and my heart made room for them.

Chez Lebichot, Johan cracked open a bottle of champagne and shared photographs and letters.

For the first time I saw an image of Jeanne. Constance and I wondered at the friendship between her and Rose, two such different women, with an ocean between, who shared no common language, who had never even met. It must be the same as with war veterans: only one who has endured the trauma of the battlefield can truly understand what another war veteran has suffered. And only a grieving mother could comprehend the pain of another who has lost a child.

Was it coincidence that Johan and I had both held onto our box in the attic? Or that we cared enough to piece together the story and patch together a decades-old friendship? I don’t think so. Both our childhoods were difficult, both families fractured, and we both know what it feels like to be orphaned.

People can shut themselves off from further attachment–and potential pain. Or they can stay open to new beginnings–and potential joy. For me, it’s a constant struggle. This time, I choose to focus on life over death, I choose to mend rather than toss, I prefer an open hand to a closed fist, and I choose to give myself the gift of a happy ending.

Please, could you confirm that you are (or not) a member of this family I am searching ?

Kind Regards

Johan Lebichot

Yes, Johan, I can confirm that this is the family we were both searching for.

All images and words copyright Naomi Baltuck

Bumbershots

In my hometown of Seattle, there are two kinds of people. Those who carry “bumbershoots”…

…and those who don’t.

I always regarded carriers as sissies, but before we left for Europe, my sister Constance talked me into buying an umbrella, and I’m glad she did. We had one day to explore the city of Liege…