Dr Rébillé is famous for his 22 books based on his 35 years of experience of being a country doctor in Central Brittany. Here, he recounts the series of wartime events that led him study medicine.
When war broke out, I was only 14 years old and was a pupil at the Lycée in St. Brieuc. My father was a tax officer in Bourbriac and my mother a school teacher. Brittany was occupied by the German army in 1940, following the rout of the French army and the collapse of the French government and I continued my studies during 1941 and 1942 under German occupation. One of my classmates took the situation particularly badly, several of his uncles had been killed in the war of 1914-18, and even at our young age, the rest of us were aware that he was speaking too freely in public of his anger and resentment against what was happening.
One day, in the Spring of 1943, he and two other boys in my class came across a German soldier, alone in a little railway station outside the town, they overpowered him, succeeded in taking his revolver off him, and killed him. Somehow, the military authorities found out who was responsible and they came to our class – by this time I was in my final year of study in the Lycée. The boy who was responsible for the killing had brought the revolver into class with him, and it was passed from hand to hand under the table as the German officer interrogated and threatened the class.
Eventually, the three boys were arrested, and the German officer made a promise that if the revolver was returned, no reprisal would be taken against the rest of the class. The revolver was handed over and the soldiers, being true to their word, departed. They returned a few days later, however, and under a pretext, demanded that our class should be dispersed and sent to schools outside of Brittany.
School in Laval
I transferred to a Lycée in Laval, and my identity papers were marked that I was not allowed to return to Brittany until we had completed our studies. I was boarding with an old lady who lived close to the station – often we were disturbed by the sound of the air raid sirens, and we sheltered together in a cellar. Usually the British and American planes passed over the railway, and sometimes I took the chance of staying in the comfort of my bed rather than spending the night underground. One night in 1944, however, things were clearly different, there was the sound of distant rumblings and the mood in the town changed – even though over a hundred miles from the Normandy beaches, we could hear the bombing and the artillery fire as British and American forces prepared to invade.
There was another boy from my class, from Plouha, who had also been sent to Laval, and we decided that there was no longer any point in us staying in the town: we determined to try to return home and set off on foot without further delay. As far as possible we kept off the main roads and tried to avoid checkpoints and German patrols; most of the time we walked, but occasionally we were given a lift by a car or lorry going to the next town or village. We crossed over the border back into Brittany and tried to skirt round the south of Rennes, but, by now, we were starting to look quite disreputable – unkempt and rather muddy. We were spotted by a group of soldiers who demanded to see our papers; our papers were marked that we were not allowed to return to Brittany, so we were taken into custody and sent to Rennes, where we were put in a camp, along with several hundred or thousands of other people.
Prison in Rennes
Conditions were quite terrible – not enough to eat, three people to a mattress, and an infestation of fleas. After a few days, my friend and I were summoned to the commandant’s office, and after some preliminary questioning were told that we were to be released: however, the commandant did not have the authority to issue us with new papers, so we had to make our way as before, on foot, and avoiding patrols. We succeeded in getting as far as the outskirts of Moncontour, where we were advised not to go any further due to a large concentration of German troops in the town. We managed to get hold of a telephone and phoned my friend’s father who was a builder and who had been drafted into working on the ‘Atlantic Wall’ – the sea defences along the coast. He was working not far from St Brieuc and had papers that allowed him to drive around the department fairly freely; he came to pick us up and took me back home to Bourbriac where I was reunited with my parents. They were overjoyed and enormously relieved to see me because they had found out that I had left Laval, but had had no further news of me.
Somehow, word was passed round that I had spent some time in a prison in Rennes and soon people from as far afield as Quimper were calling at our house to see if I had any news of their loved ones.
The Resistance
After I had spent a few days back at home, I realised that many of the boys with whom I had grown up were no longer to be seen: they had slipped out of town and joined the Resistance. Naturally, I followed suit and for the next few weeks slept in farm buildings and in remote areas of the countryside. There were no German troops stationed in Bourbriac by this time, so it was possible for me to return home from time to time to visit my parents.
Things quickly deteriorated for the German troops and the Resistance gradually assumed control of the area. As one of the few lycée students in our group, I was more or less the only one who could speak any German; I was therefore stationed on the road outside the town with the task of ordering any German soldiers that wandered along the road to raise their hands and surrender. By the time that American soldiers finally came to liberate the town, we had twenty German prisoners in hand.
In September, the time came for my final examinations, and, not surprisingly, I did not do particularly well – a summer spent with the Resistance was not the ideal preparation for the Baccalaureate! At that time, University grants were awarded according to ones ranking in the exam, and my ranking was not high enough to entitle me to a grant. My parents were not well off – particularly not just after the war – and although they wanted me to go to University, they said that they could not afford to support me for too many years of further study. My mother urged me to take up the law – the training was not too long, just four years, and soon I would be earning money for myself.
Medical School
The idea did not particularly appeal to me but I dutifully caught the train to take me to Rennes to enrol at the University. At the station, I met two other young men, also on their way to the University, we started talking and they told me that they were going to study to be doctors. A career in medicine somehow seemed much more appealing than a career as a lawyer, and when I arrived at the University, I too enrolled on the medical course.
There was some explaining to be done when I returned home, and I had to promise that I would enlist as an army doctor after I had completed the first three years of study, so that the State would take charge of my expenses. Fortunately, I was not held to this promise. Family connections helped me to get an internship in a local hospital, and, in my final year of study, I was told of a general practice that had come free in Callac due to the ill health of the incumbent. I was able to take it over and started work as one of the youngest doctors in France (I was 24 years, nine months old). Thirty-five years later I was still doing the same job.
©2008. Written by Gareth Lewis, based on conversation with Edmond Rébillé October 2008.
