Luc Illusie remembers World War II

Luc Illusie was born on 2 May 1940 in Nantes, France, the son of Francis Armand Illusie (20 December 1904 - 14 October 1986) and Amédée Schmitt (22 April 1901 - 3 July 1997). Francis and Amédée Illusie had two sons: Jean-Paul Francis Theodore Illusie (13 August 1930 - 25 November 2006) and Luc Illusie (2 May 1940 -).

In an interview by Ulf Persson on 17 January 2012 Luc Illusie related his memories of World War II. We give a version below of this part of the interview.

Luc Illusie remembers World War II.

My parents were both teachers in a lycée. My mother, actually, in mathematics, while my father taught history.

In 1969 my mother had a stroke, which left her hemiplegic. She did not recover well, and I helped her during all those years afterwards. The remarkable thing is what changes she witnessed during her lifetime. Not only did she, as did my father, of course, experience the first World War, but even the time before that war. She remembered the streets of Paris with horse drawn carriages. She had vivid memories of the great flood of the Seine in Paris in 1910, with people boating in the streets downtown.

I do have memories of the second world war, though I was such a little child, having been born in 1940. We lived in Savenay, a tiny village thirty kilometres north-west of Nantes, equally distant from St-Nazaire, an important harbour, where during the war the Germans operated a strategic submarine base. We lived in a house three quarters of which was occupied by the Germans. In the garden they had made an ammunition store. I liked to climb and dance on it, under a walnut tree.

My parents were totally anti-German at the time. They admired de Gaulle. They secretly listened to the London Radio. Though the soldiers occupying our house were not Nazis, and some officers were highly educated and spoke excellent French, we avoided talking to them. Like in Vercors's novel, The Silence of the Sea.

My father was called up for military service. In May 1940, he was sent to the front, at Diemeringen in the Vosges. He retreated after the Wehrmacht's breakthrough in the Ardennes, was made prisoner, escaped near Saintes in the south west of France, and eventually returned to Savenay in the late summer of 1940. Later he was approached by a Resistance network, but, perhaps thinking of his two children, he declined to join.

Everyday life was hard, though in the countryside certainly not so tough as in the cities. We had a rather large garden, in which we bred chickens and rabbits. I remember eating freshly laid eggs. My parents were teaching at the local school. Lots of rumours, false most of the time, were circulating. Especially about the American landing. When eventually the landing took place, we prepared American flags for the arrival of the Allied Forces. But unfortunately they passed 15 kilometres east of Savenay, and continued their way to Nantes, which was liberated on 12 August 1944. The Germans kept the control of Savenay, as well as that of St-Nazaire, where they had a stronghold with about 30000 troops.

The allied air force regularly struck targets along the Loire river, between Nantes and St-Nazaire, near the big Donges refinery : bridges, port installations, warehouses, marshalling yards, ammunition stores, etc. The bombing usually occurred at night, and it was not so accurate as it is today. When we heard the planes come, we all rushed to the basement for shelter. Fortunately, Savenay was spared. Our situation became more risky towards the end of 1944. As I said, St-Nazaire was a so-called "pocket of resistance" of the Germans, as was Royan, more to the south, near Bordeaux. De Gaulle decided that these pockets should be re-taken by the French Free Forces in cooperation with the British and American forces. On 5 January 1945, a bombing over Royan resulted in a 1000 civilian casualties. My parents were afraid of a similar attack on St-Nazaire, which would have been much bloodier, because of the considerably stronger position of the Germans there. The Red Cross had negotiated the permission to create what we would now call a "humanitarian corridor", namely organise convoys to evacuate the civilians of the St-Nazaire pocket to Nantes, in the liberated area. My parents immediately seized this opportunity. So, one morning of January 1945, we took such a train. It was snowing. I was carrying a small suitcase in one hand and my teddy bear in the other. We entered a cattle truck, and lay on the straw. I found it exciting. It took us one day to cover the 30 kilometres from Savenay to Nantes, where we got a temporary accommodation at a friends' apartment. The decision of de Gaulle to "reduce" the resistance pockets, which he justifies in his memoirs, is controversial. From a mere strategic viewpoint it was certainly unnecessary, as the Allied Forces were already penetrating Germany. Like in a game of go, those pockets were "dead". As for the St-Nazaire pocket, no attempt was made to take it. Its surrender occurred on May 8, 1945, the same day as Germany capitulated.

After the war food was scarce, expensive, and of low quality. I remember the ration cards. Heating was problematic. And the winters of that time were cold. At home we had no refrigerator, no washing machine, everything had to be done by hand. But in 1947, with the advent of the Marshall plan, things took a better turn.

Looking back, I think that the amount and pace of material improvement after the war is really remarkable. Of course, at the time I found the pace rather slow. Nantes had suffered a terrible bombing by the Allied Forces in 1943, September 16 and 23, making around 1500 victims. The whole centre of the city had been totally destroyed. Reconstruction took more than ten years.

Last Updated December 2025