nicomachus.net

During the German occupation of France, Albert Camus earned hero status among the French for editing the underground newspaper Combat. It wasn’t until the war was over, however, that more than a handful of people knew it was Camus publishing the journal. Nevertheless, he lived at various times in hiding, using false identity papers. As a moral voice in the resistance, his travels had to be simple so as not to draw the unwanted attention of the German army.

Depicting Camus’ travels in the weeks and days leading up to the Allied liberation of Paris, Herbert Lottman writes in his 1979 biography of Camus,

They left Paris on three bicycles — Pierre Gallimard, Janine, Michel, and Camus — Janine riding with the men in turn, although Pierre and Michel didn’t want her to ride with Camus because of the strain it might cause their sickly friend. They went to Verdelot, some fifty-five miles east of Paris on the banks of the Petit-Morin, where Gallimard editor and author Brice Parain had a home.
Meanwhile, Camus alerted fellow Combat conspirators Sartre and Beauvoir, and they took precautions. In her memoirs, Beauvoir describes their somewhat pathetic attempts to take protective cover: first by moving in for a few days with the Michel Leiris; then, by train and by bicycle…And when they heard that the American troops were approaching Chartres, they got back on their bicycles and by the side roads made their way to Paris.
But the news of the Allied advance, the imminent liberation of Paris, drew them (Camus and the Gallimards) back to the city. For the return trip they again rode three bicycles for the four of them, with the same seating arrangements. Peddling (sic) along, they saw planes diving and dropping bombs, Germans taking shelter in the woods along the road. They decided, “idiodically,” that the bombs weren’t meant for them.

While dates for these rides from and back to Paris are hard to nail down, I figure the return bicycle ride was sometime around today, August 24th — sixty-two years ago. So, here’s to Camus, riding a single-speed fifty-five miles through the French countryside back to Paris, dodging bombs and Germans along the way.


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