The White Brigade

This novel, published in 1943, is described as “an absorbing and authentic account of the Belgian underground” during the Second World War. In effect it's a factual account of the White Brigade resistance movement (“all the characters in the book are real”), written in the form of fiction to protect the identities of those involved in the struggle against Nazi occupation. The central character, Jean Buchet, believes he is involved in the Resistance for the sake of his daughter but the terrible living conditions in Nazi-occupied Belgium lead to a tuberculosis epidemic and both his wife and daughter are infected. A wanted man for his resistance activities, his terminally-ill wife urges him to flee to England. There he joins many other Belgian exiles flying in the Royal Air Force.

The author, Robert Goffin (born 21 May 1898), grew up in the Walloon part of Brabant in central Belgium. He was educated at the Athenaeum Saint-Gilles in Brussels and then studied law at the city’s Free University. His first book of poetry was published in 1918. During the five years preceding the Second World War, he published 13 books: two novels, three collections of poetry, three long studies on eels, rats and spiders, two works of literary criticism, two books on the Habsburgs and also a Michelin-type gastronomy guide. He lived in exile during the Second World War, supporting himself by writing and delivering lectures. During this period, along with several well-researched books set in Nazi-occupied Belgium, he also published books on the history of jazz and delivered a related course at the New School for Social Research in New York City. After the war he returned to Belgium and resumed his work as a lawyer. In 1953 he was elected to the prestigious Royal Academy of French Language and Literature.

Whereas many outsiders would contrast the German occupation of Belgium in the First World War with the Nazi occupation in the Second World War, the author describes how the country was “occupied by the same enemy who had tortured it in 1914”. The central character, Jean Buchet, “remembered with anguish those years of desolation”. Reference is made to the Resistance movement during that first occupation, citing the response in the underground press to the execution of Philippe Baucq in October 1915:
“You may rob us, imprison us, even kill us; you can never silence us... Our voice is the voice of all the mothers, the widows, the children who weep for those whom they have lost. That voice will not be still until the last German, soldier or spy, has left the country, invaded as it was in contravention of every right.”