A Childhood That Wasn’t Always Safe
Looking back, you could almost smile: surviving childhood sometimes felt like an extreme sport. No helmet. No safety net. Just imagination running wild.
But some memories aren’t funny.
They stick in your mind like an old splinter—a reminder of a time when children played with things they never should have touched. The most dangerous memories came from the long shadow of the postwar years.
On December 3, 1942, the Vichy government banned the possession and transport of all firearms and ammunition—even for hunting.
The law existed. Obedience… not always.
The Lock at Les Mousses
The Mousses lock sat against a hillside, framed by two dry-stone walls. The gaps between the stones made perfect hiding places.
It was rarely drained. To us, it was a playground.
We built rafts from empty jerrycans.
We swam—well, not me.
We caught small fish.
It was a paradise… until the day the water disappeared.
That day, the boys found ammunition and pistols hidden among the stones.
Excitement exploded.
They organized a full search. No parents were told. As for me—the only girl—I was warned:
“Say nothing, or you won’t play with us anymore.”
Silence became the price of belonging.
The Games Turn Dangerous
Jean—nicknamed our “mad inventor”—never ran out of ideas.
Soon, we had a powder workshop.
To test it, we used a large pine tree by the water. At its base, we lit small piles of powder.
In autumn, we roasted chestnuts and beechnuts.
Stolen apples cooked badly but tasted better than nothing.
In summer, fish added a bit of protein.
All thanks to gunpowder.
And that wasn’t enough.
We built a tiny boat—a piece of wood powered by powder packed into a small bottle. A fuse gave us just enough time (in theory) to run.
It rarely worked.
It often failed.
But we kept going.
We even gave the pine tree a name:
The Sacrificial Tree.
A Memory That Still Stands
I saw that tree again this year.
Tall, proud, leaning slightly over the water—as if bowing one last time. On its trunk, the blackened scar from our childhood experiments was still visible.
As if it remembered.
The Day Everything Changed
Ammunition fascinated us.
Smooth. Shiny. Sometimes marked with red or blue. Almost beautiful.
Jean had an idea: turn a bullet into a zipper charm.
He chose a long, blue-tipped round.
He took a ring.
He borrowed pliers from his father.
It was a quiet Sunday.
In the kitchen, the old stove hummed softly. Jean stood alone by the fire, holding the bullet in the pliers.
To pierce the metal, he needed heat.
So he placed it in the flames.
Then—
Explosion.
The blast threw him backward.
Phosphorus hit his eyes.
The wooden floor caught fire.
It was an incendiary round.
After the Shock
I won’t describe everything that followed.
Only this:
Jean did not lose his sight. He survived.
But something broke that day.
That was the moment fear entered our world.
What Childhood Really Taught Us
Innocence and fear collided.
Can the need to belong coexist with personal judgment?
This memory still haunts me because it reveals something uncomfortable:
Childhood is not always a safe place.
Sometimes, it inherits the debris of adult wars.
We thought we were inventing games.
In reality, we were handling danger.
Even today, the fear is not the accident itself—
It’s how close we came to something irreversible… without even knowing it.
Some scars are invisible.
They live inside us. Quiet. Waiting.
Until memory brings them back.
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Fragments of Family Memory
Memories continue to gather over time.
The family tree grows, despite gaps—especially on the Italian side. Old photographs, now colorized, bring life back to familiar faces.
And sometimes, they remind us of what was lost.
Like the bond between my mother and the “almost sister” she was suddenly separated from.
Faces from the Past
The Daval family:
- My grandfather, a foreman in a cotton mill
- My grandmother, thin and solemn, with sad eyes
- Their daughters: Claire, my unmarried aunt, and my mother
Another set of memories:
- My mother with Marie-L, the “almost sister”
- My brothers:
- Jean, the red-haired eldest
- Alain in military uniform
- Lucien on his wedding day
Time Moves On
Years pass, just like memories.
Soon, I will count eleven “springs” in this chapter of my life.
Lulu, still sitting on our mother’s lap, will soon be six.
Alain is seventeen.
Jean is already over eighteen.
They are becoming men.
Girls are beginning to matter.
And their little sister—me—matters less and less.
The End of One Chapter
A few childhood stories remain to be told.
Then we will leave Les Mousses behind.
And slowly, the paths of the siblings will begin to separate.
- Quatre années trépidantes
- Où ai-je trouvé cette force ?
- « Pourquoi fais-tu tout cela ? » demandait ma mère.
- La pluie a-t-elle le goût des larmes ?
- Qu’ai-je appris sur moi ? Et quel geste simple rend ma journée plus belle ?
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