Ruthless duty

Sigurd Yves Larsen, a longtime family friend from before my birth, a close friend of and professional collaborator with my father, has just died at the age of 92. He was born in Brussels in 1933. What I never knew until today is that when Germany invaded Belgium (he being then only 7 years old), his father left his wife and three young children in order to join the Resistance. For the rest of the war they had no idea if he was alive or dead. His wife set out on foot, with all three children, the youngest in a pram, to traverse the entirety of France and try to cross the border to Spain, only to be turned back. They spent the rest of the war in Belgium, then were reunited with the father in 1945. The whole family emigrated to Brazil, then soon to the United States. My father's friend became the head of the physics department at Temple University, and even after retiring, kept working on physics problems I'm told include second virial coefficients, gas thermodynamics, and few-body systems. He had been frail in recent years, but remained in reasonable health until a mercifully brief final illness in the last couple of weeks.

His family journey through France on foot was no isolated case; millions of people were on the road, facing bombs and strafing by the Germans. Per a combination of Grok and Wikipedia: the mass exodus of civilians during the German invasion of Western Europe in May-June 1940, known as "L'Exode" in French history, involved an estimated 6-10 million people fleeing southward from Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and northern France as the Wehrmacht advanced. This included nearly two million Belgians who crossed into France within days of the May 10 invasion, driven by panic and memories of World War I atrocities, creating overcrowded roads clogged with families on foot, bicycles, horse-drawn carts, and occasional vehicles—all moving amid military traffic heading in the opposite direction.

German Luftwaffe aircraft, particularly the infamous Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers, frequently targeted these refugee columns to sow terror and disrupt Allied movements. Stukas would dive steeply with wailing sirens to strafe and bomb the slow-moving crowds, causing widespread casualties and forcing people to dodge attacks while hiking among thousands. These assaults were tactical, exploiting the vulnerability of mixed civilian-military convoys to create blockages and panic.

As impressed as I am by his courage and dutifulness in joining the Resistance, it seems unimaginably harsh for him to leave his family in the circumstances, especially considering that one of his wife's grandparents was Jewish. Still, when men have to go war, they have to go to war.