Legacy

Hello Mon Ami, my name is Gaston LeBlanc; this is not my story, but a tale of my Grandfather. Pierre LeBlanc.  This story starts in 1938 near the small village of Le Roche in southern France.  My grandfather was employed by the government as a forester working in the forest near the aforementioned village.

 

He was also a master woodcarver and amateur arborist.  In pursuit of these interests he decided to make about thirty of the trees unique.  Maybe he should have gotten permission, but he didn’t.  He was used to grafting branches onto trees, especially fruit trees to make a multiple fruited tree.

 

Part of his job as forester was to keep the trees trimmed and pruned; and clear of dead wood as well.  He had already experimented very successfully with taking a limb pruned from a spot it wasn’t needed and grafting it right back to a spot where it was needed.

 

Thus he had an idea.  He said to himself I think I will use the pruned limbs as material to put faces on trees.  He said he would do so by creative grafting so the tree would live.  He took bits and pieces here and there being careful to leave the living bark intact and facing outward.  Thus he slowly molded faces into a variety of trees.  A variety of faces evolved, I’m told that one even resembled Napoleon.  That may have been a bit of puffery, I’m not sure.

 

A number of years passed and the seams of the pieces had healed over with new bark; the trees had grown and the sizes of the faces with them.

 

It was the spring of 1944 when the German Army approached the forest on its way to subdue and occupy the village of Le Roche.

 

My grandfather didn’t want those Nazi’s in his forest; but my grandfather didn’t even own a gun.  What to do, what to do?  Grandfather thought I wish I could scare them away.  He wished his trees were dogs he could sic on the Nazi’s.  Then my grandfather thought they don’t know about my trees with faces; maybe between his voice and the way the trees looked he could scare them away.

 

As the story goes’; grandfather climbed up and hid in the leafy part of a tree where he couldn’t be easily seen.  A few German soldiers and a tank entered the forest.  Grandfather then using a megaphone and his best spooky voice said “Flee or the trees of hell will devour you.”  Grandfather repeated that over and over.  The German soldiers couldn’t see a source for the voice, but in trying, they got a load of the trees with faces.

 

They turned and fled like the devil himself was after them.  The hatch to the tank sprang open and a crewman popped his head out.  He shouted “Ach Himmel” and shisten on der Furor, I didn’t enlist for this. He apparently got so scared he lost control of his bowels and created a very foul aroma in the tank.  The next thing grandfather said happened was he saw the entire tank crew exiting as if they needed fresh air real bad.  They also fled as if their life depended on it.

 

That is how grandfather captured a German tank single handed without firing a shot.  Since the forest was between the Germans and the village; it was the only one never occupied by the Germans in World War II.

 

Today, standing among the trees is a statue of my grandfather of whom I’m quite proud.  The forest has become a tourist attraction.  The tank is still there rusting away.  I’m told that two of the German soldiers have also visited the tourist attraction and now having seen the light of day are being sports and laughing at themselve’s.