I was a bicycle mechanic in Lille when the Germans came. In 1942, the Resistance recruited me because I could repair anything — including a German Enigma component that had been salvaged from a crashed plane. My job was to courier messages between the Pas-de-Calais network and the British intelligence station in London. I bicycled 80 kilometers a week carrying microfilm messages sewn into the linings of my coat. The Gestapo had a photograph of me — taken by a collaborator — that circulated through every police station in northern France. I disguised myself: grew a mustache, changed my posture, learned to walk differently. I kept a spare set of identity papers in a compartment under the seat of my bicycle. In March 1944, I was stopped at a checkpoint. They didn't recognize me. I had a note from a local mayor — forged — that said I was a tuberculosis carrier. They let me go immediately. I bicycled home and vomited for ten minutes. I was terrified. I kept doing it anyway.

For two winters, my unit of 340 partisans lived in the Bryansk forests — the largest forest in Europe. We had no formal supply line. We ate what we could hunt, forage, and steal. We cut German railway lines an average of twice a week. The Germans called it 'the Bandenland' — bandit country — and sent 30,000 troops specifically to pacify us. They never did. What the history books don't tell you: we had families with us. Forty-two children lived in those forests. We had a school — two hours a day, under the trees. We had a newspaper. A theater troupe performed for us. We even had a small printing press that produced leaflets we dropped on German soldiers. The leaflets were effective — about 200 German soldiers deserted directly to us after reading them. The hardest moment: January 1943, when the Gestapo captured my sister's family in Bryansk and sent me her ears in a package. I kept fighting. What else could I do?