| HOME Go to  Homepage
GENERAL |
| use.
The type of "program" I had in mind was a fake BBC transmission, to which everybody would listen with rapture. Since an Allied invasion was the most eagerly anticipated event, that was to be the subject of our home-made broadcast. Daniel was assigned to man the microphone and imitate the BBC announcer. I rigged the machine by putting the wire of the headphones through the wall behind the radio into the adjacent lecture hall. There was no need to drill a hole, as a large gap, never plugged, had been left by the installation of the central heating system. Everything was set and our watches were synchronized. At 20:00 hours to the second I switched the radio from music to what everyone thought would be the nightly BBC broadcast. Only instead of switching to the shortwave, I turned the knob one notch farther to the phonograph mode. On the other side of the wall Daniel knocked four times on the headset, imitating the signal of the clandestine radio, namely the first bar of Beethoven's Fifth. He then came on strongly with a special bulletin. By then everybody in the room on my side of the wall, was listening intently. And then, it came loud and clear over the radio. There was indeed a special communique and it announced that Allied troops had landed this afternoon on the Mediterranean coast, in Palavas-les-Flots near Montpellier. There was, the radio said, a heavy artillery barrage, and the Germans were not resisting the advance of the American, British, and French troops toward Montpellier. Nobody noticed that there had not been a single shot fired in the vicinity. Indeed, from where we were sitting one could see perfectly well that nothing at all was going on at Palavas-Les-Flots. Yet, as Daniel was still speaking, pandemonium broke loose. One student rushed off and returned with a bottle of good champagne, a great rarity during the war. He was only looking for the glasses to serve it. I panicked. The joke had misfired. Switching to the real BBC, which was giving the usual news of the day, I tried to make them aware of the fact that the special bulletin had not been confirmed, that there still was some uncertainty about the landing. To no avail. I raced around the corner into the lecture room where Daniel was sitting. The punch line of the joke, which I had arranged to be given in five minutes, had to be advanced. I gave Daniel sixty seconds. Racing back to the radio, I switched it back to the phonograph position, just in time to hear Daniel again: He was the personal reporter accompanying the troops on their invasion run, broadcasting direct from Montpellier, where the Anglo-American troops had just reached the Protestant seminary and were being greeted by the students with wild enthusiasm. Sabi himself had come to the school and had ruled that the female students could come over for a special dance in honor of the liberating soldiers. The Dean had brought out the champagne from behind his lectern and the celebration was going to reach its climax at two in the morning, with a cabaret performance by all the professors in the great lecture hall. By then, everybody had
understood. There was no invasion and there was no Allied landing
in Montpellier. Faces fell. René Chave stormed out of
the room |
