PATRIOT OF THE UNDERGROUND

A story of the French Resistance told with what the French would call bons sens populaire as well as a sturdy sense of life as it went on, at the home front. Paul La Coque is 13 when his father is arrested by the Gestapo; he lives in a small coal mining village where even more resentment is fuelled by the shipments of their coal to the Vaterland. Paul and his friends not only engage in the attempts to sabotage the coal trains; they also become part of an older underground as economic circumstances drive them to work in the mines. The book, which, as a narrative, is not much more than the various ""lamentable incidents"" the German Commandant condemns, also includes the youngsters' activities in the secret cave of a tunnel they discover which will have more permanent archaeological value at the war's end.... All of this is handled with sobriety which makes very few concessions to la gloire or wishful dreams of identification.