Sarah Rose, D-Day Girls, Crown Publishing, NY.Excerpt Chap 8, Page 77: Tucked into the tight Little Ru de Caumartin was a small Parisian Café Aandrée Borrell knew from happier times and easier days. She sat at a small round table waiting for the noon hour, not far from her sister's apartment. It was the third year of what was to be a thousand-year occupation of Europe. The hard work of organized rebellion began with coffee.
The women of the secret army operated in the fog of war. With all planning at Baker Street and the education in Beaulieu, clandestine life was improvisational. Agents live the war on the ground, day by day, and her first assignment was to activate an Allied-backed Parisian network. Every other move would be decided later.
I the café, voice were at a soft number, broken occasionally by the footfall of a wooden-soled shoe against worn tile flooring. Mirrors, aged and cloudy, offered sight lines around the room. It was perfumed by coal smoke, stale cigarettes, and the bitter smell of counterfeit coffee made from ground acorns and chicory; it approximated the taste, if not the stimulation of caffeine. Like diktat and blitz, ersatz was new to French vocabulary, an ugly word adopted from the brutish invaders.