I still remember the name after over 60 years. Every week my mother would drive me to Le Havre, about an hour away so I could follow my passion, horses. The arena was in a big Quonset hut that had actually housed aircraft during the war, which was not so long before. My teacher was Odette. I’m not sure I remember her background, or even if i knew it. She was the instructor but she did not own the stable. There was a big covered arena inside the Quonset hut with sliding doors at one end. Attached to the hut was the stable with the school horses, as well as privately boarded horses.
Odette was unlike any other teacher i had ever had. Although we were learning to jump, she drilled us unmercifully on the basics. We would have to post without stirrups. Sometimes she would make us ride bareback; often she just took the stirrups off the saddles. She would take the reins and tie them up around the horse’s ears so we had to direct them with weight and legs, then she would have us do circles in the inside of the ring. She would have us lie down on the horse, leaning back on the rump. We would have to do circles and serpentines with our arms crossed and no stirrups. We even had to ride backwards and use our weight. When we were learning balance to start jumping, we didn't have stirrups on the saddle for weeks at a time. She took the stirrups off the saddles and put paper francs between our knees and the saddle. She would stand in the center of the ring with a big long whip and and whenever she saw a franc flutter to the ground, she would crack that whip. The horse would jump and many a time the rider ended up on the ground. I had such bad blisters on the insides of my knees from gripping the saddle that I had to have antibiotic treatment for months and I had scars for years.
Sometimes if my mother was late picking me up I would help Odette clean the equipment. Once she took me upstairs to her apartment and talked to me a little about the war and about the planes bombing the area. I had noticed when whenever a plane flew over, she tensed up. She told me both her parents had been killed in bombing raids. I thought she had a perfect life, living above the stable, with her own horse.
I don't really remember any other people in the classes. They weren't always the same; we would advance depending on our skills. I do remember we always had to wear our 'bombe', which was a steel helmet covered with velvet. I fell a lot and got bumped and bruised but never really hurt. But one of the girls came to class without her bombe one day. Odette didn’t want her to ride, but her mother insisted. She said that had driven too far for her not to. The inside of the Quonset had wooden walls up to about 8 feet to make a straight vertical wall. Odette had us trotting around the arena and posting without stirrups. Suddenly, a bird flew out in front of this girl's horse and spooked him. He jumped and she fell. Apparently she was cheating and had her outside foot still in the stirrup, which kept her off balance. When the horse jumped she fell to the right, against the wall, and her foot got caught in the stirrup. Her banging against the wood scared the horse even more, and when he finally stopped she was unconscious. Actually, I thought she was dead. They took her away in an ambulance and later we found out she was in a coma. I don't know if she ever recovered.
I came home from school one Friday in 1959 and my parents told me we were leaving, going back to the United States, leaving on Sunday, in 2 days and my whole life was shattered.