 At the age of 11, he became a farm worker for a colonist in Staouéli, a small resort near Algiers (the very beach were the French army landed in 1830).In 1937, he landed at Longwy as part of the Service du travail obligatoire and found work in a steel mill operation before being mobilized during the "Phoney War" in Issoudun.In 1940, he was discharged and went to Paris where he was hired as an assistant electrician in the Paris Métro.