The City of Light Shines

This is the last couple of entries in the diary:

June 1 – Bud & I left about 11:00. Went to Paris. Rode with Sergeant Ed Acruggs. Got back to camp at 6:00 A.M.

June 2^nd – Got paid. I’d off at this lunch about a pass

(That’s where it ends – so many questions.)

My father lived at Camp Lucky Strike until June 14, 1945. He and his fellow soldiers hitchhiked to Paris twice, which is about 190 kilometers (or 121 miles) from the camp near Saint Valery en Caux. I always thought this photograph of my father and his friends (l. to r. 2nd Lt. Ralph E. Warren; my father; Capt. Meech Taksequah; 2nd Lt. William E. Thacker; and 2nd Lt. Kellar M. Anderson), taken somewhere in the Latin Quarter spoke to the excitement and energy that must have pervaded the city. Paris had been liberated on August 25, 1944, after being ruled for more than four years by Nazi Germany. Even though the liberation of Paris had been over nine months prior to my father’s visits, it was probably a time of high emotion, chaos and recovery from the war.

The liberation began when the  French Resistance staged an uprising against the German garrison upon the approach of the U.S. Third Army, led by General George Patton. On the night of August 24, Gen. Philippe Leclerc's Second French Armored Division fought its way into Paris and seized the Hôtel de Ville shortly before midnight. The next morning, the bulk of the Second Armored Division and Fourth U.S. Infantry Division entered the city. Dietrich von Choltitz, German commander and the military governor of Paris, surrendered to the French at the Hôtel Meurice, the newly established French headquarters, while General Charles de Gaulle arrived to assume control of the city as head of the Provisional Government of the French Republic.

My mother’s first letter from my father after the war in Europe was over was mailed from Paris. I wish I had that letter today. My father never said much about what they did in Paris, but he left a few photos and postcards, some cheese wrappers, some francs, and night club tickets for me to piece together his adventures there. He did say rode the Metro to get around the city. He left a Red Cross Metro map with a map of the city. I imagine that it was well used.

When I went to Paris in 1968 as a recent college graduate, I did not realize that my father had been there after the war. I remember not having much spending money and thinking the people weren’t very friendly. I had asked my father what he wanted me to bring him from Europe, and he said a good bottle of cognac. I went to a store in Paris and managed in broken French to purchase a bottle of Courvoisier. Little did I know that it was the cognac of Napoleon. When my father passed away in 2005, I found the glass bottle in a cupboard mostly empty. It now resides in my yard on the bottle tree.

I’ve been back to Paris twice since 1968, and it continues to be a living history book and an exciting work of art. I could visit and explore its streets again and again. I like to imagine how much fun my father had back in 1945. This last trip I traveled from Paris to Omaha Beach. It provided me with an insightful appreciation of D-Day, June 6, 1944, which played a critical part in winning the war in Europe and a small role in freeing my father from the German prison camp. Here is a cemetery on ground that the French people gave in perpetuity to the Americans to bury the dead. On this trip, I sensed that the people of France are eternally grateful to the Allies; they certainly seemed a lot friendlier.