Saving the Light at Chartres

by Victor A. Pollak

  But that wasn’t enough. The towers, the roofs, and the inside still had to be cleared before he could call off corps artillery.

  He signaled to Stark and Cullen to follow closely behind him.

  “I’m going up into the top of that spire,” he said to Stark and then signaled for him and Dugan to stay put outside and for Cullen to accompany him inside. He yelled to Stark, “I’ll ring the bell and put out a flag. If I don’t ring the bell after a while, you attack.” He headed inside the cathedral and ordered Cullen to stay at the door behind him.

  Rifle in hand, finger quivering on the trigger, he inched inside the north portal’s rampart and up the marble steps of its porch and at first gently pushed his shoulder against the heavy door. He worried whether the creak of its rusty hinge would alert any enemy sentry inside, but he opened the door a crack, listening. Prayerlike mumbling seeped from inside. Old, damp, cool air brushed his face. He smelled incense that triggered a memory of a Wyoming wedding in which he’d stood as best man for a Leavenworth classmate and had felt awe in the strength of that classmate’s Catholic spirituality.

  He entered the dark transept and was absorbed by the wall of quiet. It was unlike anything he could remember, a different world—strangely intense, yet serene. He inched forward from the relative safety of the north portal door, listening and peering into the dim light, and he sensed no activity inside, except the continuing sounds of prayerlike murmuring and reverberations from shots fired outside. The terror he’d just felt, with heart rate skyrocketing and vision closing in and hands white and body humming, was now slightly subsiding. He’d been unable to think, but now thoughts seemed to be coming to him in a semblance of order. He had been an animal, doing what he’d been trained to do, but now he was returning to normal terror and being a human, starting to think again.

  He slinked through the transept into the cavernous nave and through an aisle formed by chairs positioned for Masses; then he turned toward the west end. He crossed over the floor’s mysterious inlaid circular labyrinth—fourteen yards in diameter—that pilgrims had explored for scores of generations. The smooth inlaid stone brought to his mind an image of parishioners and pilgrims passing through centuries into the cathedral. Through the stillness, at the back of the nave, he saw rows of red votive candle flames. They were like a chorus of glowing, floating, giant almonds, spirits gently dancing in rhythm, suspended in serene quiet, each flame in the process of consuming itself as a symbol of self-sacrifice.

  To the left, at the southwest corner, he spotted a short set of stone stairs that headed down. Before descending, he scanned as much of the first floor as he could in the dimness but saw nothing moving. So he began his descent down the steps, aiming to search the basement to be sure no enemy lurked down there before facing the dangers of the rest of the building and its towers. He felt the steps, worn smooth by centuries of shoes of worshipers and priests. At the foot of the stairs, a locked iron gate blocked him at the entrance to a barrel-vaulted passage that led into the crypt. He listened for any noise or rays of light in the passageway. Hearing none, and seeing no footprints in the dust in front of the gate, he reversed course to search the rest of the nave, rather than waiting to track down keys to open the door.

  He climbed the stairs and worked through the right-side ambulatory, curving around the south side of the alter in a ring around the east crown of the sanctuary, past the three apsidal chapels carved into the east walls, and past the locked door to the attached Chapel of Saint Piatus of Tournai. He continued around the altar and back into the transept at its north end and wondered whether any enemy stragglers retreating from the American attack had come inside the church in search of a fight or for rest or refuge. His spine chilled from the thought that every corner, every dark niche, might be hiding an enemy with gun ready, but he found none and felt relief.

  He looked around for the stairs to the south tower and again heard mumbling near the sacristy just east of the north entrance by which he had entered. He made out two figures in shadows standing next to the wall of the sacristy leading into the choir toward the altar. They were two older men in clerical collars and ruffled dark robes—one about seventy, the other middle aged. Each held rosary beads and was waving a white handkerchief, whispering French. Griff neared them to make eye contact. Their patent terror—as if afraid he’d shoot—unnerved him, but he knew they could see his American uniform. He approached them, pointing his gun to the floor, and asked them in English whether Germans were inside. They shrugged. He couldn’t tell whether they’d understood his words.

  The sound of footsteps drew their eyes toward the west portal. An elderly man approached who wore an Adrian helmet and a World War I horizon-blue military uniform. Griff could tell from the uniform’s fresh creases that the old man was a civilian veteran, today dressed for liberation. He’d come to tell the priests of the Americans’ second sweep into the city; nothing to fear, he gestured, addressing them by name and then greeting Griff in English. Griff asked him, “Germans?” pointing up and then down. The old man shook his head, pointing down, muttering, “Locked rooms, only crates.” He pointed his index finger toward the ceiling and whispered, “Occupying authorities took all keys; ordered all to keep out of both towers,” but he turned his head and nodded toward the tower stairs entryway. He motioned up the stairs with a nod of his head, inviting Griff to look also.

  The two priests and the old man watched Griff walk to the closed stairway door of the south tower. Griff raised his rifle in case a sentry was poised inside, able to fire through the door. Griff heard nothing and reached for the handle on the old wooden door and found it also locked. The old man saw too that it was locked and urged the priests to help by summoning the custodian to retrieve extra keys for the tower stairs. One of the men left to do so. Soon they heard someone approaching, and the old man quickly pointed over Griff’s shoulder toward a fourth man, in work clothes, approaching and carrying bucket and keys. The man’s jaw and clenched teeth betrayed his panic.

  The old man explained in English that the custodian was terrified of the German occupiers’ reprisals for violation of their order to stay out of the towers, but the priests prevailed on him to unlock the door of each of the two towers. Griff whispered that he would first search this tower and then the north tower.

  After the custodian unlocked the doors, all waited quietly for any response to the sound of the locks clanking. There was none, and Griff felt another mix of partial relief and increased pressure in his throat from the prospect of the danger that might be lurking above in the spiral stairway. He turned the handle and pressed slowly on the unlocked door and peered inside and up into the dark, narrow, circular stairway, each step only wide enough to accommodate a single person. He headed up the worn, narrow stone steps. The tension felt like hot wind on his face.

  For Griffith’s six-foot-three-inch frame, with tall shoulders and steel helmet, this was a tight fit, especially with rifle pointed ahead. He aimed his gun upward, ready for any descending foe.

  As he entered, a pair of rifle shots ripped from a distant street, the noise entering through a window. This sound flashed his thoughts back up into the bell tower, his rifle and pistol still pointed upward toward whatever imagined German gun pointing downward might be quietly descending to defend. Griff hoped any enemy soldier holding such a gun would be equally fearful of Griff heading upward, preceded by his M1, braced to shoot.

  Griff figured that the stairwell would require him to make several dozen spiral rotations from bottom to top. When he reached a point about one-third of the way up, he peered out every dozen or so steps through the tower’s series of small arched windows, each a foot thick, which brought in moist air from the intermittent rain. In sequence, they provided an unobstructed view along the west and north sides of the cathedral. From there, he could spot any Germans positioned at windows or on the roofs, along the flying buttresses, and along the attic, including anyone looking out its many small gabled windows.

  Ha
lfway up the stairs, he looked out across the copper roof, more than an acre on a metal frame in the shape of an inverted ship’s hull. He searched for enemy soldiers who might be hiding in the attic and who could fire through arch-gabled windows that pierced the roof at fifty-foot intervals. His breathing and heart rate increased from the strain of the climb and the tension of his search. He peered through the humidity, sweat dripping from his forehead with even more concentration. With each step, he felt the growing danger of confronting any descending German, so with each step he tuned his ears and senses ahead and riveted his eyes upward, side to side along the stairway walls, searching for the slightest sound or visual cue, as would cowboy gunmen facing off against each other, ready to draw in their shoot-out in the dusty street of a Western American cattle town.

  At the top step, Griff slowly creaked open an unlocked, weathered wooden door and stepped out onto the narrow outside gallery, edging forward in successive steps just a few inches each time to maximize his view and hearing. He worked his way around the gallery, corner by corner. He came across discarded wrappers from German food rations, a German chocolate wrapper that read “Shoka-cola,” cigarette butts, and expended rifle casings, but no German equipment. He also found American chewing-gum wrappers and a GI-issue can opener.

  So it appeared that snipers from both sides could have been up in this south tower from time to time. A swell of partial relief came over him that so far he had escaped harm. He studied those portions of the uppermost part of the tower visible to him, and still he saw no sign of anyone higher up in the tower and no sign of any stairway heading farther up to the spire, so he felt no need to explore the tower further. He looked over to the north tower and carefully scanned every window and every visible niche that might hold an enemy soldier or sign of any nearby.

  He stood on the balustrade of the south tower and felt a streak of sunshine breaking through thinning clouds, a sign of the fog lifting. To his left, looking to the west, he again saw the leopard-sized stone gargoyle he’d spotted from below during his circuit, now in sunlight, its mouth still open, eyes peering down, still looking out, attentive, guarding, vigilant, as it always had been since the Middle Ages.

  But he couldn’t let himself feel total relief unless he could clear the north tower. So he descended the stairs, two at a time.

  He met the custodian and old man at the bottom and in a whisper asked where he could enter the steps of the north tower. The custodian showed the way and quietly unlocked the north tower stairway door and opened it, and Griff scanned inside up into the dark, narrow, circular stairway, which was about the same width and had been built with roughly the same pitch as that of the south tower. Halfway up this second stairwell, he again looked out the small windows across the copper roof. Again he searched for enemy soldiers who might be hiding in the attic or its windows. Another quarter of the way up, at the fourth level of the tower, he reached the bell ringer’s room, with its vault capped by a nine-foot-wide keystone. Two of the cathedral’s seven huge bells in the first belfry were visible from the stairway. Still he discovered no sight or sound of Germans inside or above or across on the roof.

  Finally he reached the top step. He paused to listen and nudged his way through the partially open door out to the narrow gallery, and he again looked around while navigating through the gallery, section by section. Discarded food cans, empty German Panzerschokolade candy and Stuka-Tabletten stimulants wrappers, crumpled Dresden-made Sulima Turkish cigarette wrappers littered the floor along with ashes, butts, and spent rifle casings.

  Griff shivered and patted his chest and legs with his palms to confirm that he was still in one piece. He raised his binoculars and scoured along the west facade, searching to be sure no Germans had reappeared in any window or roof or platform, or had infiltrated back into the south tower from any side rooms he might have missed when climbing up and down. He scanned the skyline and across the city along his south and west flanks for any sign of enemy action that might be retarding the American advance, but he saw none.

  He felt a surge of elation on first experiencing the dominating overview the towers afforded. They revealed most streets, buildings, and vehicle movements through the city. He was struck with how effective the tower would have been for spotting artillery. His view of American units was unobstructed, and he could make out even individual soldiers working their way through the city. It had been logical for American field commanders to believe the towers were being used by the Germans to aim artillery, but so far he’d proven that the Germans were not—at least not now, since it appeared that the backbone of German resistance was being broken.

  Griff inhaled a lung-full of air and felt sunlight breaking through the clouds, and he pulled the American flag out from the back of his shirt and waved it over the balcony to confirm to everyone below that he’d reached the top unharmed. He’d been correct all right. No Germans had been in either spire. He called down the stairwell inside to Cullen or the old man to get one of the priests to ring the bell multiple times to confirm it.

  He felt a wave of exhilaration. He’d been right. His risk had paid off. Somehow it all felt transfiguring, as though his world were reshaping.

  He could see German soldiers below, scurrying on the east side of the river, in their block-by-block retreat. He concluded that they’d blown up some but not all bridges crossing the river, mainly the historic ones.

  He paused before descending. Maybe he’d learned something about himself. He’d enjoyed this. When he and the other division heads back at the CP briefing had been arguing about spotters in the towers, he might have spoken up. He pondered, why not?

  In a sense, he’d gone on to defy his own orders. Maybe this was what it felt like to pursue some sort of personal glory at the expense of loyalty to corps procedure.

  The church bell clanged in the belfry below. The peal reverberated through Griff’s aching legs. The American and French fighters below saw the flag and heard the bell and rejoiced in relief. The flag billowed in front of Griffith’s face. His realization that the cathedral was in fact still clear of Germans swelled his confidence. He basked for a moment, looking out from the narrow tower balcony, feeling the moist wind in his face, but at the same time hearing fitful rifle and machine-gun shots in distant streets below from confrontations surrounding the cathedral. They were probably just Resistance fighters outstripping their orders, or possibly trigger-happy American patrols trading shots with German snipers and stragglers. He heard the strike of artillery shells to the south and saw a few isolated American light tanks come into view as they squeezed through narrow curving streets and scraped around corners, but he couldn’t see any armored column on the main streets.

  He squinted through his binoculars to find the bridgehead area east of the city—somewhere east of Luisant across the Eure River in the area between Le Coudray on the west and Bonville on the east—where he had ordered the Seventh Armored Division and its Thirty-Eighth Armored Infantry Battalion to secure the bridgehead toward the east and then to patrol vigorously to the east, north, and west while awaiting further orders. He saw the main concentration of the Seventh Armored Division portion of his 12,500-man corps force. He spotted an armored column patrolling to the west and another to the east but none pushing north. He did, however, see a separate column, pointing north but standing still.

  Damn. They hadn’t even begun their probe northward. They’re just standing there. What are they doing, just sitting there, dithering?

  But now there wasn’t time to ponder that. His thoughts returned to the urgent need to report to HQ at CP 7 that the cathedral was not occupied by any Germans and was not now being used to spot German artillery. He knew corps HQ had to transmit orders to the corps’ own artillery to reiterate the standing command to refrain from firing at the cathedral and rescind any contrary order to attack it, and he knew that the corps had to get word up to Third Army HQ that Chartres had been taken. Once that was done, he also needed to find out what bottleneck was st
alling the Seventh from pushing north as he’d ordered.

  A rush of exhilaration propelled him through the door into the stairwell, and he cascaded down the spiral steps, taking them two or three at a time, his hand circling down the interior, smooth-worn stone handrail, speeding toward the base like a North Texas oil-well drill bit on the verge of a big, black, wet strike. He felt himself smiling in jubilation. He pressed through the door at the bottom step, past the priests and through the nave, across the Labyrinth, back to the transept, and through the north door, with another rush of success, and waved for Cullen to follow, emerging into the sunlight. He called for Dugan to come forward and regrouped with him, Stark, and Cullen to confirm to them that no Germans were in the cathedral and signaled to all to continue holding fire and yelling to the troops to cease fire and call off any guns aimed at the cathedral.

  He told Stark to get on the radio ASAP to order corps artillery to hold off any attack at or near the cathedral while he scratched out a field message to HQ. And he ordered Cullen to get word to the tanks and field artillery to call off any attacks on the cathedral and rescind all prior orders to the contrary. He stopped to prepare a handwritten field message on a six-inch-by-nine-inch form, his twenty-third of the campaign, marked URGENT, addressed to G-3 Third Army, which read, “Chartres captured by . . . Workshop [codename for the Seventh Armored Division] 0130. Still some fighting. Dynamite closed south Chartres. Corps Trps concentrating via Coursville. G.P. 2 mi N Coursville.” He signed it “Griffith, C G XX Corp” and marked it “12:45, 16 Aug.,” then gave it to Stark to get it to Third Army HQ, ASAP.

  This would be the last thing that Griffith would ever write.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  In Command at Lèves: Chartres and Lèves, August 16, 1944

  WITH THE CATHEDRAL CLEARED, GRIFF ORDERED THE TWENTY-THIRD Armored Infantry Battalion troops to continue securing the area and to push on with their mission inside the city of Chartres. To the north, time was fast approaching for the intersection a mile beyond the outlying town of Lèves, three miles north of Chartres, to have been secured. If Third Army units could hold that intersection and could reach the Seine ahead of the retreating Germans, the Allies could likely bottle up and destroy or capture all fleeing units of the German Army south of that river. Griff now had to get to the Seventh Armored Division G-3 to see whether—as he had expected—elements of that division had as of yet failed to carry out their orders.