Saving the Light at Chartres

by Victor A. Pollak

  “Pseudonym Sinclair”: In 1939, age sixteen, she had met Maurice Clavel, who directed the Resistance network in Eure-et-Loir. She participated in the liberation of Nogent-le-Rotrou and of Chartres in 1944. Once the war ended, she was one of the notables who welcomed General de Gaulle on the square in front of the Chartres Cathedral. She and Clavel married after the war. She was decorated with the Croix de Guerre by General de Gaulle and with the Bronze Star by General Patton.

  “A load of bazooka ammunition”: Eastman and the US Army, “The Campaigns of Normandy,” 79, 83.

  “Three additional operations”: In one, they liberated Vernon, about one hundred miles north of the CP. Town residents, with only a few weapons, took in over 130 pilots parachuted in the area and gathered and transmitted information. On August 18, they tried to blow up the bridge with about fifteen pounds of plastic explosives. It wasn’t enough to make the damaged bridge fall, but it did trigger street fights between Resistance fighters and German soldiers, and on August 19, forty French fighters managed to take three German tanks and two trucks. The German troops retreated to Vernonnet to occupy the right bank of the river. Vernon’s own fighters would hold the town alone for a week, until British soldiers arrived.

  In another operation, they carried out a series of disruptions in the Oise region, north of Paris surrounding Bouvais, coordinated by British SOE and American OSS teams. The FFI confront German units in combat, but, as concluded in a later military report, “like termites they caused the whole German edifice to crumble.” Steven J. Zaloga, Liberation of Paris 1944: Patton’s Race for the Seine, Campaign, 194 (Oxford: Osprey, 2008), 29. They impeded German combat transit and by harassment helped to demoralize and speed the German evacuation. For Patton’s Third Army, the FFI provided reconnaissance and intelligence. The FFI were deeply appreciated by US units for their service. Ibid., 30.

  In yet another operation, they worked with a Jedburgh team, named “Alec,” that had parachuted into Loir-et-Cher on August 10 and operated in the Fréteval forest near Vierzon, a city about a hundred miles south, that served as a railway and road communication hub in the Cher department of the central Loire Valley, about two hours from Paris. The Resistance team protected more than 130 Allied airmen who had evaded capture and worked their way to a camp in the forest, from which the American Third Army liberated them. Jean de Blommaert was parachuted into France and made his way to Paris to start arrangements for the camp. A British officer, Airey Neave of MI9 (the British Military Intelligence Section 9), was in overall control of the operation. The first evaders were brought from Paris on May 20, 1944.

  In the clandestine Operation Jedburgh, around three hundred British SOE, US OSS, Free French Forces, and Dutch and Belgian personnel dropped by parachute into occupied France and elsewhere for sabotage and guerrilla warfare and to lead the Resistance forces against the Germans. Eisenhower ensured that the French would lead the Jedburgh teams in France. The parachuting teams consisted of three men: a commander, an executive officer, and a noncommissioned radio operator, one of whom was British or American and the other French, with a radio operator from anywhere. They carried weapons, sabotage equipment, and a Type B Mark II radio, more commonly referred to as the B2 or “Jed Set.” They wore military uniforms and were equipped with medical supplies, food such as K and C ration packs, sleeping bags, field glasses, and maps on silk like their radio ciphers.

  “Griffith, as senior operations officer”: The G-3 covered infantry, armor, artillery, cavalry, antiaircraft units, and the G-3 Air Corps (air reconnaissance and tactical fighter-bomber air support). Twentieth Corps, being a “corps” of two or more divisions, then consisted of the Seventh Armored Division, the Fifth Infantry Divisions, and Corps Artillery Units, each varying from ten thousand to eighteen thousand troops. From time to time during operations, Twentieth Corps expanded with newly assigned divisions and shrank due to reassignments of divisions. Over the course of the war, it included as many as twenty-one separate divisions. Eastman and the US Army, “The Campaigns of Normandy,” 89.

  “Construe the tactical plan into step-by-step objectives”: Eastman and the US Army, “The Campaigns of Normandy,” 90.

  “Griffith . . . attaching himself . . . to Allison’s Twenty-Third”: This according to a study later conducted by Roger Joly, himself a Resistance fighter, who based his research on archives and interviews with Resistance-fighter witnesses.

  “All members of . . . Corps staff followed this practice”: Eastman and the US Army, “The Campaigns of Normandy,” 83.

  “Third Battle of Ypres”: Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, “The Great Battles of Attrition,” part 1, lecture 9, in World War I: The Great War, The Great Courses, Guidebook, outline part V.B 3–6 (Chantilly, VA: Teaching Company, 2006), 3–6.

  “Griffith and Dugan drove through”: An area that years later would be designated the Regional Natural Park of the Perche (Parc naturel régional du Perche).

  “American first lieutenant, James O. Gomer”: Frédéric Hallouin, “Histoire passion,” Courville sur Eure, no. 39 (April 2012): 26–27, http://www.courville-sur-eure.fr/uploadji/Courville%20info-N39.pdf, English translation available online at http://www.7tharmddiv.org/courville-gomer.htm. Gomer’s platoon was in the Twenty-Third Armored Infantry Battalion, to which Griff had attached himself to observe closely the upcoming battle at Chartres.

  “Three explosions”: Early the following morning, the first American soldiers to arrive had examined the destruction of the bridge of the Rue d’Illiers. A few Courville citizens had welcomed them from across the river. With the help of an English-speaking refugee, they had shown the soldiers that one of the sidewalks of the bridge remained intact, permitting them to cross on foot. The soldiers had radioed engineers who had arrived and had gone to work immediately with a bulldozer to remove felled trees and one or two truckloads of soil to quickly arrange passage for vehicles. The soldiers had heard a suspicious noise at a destroyed house opposite the entrance to a school near the center of town. They had immediately begun shooting, but no Germans had been found. The city center had then filled with American troops and their equipment. The troops had distributed cigarettes, candy, chocolate, and chewing gum—which the French had not seen over the four years of occupation—together with instant coffee, a convenience previously unknown to the French. Soon the cafes had become full, with toasts and jubilation celebrating arrival of the Americans.

  “A respected and capable strategist”: Schulz, The Ghost, 165.

  NOTES TO CHAPTER 20

  “Three thousand German troops”: William M. Roseboro Jr., After Action Report from Headquarters Combat Command “B,” Seventh Armored Division, Battle Report, September 3, 1944, New York: APO 257, 2, available for download at https://509thgeronimo.org/campaigns/documents/CbtCmdBAug44toJun45.doc.

  “Two hundred to three hundred men per twenty-four-hour period”: Roseboro, After Action Report, 2.

  “Cathedral’s western facade”: The cathedral is oriented from west to east, as are all Gothic cathedrals, with the altar at the east end and the transom intersecting in a north-south direction, such that if viewed from the air, it would appear as a cross.

  “Like a giant owl with wings high”: Today we have only a single record to establish that Griffith visited the cathedral that first time on August 15, a matter that draws its significance from events that would follow the next day. A letter from Mel Stark to Colonel Griffith’s younger brother Philip, written decades later, confirms that Stark and Colonel Griffith did enter and investigate the cathedral a first time on August 15 as the battle for Chartres was unfolding. Stark’s letter was in response to Philip’s own investigation into the life of his brother; his interest was piqued by an apparently contradictory account of events at the cathedral that appeared in Reader’s Digest in 1965: Gordon Gaskill, “The Day We Saved Chartres Cathedral,” Reader’s Digest (August 1965): 102–107.

  “Germans beat up the mayor”: Albert Love, The Fifth Division in the ETO: Iceland, Irela
nd, England, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Czechoslovakia, Austria (Atlanta: Fifth Division Historical Section, 1945), 76.

  “Daybreak . . . after a long night”: Through a remarkable turn of events, Father Douin’s diary would find its way into the hands of Colonel Griffith’s daughter, Alice Griffith Irving.

  “Adept at translating the flow of information”: Schulz, The Ghost, 151–55.

  “The corps’ standing order remained in place”: Leslie Allison, After Action Report, Month of August 1944: Seventh Armored Division, Twenty-Third Armored Infantry Battalion: Battle at Chartres, August 15–18, 1944, APO #257, C/o Postmaster US Army 1944 (text available for download from https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:avj1PjJp7p0J:https://www.7tharmddiv.org/docrep/N-23-AAR.doc+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari); United States Army, “31st Tank Bn Records of Action of Night of 15–16 August 1944: Relating to the Tank Buried at Chartres,” US Army After Action Report, compiled by Wesley Johnston at U. S. 7th Armored Division Association (website), 2008 (text available online at https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:OHZqbAHCVRwJ:https://www.7tharmddiv.org/docrep/images/Places-Maps-Photos/France/Chartres%2520Area/31%2520Tank%2520Records%252015-16%2520August%25201944.doc+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari); interview with General Thomas Griffin (US Army Ret.), 2018.

  “No reason to fire on the cathedral”: Letter from Melville I. Stark to Philip Griffith, Colonel Griffith’s brother, 1970, 1.

  “Appointed Griffith . . . first-line director of . . . operations”: Éric Santin, Derniers combats: 1944, Eure-et-Loir; ordres et comptes rendu de batailles, 2nd edited ed. (Paris: Santin, 2009), 3–5.

  “God be with you”: Schulz, The Ghost, 160.

  “Griffith . . . hopped into his jeep”: Schulz, The Ghost, 160.

  “Sources are in conflict”: One source, Eugene Schulz, would later write in his memoir that “the order to destroy the cathedral was given because it was suspected that the Germans were using the twin towers as observation posts.” Schulz, The Ghost, 160. But in a 2014 interview Schulz conceded that he had never seen any such order in writing or heard any confirmation that any such order was actually issued or who might have issued it. Thomas N. Griffin, a retired US Army general and nephew of Griffith, told me in a 2018 interview that he had personally researched whether any such order had been issued and found no evidence that one had been. Yet he had no doubt that in those particular circumstances some hot-headed officer might well have told his troops to fire on the cathedral out of fear that the Germans were using its towers.

  “Griffith’s job was foremost”: Schulz, The Ghost, 151–52.

  NOTES TO CHAPTER 21

  “Griff didn’t like what he saw”: Kenneth Foree, “They Nearly Stopped the War to Bury Texan,” Dallas Morning News, August 25, 1945. Foree, a veteran reporter, conducted a one-year investigation into Griffith’s actions at Chartres before publishing his article.

  “Wasn’t an art buff”: Foree, “They Nearly Stopped the War.”

  “Couldn’t tell whether they’d understood”: Schulz, The Ghost, 159–65, 316–23.

  “His panic”: Paul Douin, The Diary of Father Paul Douin (August 12 through August 23, 1944), transcr. Agnes Douin, trans. Marianne Pradoura, reporting events jointly experienced on August 16 by seventy-year-old Father Drouin and forty-year-old Father Maurice Cassegrain.

  NOTES TO CHAPTER 22

  “Restrained his pistol arm”: Gene Currivan, “Troops Spare Chartres Cathedral in Routing Out German Snipers: Use Only Small Arms to Prevent Damage to Famous Edifice—Patrols Have Field Day in Rounding Up Collaborators,” New York Times, August 16, 1944.

  “Ambulance drove them off”: Joseph Driscoll, “Chartres Cathedral Nazi Snipers’ Nest,” New York Tribune, August 16, 1944, 1, 3.

  “Lives of these men had been known”: Currivan, “Troops Spare Chartres Cathedral.”

  “Characters with swords and stern faces”: Currivan, “Troops Spare Chartres Cathedral.”

  “Griff . . . lost his temper”: Captain Carl K. Mattocks, infantry, Seventh Armored Division, the man who led the attack on Lèves, when it finally got under way, described the division as “green” in a letter to Philip Griffith, Colonel Griffith’s brother, dated January 1, 2001. Mattocks went on to say that he understood General Walker’s sending Griff to “provide impetus to a ‘green’ division,” noting, however, that the small armored divisions were manned with considerably less infantry than a full infantry division. Mattocks believed that more infantry personnel might have contributed to a different outcome for Griffith.

  This would be only one of many instances in which General Walker would not be happy with the pace of the Seventh Armored Division operations. Also, difficulties with Major General Silvester’s accomplishments as a commander would not end there. Silvester had been a US National Guard officer, not a West Pointer, and had been only temporarily made a major general. Less than six months after the incident at Chartres, in January 1945, Silvester would be reverted back to his permanent rank of colonel and relieved of his command of the Seventh Armored Division, as a result of that division having been badly mauled by the Germans near Venlo in November 1944.

  During the Battle of the Bulge, the Seventh Armored Division (then part of the Ninth Army) would come under the control of British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s Twenty-First Army Group. Montgomery would become displeased with Silvester’s performance as well and would engineer Silvester’s replacement, which would be carried out by General Omar Bradley, the Twelfth Army Group Commander. At the time of Silvester’s replacement, the Seventh would be holding an extended front and be on loan to the British Second Army. Silvester would be removed from his command shortly afterward at the time the division was to revert to control by the American Ninth Army. Other members of the division command would also be released in the shakeup. A 1946 inquiry requested by Silvester would vindicate General Bradley.

  “Griffith took charge himself”: Mel Stark, who worked as a young lieutenant colonel with Griffith for more than two years, said in a letter to Griffith’s brother Philip two decades later that when Griffith took leadership in Chartres, he was doing the battalion commander’s job and the division commander’s job, in getting them moving again, and that Griffith “had no use whatever with . . . incompetent people.” The Seventh Armored Division was under the command of a general who, Stark said, was “the poorest general I have ever known.” For that division, he said, the fight at Chartres was its first; “the cathedral fell into its sector of the City, and the soldiers were trigger-happy and poorly[] led, or both.” Stark continued, I can remember Griff’s weaknesses as well as his great strengths, because these made the whole man. That hair-trigger temper he frequently displayed came my way only once, and he was right. He was extremely patient with people who wanted to learn and who wanted to do—he had no use whatsoever with lazy people. And if he drove people, he drove himself more, and in setting this example I always considered he was leading, not driving. Never in my life have I known a more dedicated man; this [led] to his death, which I have always considered should never [have] occurred when and how it did. . . . The armored unit Griff was leading when killed had “frozen.” . . . The Division Commander was relieved and reduced, but that’s little compensation for some of the effects of his failures.

  Letter from Colonel Mel Stark, dated April 7, 1970, to Philip L. Griffith, brother of Colonel Griffith. Two additional sources referred to Lieutenant Colonel Samuel L. Irwin as one of the weakest of commanders. Interviews with Colonel Fredrick F. Irving, US Army (ret.), in January 2015, and with Lieutenant General Thomas Griffin, US Army (ret.) March 2018.

  “The column would need enough men and equipment”: This would not be the end of the matter for Lieutenant Colonel Samuel L. Irwin. He would in fact be reassigned by the corps five days later on August 21 to the Eighth Armored Group until transfer to Second Armored Division on November 20, 1944. On August 21, Lieutenant Colonel Edwin Keeler replaced Irwin
as battalion commander of the Thirty-Eighth, but Keeler would be wounded three weeks later by artillery near Point-du-Jour, France.

  “They likely checked both routes”: The Boulevard Jean Jaurès, east of the hill, followed alongside the east bank of the Eure River and intersected a road that ran east for two miles to the airfield. The Boulevard Charles Péguy, on the left, paralleled the railroad tracks and also met the Boulevard Jan Juarès, at the north end of the hill and then led into a junction called Place Drouaise, a busy village commercial and residential district. From there, the main two-lane paved road northward, the Rue du Bourgneuf, headed parallel to the Eure River for a distance of a mile and a half into the village of Lèves.

  “Griff grabbed Dugan’s carbine”: Letter from William L. Dugan to Philip Griffith, August 17, 1966.

  “I’m going with you”: Foree, “They Nearly Stopped the War.”

  “Griff may . . . have stood on a tow hitch,” Santin, Derniers combats, 3–5. Santin described it as an armored truck, but all other sources, including the Army DSC citation, called it a tank. Captain Carl K. Mattocks, who called it a light tank, was likely in the best position to know, since he led the attack on Lèves. One element of his unit cleared out the center of the village, while another deployed on the south edge of the village to attack to the east toward the airport. A later report of an investigation by the Army Headquarters in Washington, as of 1966, identified two other witnesses besides Dugan and Cullen. They were David W. Washburn of Bells, Texas, and Carbin O. Maynard, of Baxter, Tennessee, both now deceased.