by Phil Keith
Bullard was too old to volunteer. He hadn’t sat in an airplane cockpit for over twenty years and the last time he did fighter planes had two wings instead of the modern monoplane design. He loosely kept track of where his old 170th Infantry regiment was mobilizing, but he knew they would not take him because of his age. He wasn’t exactly itching to go anyway, but he would if he had to.
In the meantime, he had a business and friends to concern him. Even with the blackouts, he kept the gym and the club open. Since L’Escadrille was one of the few clubs still operating Bullard encouraged every patron with any spare money to spend as much as they could. He was not shy about asking them to do so, and he was very open about using their resources to help his many musicians and friends to “get by.”
After the sale of his car, he no longer had the means to drive about the city to scrounge for foodstuffs for his kitchen. To make do, he constructed a wooden pushcart out of old crates and bicycle wheels. Every day, he and the cart would be off, right after lunch, to the main food market, Les Halles. During the months of the Phony War, Les Halles was still booming. Farmers, dairymen, livestock producers, bakers, and food producers of all types were still trucking their wares into the city from the countryside.
Bullard hung out until the last half hour or so of the market day; then, as the vendors dropped their prices so as to clear out their goods versus hauling them back home, he swooped in. He would buy up as much in meat scraps, soup bones, and vegetables as his meager purse could afford. He loaded up his cart and pushed it back up the hills to Montmartre. By dinnertime, Bullard’s Chinese cook would have a large stew boiling on the stove, and everyone would have at least one hearty meal for the day.
Later that night, the blackout curtains would be deployed, and Bullard would break open packs of cigarettes, placing a few on each table so everyone could have a smoke. The cheap wine flasks would be uncorked so those without funds could at least have one free drink. This cycle repeated itself, day after day, all through the bleak winter—and Phony War—of 1939-40.
The Germans, however, were not idle. After wrapping up business in Poland, Hitler began preparing for the invasion of France. There were some minor skirmishes at sea, and Russia attacked spirited little Finland. In April, Germany launched an offensive against Denmark and Norway. In England, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain struggled to keep the reins of government in his hands, but was forced to give them up to Winston Churchill in May 1940. Ironically, on the same day Churchill assumed power, the Phony War would end as Hitler, sending a coded signal to his forces, launched his invasion of France and Belgium.
As the German Panzers began smashing into the Ardennes, and tearing up the cobblestone roads of rural Belgium, it became clear to Eugene that continuing to try to operate his clubs was becoming more untenable every additional day. With great regret, he closed and boarded up both establishments. He had hopes of reopening after the war was over, whenever that might be, and only if the French were victorious, of course. He retained ownership of both locations but, sadly, he would never realize any profit from them again.
It was on to the next phase, but Eugene Bullard, hero of France, had no idea what that might be. He did not expect that being back on the front lines battling the enemy would be part of that scenario, but, as Gene had learned, “life was what happened to you when you made plans.”
* * *
1 Bricktop hosted a propaganda radio program for the French government in 1939, but when the war finally heated up, she left Paris and moved to Mexico City where she opened another “Chez Bricktop” in 1944. After WWII, she moved back to Rome and opened yet another club there, which she ran from 1949 to 1961. She then moved back to New York where she continued to occasionally perform cabaret gigs and even had bit parts (playing herself) in two Hollywood movies.
19
AT WAR ONCE MORE
After World War I ended, hundreds of thousands of doughboys had remained in France, most of them waiting their turns to travel back to the United States. Logistical quagmires and the need to keep a force of about two hundred thousand in Europe to police the former Central Powers presented General John Pershing and his American Expeditionary Force with multiple challenges, not the least of which was keeping the soldiers busy and sustaining morale.
One of the officers on Pershing’s staff, Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt Jr., thought he had an idea that might help. He and several other officers, with Pershing’s blessing, set about to organize an “American Legion” that would see to the recreational, educational, and repatriation needs of the soldiers who were left behind. From these beginnings, the modern American Legion was born. Post Number 1 was chartered in Paris in February 1919.
Eligibility for the American Legion was extended to all US servicemen who had soldiered overseas in the Great War and was soon extended, in the early 1920s, to all servicemen and servicewomen who had put on the uniform whether they had been sent overseas or not.1 Membership was also offered to any Americans who had served in the war under any other allied flag; thus, Eugene Bullard had proudly presented his French Army credentials in early 1919 to Post Number 1 and was immediately accepted as a member.
In Paris, the American Legion became a true fraternity and was dedicated to members helping other members. Twenty years later, Post Number 1 was still active, and became even more so in late 1939 when it became clear that most of Europe would be plunging into war again. Legionnaires were busy raising funds to help repatriate old soldiers back to America before they became trapped. The Paris post worked hand in hand with the US Embassy and its consular officers scattered across France to identify and assist those who wished to leave. For those who were staying, like Eugene Bullard, the American Legion tried to find places for their veterans to work, obtain shelter or otherwise avoid the coming conflict.
In May 1940, Bullard fell under the sponsorship of Dr. James V. Sparks,2 one of the most colorful characters of the interwar period in Paris. Sparks, originally from Indianapolis, graduated from Indiana Dental College (the Indiana University School of Dentistry today) in 1914 and, with war on the horizon, and a yen for military adventure, immediately joined the US Army Dental Corps. The young first lieutenant was shipped to France almost immediately after the American Expeditionary Force was mobilized.
One of his more intriguing days in France had occurred late in 1917 when the twenty-four-year-old oral surgeon was summoned to General Philippe Pétain’s headquarters in the Vosges Mountains. Pershing had recommended his staff dentist to Pétain, who was suffering from an ulcerated tooth. It turned out that Pétain had had the tooth pulled some weeks before, but the dentist had apparently left a sliver of the tooth behind, which became infected.
Pétain, in severe pain, took one look at Sparks and said, “You’re too young to be a surgeon.”
Sparks immediately replied, diplomatically, “And you, sir, are too young to be a Marshal of France.”
Pétain smiled, and Sparks removed the offending piece of tooth with a sterilized pocket knife and no anesthetic. Pétain, greatly relieved, offered his sincerest thanks.
In 1919, Sparks returned to the US to practice dental surgery with an uncle in Oklahoma City. His overseas itch had not been scratched completely, however, and he decided to take a vacation in Paris. While there, through the American Legion, he met another expatriate dentist, Dr. Perry Chance, from Akron, Ohio. The two men decided to open a practice in Paris, and Sparks simultaneously studied for and attained bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in dentistry from the University of Aix and the École Dentaire, respectively.
In mid-1924, an American officer on the residual AEF staff in Paris, Colonel Charles Sweeny, approached Sparks with an intriguing offer: a group of American pilots was being recruited to fly for France in Morocco, fighting the Berber tribes in the Rif Mountains. Would Sparks like to go as the attending dental officer? He immediately agreed, and while in Morocco not o
nly did he perform his dental duties but he learned to fly, first as an observer then as a machine gunner, and finally as a full-fledged pilot. After he started flying combat missions with the other pilots he was given the nickname the “Death Dealing Dentist.” Also while in Morocco, he met a young French captain who would become a lifelong friend: Charles de Gaulle.
Before leaving Morocco in 1926, Sparks would serve as the honorary captain of the guard of the sultan of Morocco and would be decorated with the Medaille Colonial. The sultan also gave him one thousand acres of land and sixteen wives. Sparks accepted title to the acreage, but wisely left the wives behind.
Back in Paris, he resumed his dental practice, married a beautiful Parisian, and, in 1931, was elected commander of American Legion Post Number 1. For all his work on behalf of France, he was made an officer in the Legion of Honor and in 1939 was elected that organization’s commander. Among Sparks’s patients over the years he spent in France were Marshal Pétain, General Pershing, the King of Greece, the King of Siam, the Aga Khan, and the Duchess of Kent. Through the Duchess, he met King Edward VIII, who became the Duke of Windsor after his abdication in December 1936.
At the Duke of Windsor’s suggestion, an international committee for peace was formed in the late 1930s to try to prevent another world war. Dr. Sparks was chosen as head of the American delegation, and he, with others, met with Hitler, Mussolini, King Emmanuel of Italy, and French Prime Minister Leon Blum. It was all for naught, of course.
When the Phony War morphed into the real thing in May 1940, Dr. Sparks left his work helping Americans escape France and accepted a commission as a colonel in the French Army with responsibility for organizing and equipping a modern ambulance fleet for the troops. One of the principal financial backers for Dr. Sparks’s ambulance corps was an American widow by the name of June Jewett James. She had been married to a very wealthy Englishman who had left her a considerable fortune and a small castle in Neuilly, a suburb to the west of Paris.
Mutual contacts in Post Number 1 brought Eugene Bullard and Sparks together. Bullard, his pockets totally empty after closing up his establishments, needed work and a place to live. He and his daughters were on the verge of having to vacate their apartment because they could no longer pay the rent. Mrs. James needed an all-around handyman, butler, chauffeur, masseur, and experienced waiter for formal dinner parties. Sparks made the introductions, and Bullard, one-time hero of France, was hired and invited to move into the James château along with his two daughters. Paris was still facing uncertainty, but the arrangement was a perfect temporary solution for all parties.3
Mrs. James planned an elegant champagne luncheon for all the dignitaries and officials involved in the creation of the new ambulance corps. Bullard would serve as maître d’ and for the occasion he donned his old pilot’s uniform and wore all of his medals. As luck would have it, one of the invited guests was his old “friend” Dr. Gros, who had been made the head of the American Ambulance Corps, the same post he had held in the previous war.
Gros, who barely deigned to speak to Bullard, although they had known each other for a quarter century, remarked, “I did not know you had the Medaille Militaire.”4
To which Bullard replied, “Oh, I thought you kept all my records, just as you kept the scroll issued me by the French government as it was to every member of the flying squadron.”
Gros frowned, reddened, turned on his heel, and strode away without another word. It was the last time the two men ever set eyes on one another.5
Soon after the luncheon, Bullard was requested to return to Paris to work for what was then known as “La Résistance.” Ironically, there was a metro stop only one mile from Neuilly, so he began a daily commute to the war, in Paris. He met up with his old partner, Kitty, and they stayed together in Kitty’s apartment whenever it was necessary for him to spend the night in Paris. Bullard brought with him whatever useful news he picked up by assisting Mrs. James with her regular gatherings at le Petit Château de Neuilly.
* * *
For several crazy weeks, Bullard would hop on the metro, when he wasn’t needed by Mrs. James, and commute to his old haunts—and Kitty—in Paris. He would bring in any tidbits of information he had gleaned from Mrs. James’s guests—information the Resistance might want to have. When in Paris, he and Kitty would work together, most often running information and messages between Resistance cells. In this work, his familiarity with the city was invaluable—but his distinctive “color” was not. It did not take long for the Gestapo to pick up on news about and images of the “black man” possibly working for the Resistance.
Bullard had a couple of very narrow escapes. One day, he was given several rolls of film hidden inside a soccer ball that he was to take to a British Army colonel soon to be a guest at Mrs. James’s château. As soon as he left the office building in Montmartre where the Resistance cell met, soccer ball under his arm, he noticed a “tail” of two suspicious-looking Aryan men following him. His heart skipped a beat. If the men stopped him, they would surely examine the soccer ball, and then it would all be over for Bullard.
Rounding a corner ahead of the men, he ran into a group of six boys playing soccer in an empty lot. Thinking quickly, he traded soccer balls with the boys and told them to meet him three blocks away in ten minutes, and if they did, he’d give them twenty francs.
The ruse worked. Bullard took the “new” soccer ball and continued walking just as the Germans turned the corner. He then started jogging, which caused the men to speed up, too. Another block away, he pretended to panic and tossed the ball down an alleyway. The Germans took off after the ball.
Bullard found the boys, gave them their reward—enough for three new soccer balls and lunch—and trotted off to the metro.
Two weeks later, Kitty and Gene were tasked with smuggling a packet of messages from Resistance HQ to another messenger waiting for them in the Bois de Vincennes park just to the east of the city. It should have been a simple metro ride to the park, and an innocuous handoff. It wasn’t.
Once again, Bullard’s distinctive face was immediately picked up by a pair of Gestapo “watchers.” Gene and Kitty (who was hiding the letters under her skirt) decided on a diversionary stroll, all in very public places so they couldn’t be cornered.
Several blocks later, the “lovers” decided to duck into a local church. The two Nazis quickly followed them in—but the pair was nowhere in sight. The Germans desperately searched every alcove and space—but nothing.
What they missed was the procession of nuns chanting and walking down the central aisle, right out the front door and on their way—including Gene and Kitty hurriedly swathed in black-and-white habits. It was a slick trick, worked to perfection, and helped along by the giggling nuns.
* * *
Also doing her bit for France was Bullard’s friend—and possible former lover—Josephine Baker. The same month the allies had declared war against Germany, she opened a show in Paris, sharing the bill with Maurice Chevalier. When it closed, as many entertainments did in the Fall of 1939, she put away her skimpy costumes and reported to work at the Red Cross relief center on rue de Châteaudun. According to the biographer Lynn Haney, Baker “did everything from comforting homeless families to helping prepare pot-au-feu for the hungry. On her days off she flew supplies for the Red Cross into Belgium. She wrote hundreds of letters to soldiers at the front and, at Christmas, sent fifteen hundred presents to the troops, each with an autographed photo of herself.”
In addition, that spring she and Chevalier took their show on the road, performing for the French soldiers posted along the German frontier. Upon her return, Baker was recruited by the Deuxième Bureau. She told one of the agency’s captains, echoing Eugene Bullard’s sentiments, “France has made me what I am. Wasn’t I the darling of Parisians? They have given me everything, especially their hearts. Now, I will give them mine.”
She continued, “Captain
, I am ready to give my life for France. You can make use of me as you will.” Thus, Josephine Baker, like Gene, became a spy for her adopted country.
* * *
For Bullard, the day came when he had to say goodbye to the generous Mrs. James. Her teenage daughter was felled by polio. That, plus news of Panzer tanks rolling across France, persuaded Mrs. James to relocate to another estate she owned, this one in Biarritz. She borrowed one of the ambulances she had purchased, driving it herself with her paralyzed daughter in the back. The James women joined the millions of refugees on the road between Belgium and the Spanish border.
There were few Germans going to the clubs; in fact, very few clubs were open at all, so the spying became even more risky since it had to be done pretty much in the open. Bullard’s black skin became even more of a liability as far as recognition went.
He and Kitty soon came to the realization that spying was too dangerous for him. This severely limited his options; in fact, his choices really boiled down to two: fight or flee. Kitty knew he would never run. Making Kitty promise to take care of his daughters, Bullard became determined to find his old regiment and rejoin it. He knew he was too old, he knew he’d probably not be accepted for service, but he had to try.
Many veteran Poilus, most of them then old “grand-pères,” had dusted off their long blue overcoats and headed for the front. Gene had heard that the 170th was dug in and battling the Germans at Épinal, far to the east of Paris, along the border with Germany.
On June 14, 1940, the Germans triumphantly marched down the Champs-Élysées and through L’ Arc de Triomphe. Panic seized Paris and tens of thousands of residents hurried out of the city. Stuka dive-bombers with their paralyzing, high-pitched, screaming engines fell on the mixed columns of soldiers and civilians like raptors on defenseless chickens. Thousands were killed, their torn and mangled bodies left to litter the roads and ditches.