Eleven Days in August

by Matthew Cobb

  As the day wore on, the Germans began to use heavy weapons in a chaotic series of exchanges. In the late afternoon, Veau and his medical colleagues heard the sound of gunfire from the nearby place Saint-Augustin. As the shooting grew more intense, they looked out of the ground-floor window and saw a dozen German soldiers firing from behind tree trunks. After a while, some tanks moved up towards the square, followed by a heavy machine gun mounted on a car. The car came to a stop outside Veau’s building, and the gun barrel was pointed directly at his window. Suddenly a young man ran into the street and was shot dead; a gun fell from his hand. Then a motorcycle ambulance arrived, with the pillion rider carrying a Red Cross flag. They were stopped by three German soldiers, and the pillion rider got off; the German officer took a couple of steps away from him, drew his revolver and shot the young man dead. The motorcycle driver roared off down the boulevard, while the heavy machine gun began to fire. Bullets flew into Veau’s apartment, spitting bits of plaster and wood, and everyone dived to the floor. Then the firing ceased and the gun was driven off. A few minutes later a large lorry, with FFI painted in red letters on the side, came thundering along the street and headed towards the place Saint-Augustin. There was the sound of more firing.51

  Just up the road in the 17th arrondissement the Germans sent tanks to deal with the Resistance; one arrived from the rue des Dames and fired a shell into a building, punching a massive hole in the façade, while another attacked the Ecole Normale on the rue Boursault, also firing on a garage occupied by Resistance fighters, before receiving a hail of machine-gun fire in return and eventually retreating.52 Once again, the Germans’ actions were apparently designed to intimidate but ultimately gave the impression of powerlessness – the destructive power of their weaponry was not fully deployed as there was no infantry to support the tank attack, and the Resistance ended up feeling they had won the confrontation. And in the only way that counted, they had: every time, the Germans pulled back.

  At the end of August, the Allies asked von Choltitz why he had first agreed to the cease-fire and then broken it. The German commander explained that he had wanted to save the city from the communists, and that when Parodi did not keep his promise to remove barricades from around the German strongholds, he felt obliged to send in the tanks.53 Whatever his reasons, all over the city ordinary people were killed by the Germans while the cease-fire was in operation.

  *

  In the late afternoon, the CNR met in an attempt to resolve the political chaos created by the cease-fire.54 At one point twenty-two people were crammed into a small airless room partly filled by a piano, not far from Rol’s bunker. The cramped conditions, the stifling heat and the deep-seated differences all combined to make for an explosive situation as supporters and opponents of the cease-fire confronted each other.55 In the front line was the communist Pierre Villon. CNR member Jacques Debû-Bridel recalled: ‘with his high forehead, his pointed nose and his steely gaze, Villon, extremely tense with two days’ lack of sleep, played the role of prosecutor.’56 Villon questioned the validity of the previous day’s meeting when the CNR Bureau had supported the cease-fire, demanded to know on whose authority the CNR’s name had been attached to the declaration and denounced the ‘forgery’ that had been posted on the walls of Paris in the name of the CNR. To make matters worse, he announced that the Front National was about to publish a poster describing the cease-fire as ‘a new manoeuvre by the enemy designed to stab in the back the Parisians who have been fighting heroically against the Hun for 48 hours’.57 Parodi stood up and said: ‘This will mean a split.’58 The tension in the room grew even stronger.

  To calm the atmosphere, Debû-Bridel insisted on the need for unity and underlined the importance of the military situation. This was an invitation for Chaban to give a half-hour explanation of what he called the ‘technical’ aspects of the insurrection, describing the German forces he claimed were threatening the city, and correctly informing the CNR that the Allies were planning to go around Paris and could not be expected to enter the capital for at least another week. In passing, Chaban described the cease-fire as ‘a gentlemen’s agreement’.59 This understandably infuriated his opponents – the Germans had hardly behaved as ‘gentlemen’ five days earlier at the Cascades in the Bois de Boulogne. This was war, not a game. In reply, Jean de Vogüé, the leader of Ceux de la Résistance and member of COMAC, mocked Chaban’s newly acquired rank of General and scornfully attacked the younger man’s ‘criminal lack of seriousness’ in agreeing the cease-fire. De Vogüé’s logic was relentless: ‘The enemy’s morale is broken: he does not want to fight in Paris, but merely save what remains: his proposals show this – they are the product of an enemy who recognises he is defeated . . . Any junior officer knows that when the enemy weakens, you must double your attempts to destroy him.’60

  If that was bad, what followed was worse. Villon went back on the offensive, sneered at the ex-civil servant Chaban (‘He should have stuck to his day job’) and then described the Military Delegate as ‘a coward’.61 Uproar. Once people had stopped shouting and calling on Villon to withdraw his comment, the communist leader spoke again: ‘I do not accuse him of cowardice, but he behaved like a coward.’ More uproar. Parodi and Chaban made for the door, Debû-Bridel shouted at Bidault to suspend the session, but the President of the CNR just sat there, stunned.62 Suddenly, a window smashed; everyone dived for cover. But it was not a bullet – Debû-Bridel had accidentally knocked his chair over and broken the window. As everyone calmed down, fresh air entered the room. Parodi was sobbing.63

  When the meeting resumed, Villon withdrew his accusation, but did not change one iota of his critique of Chaban and Parodi’s position, going point by point through their arguments.64 It was obvious that if the two Free French delegates pursued the cease-fire any further, the Resistance would be permanently split. It could mean civil war, and it would certainly mean that the Allies would impose AMGOT (Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories) instead of allowing the French to run things, just as Chaban had warned General Koenig less than a week earlier.65 Under these circumstances, Parodi and Chaban had no choice, and they had to bow to a unanimous CNR resolution calling for the fighting to begin again. However, the two Gaullists posed two conditions: the Front National had to withdraw their defamatory poster, and the fighting should not begin until 16:00 the next day.66 The unity of the Resistance had been preserved, and Parodi had cleverly gained the extra day he had asked for that morning.

  In reality, things were not so simple. As many Parisians could attest, the cease-fire had never really been effective, and even as the CNR was meeting, Rol had ordered Lizé and the FFI to renew the fighting. Rol added that because the SS had been shooting their French prisoners, the Resistance would treat SS prisoners in the same fashion.67 Relieved by the sudden change in the situation, Lizé sent the order to his men: ‘More than ever, fight to the death. Cover Paris with barricades.’68

  As battle recommenced, Rol asked Chaban and Parodi to provide the Resistance with enough plastic explosives, detonators and fuses to build ‘thousands’ of anti-tank weapons. It took Chaban two days to transmit the request to the Regional Military Delegate, who viewed the request more seriously than his superior, and immediately sent a message to London asking for a supply drop.69 There was no response, and no supply drop.

  In the absence of any weapons from the Allies, Rol issued instructions for making Molotov cocktails (this involved more than just filling a bottle with petrol) and the leading French physicist Frédéric Joliot-Curie began cooking them up in his laboratories in the Latin Quarter, using petrol, sodium chlorate and sulphuric acid.70 That night, FFI fighters moved into the upper floors of buildings next to the Saint-Michel barricade, armed with Joliot-Curie’s bombs, ready to throw them onto any German vehicles that approached.71

  Most of the city was now no longer under German control – by the end of the day, the Resistance had liberated sixty-one of the city’s eighty neighbourhoods.72 All of th
e main government buildings were occupied, with Resistance administrators sleeping in unaccustomed luxury in state apartments, preparing for the arrival of General de Gaulle and the Provisional Government.73 In the evening, the Resistance radio was finally allowed to broadcast, and the announcer read out two communiqués in the name of the Provisional Government before turning to a programme of music.74 Parodi was wary of unnecessarily attracting the attention of the Germans, and for the moment refused to allow the radio to transmit a full programme.

  Two high-ranking SS officers turned up at von Choltitz’s headquarters at the Hôtel Meurice, bearing orders from Himmler to bring back the Bayeux tapestry, which was held nearby in the Louvre. Von Choltitz explained to them that the Louvre was in the hands of the Resistance, but that they could go and get the tapestry if they wanted. They left empty-handed.75 Meanwhile, Paris Gestapo chief Knochen, who had fled to safety, decided the Gestapo needed its own channel of information about the situation in the capital. So his right-hand man, Nosek, was sent back towards Paris, in a five-vehicle convoy.76 Something was going on at Gestapo headquarters on rue des Saussaies: Suzanne Chocarne saw five Germans arrive and, after a long discussion with the French policemen who were guarding the building, climb up a ladder and go in through a window. After a while the Germans came out again, each of them carrying a large box, which they loaded onto a lorry. The same procedure was repeated the next day. Whatever was in those boxes, the Germans were keen to get it back, and the policemen were surprisingly compliant.77 Not all the Paris police seem to have realised that they were supposed to have changed sides.

  According to a report written that night by de Vogüé – no doubt still buoyed by his victory at the CNR – there were over 4000 armed FFI fighters in Paris. In contrast, the Germans were estimated to have no more than 6000 ‘real fighters’ in the city (the 14,000 administrators, cooks, translators and others were dismissed by de Vogüé as having ‘no fighting value’). The German forces were confined to five or six defensive positions, with a few dozen light and medium tanks patrolling the city but never fully exercising their power and not supported by infantry. ‘Feeling insecure, they have abandoned many points without fighting,’ wrote de Vogüé. ‘As a result, the local balance of power has clearly swung in our favour, even more so considering the growing activity of the population.’78

  *

  At Rambouillet, OSS spy chief David Bruce and Ernest Hemingway found that their entourage of excited journalists evaporated once it became clear that they were not heading for Paris. Bruce was frustrated, as he wrote in his diary: ‘It is maddening to be only thirty miles from Paris, to interrogate every hour some Frenchman who has just come from there and who reports that even a very small task force could easily move in, and to know that our Army is being forced to wait – for what reason?’79 Bruce’s perplexity was strengthened by the remarkable speed with which the Allies continued to press northwards and eastwards. They liberated Etampes, fifty kilometres south-west of Paris, and in a deep thrust to the south took the town of Sens, nearly ninety kilometres south-east of the capital. General Patton’s glee was palpable in a letter he wrote to his son: ‘It worked! We got the bridge at Sens before he [the enemy] blew it. That is worth a week.’80 Nevertheless, substantial German forces remained west of Paris on the north bank of the Seine around Rouen, blocking the Allies’ passage into northern France and Belgium, causing problems for the British troops that were concentrated in this sector. But overall, the map looked as though a flood was surging out of Normandy towards the east, about to sweep round Paris on both sides and carry on towards Germany. Full of self-confidence, General Patton wrote in his diary: ‘We have, at this time, the greatest chance to win the war ever presented. If they let me move on with three corps . . . we can be in Germany in ten days.’81

  Bill Downs, a CBS reporter embedded with the Allies, described what it was like being part of this rapid advance: ‘You move forward all the time. You eat a lot of cold rations because you’re on the move and when you bump into the enemy rearguard the fighting is just as bitter as it was before. And when you take the Nazi-held position you find that there haven’t been many Germans because the enemy has retreated, and there isn’t much booty and not many prisoners – yet.’82

  The rapid progress meant that supply lines became stretched. As the Third US Army’s After Action Report for 21 August put it: ‘Large quantities of clothing, individual equipment, water cans, cleaning and preserving material were requested to be shipped by rail and air. Acute shortage of operating parts for medium and heavy calibre weapons was reported in all corps.’83

  The closing of the Falaise pocket and the rapid movement of Allied forces eastwards meant that Leclerc’s 2e DB had even less reason to hang about in Argentan. However, Patton had rejected Leclerc’s repeated requests to move on Paris, while Eisenhower had given de Gaulle the brush-off the day before. The Allies were not going to budge. In the late morning Leclerc’s patience finally ran out. In an act of rank insubordination, he ordered Lieutenant-Colonel de Guillebon, together with a small group of about 300 men and fifty vehicles, including ten light tanks, to head towards the capital in a probing operation. Although de Guillebon’s orders were simply to reconnoitre the route, it was understood that, should the Allies suddenly make a break for Paris, he was to be with them. Leclerc’s instructions were clear: ‘You will appreciate that the Allies must not enter Paris without the French Army. That would undermine the national sense of the event. So go as quickly as possible; if any Allied unit enters Paris, I want you to enter with it; I will join you, but, in the meantime, as far as the Allies and the French are concerned, you will act in my place as Military Governor. And of course, if you can enter the city on your own, do not hesitate, just go.’84 Leclerc wanted to send the whole of the 2e DB on this mission but, as he wrote to de Gaulle that evening, ‘Unfortunately, I cannot do the same thing for the bulk of my division because of matters of food and fuels.’ But that was not the only reason: Leclerc recognised that he was also constrained by the ‘rules of military subordination’.85 The Leclerc Division was still part of the US Army, no matter how much that might irritate the Free French.

  At 12:00 de Guillebon’s column left the tiny village of Mortrée, eighty kilometres north of Le Mans, and drove eastwards for the next seven hours, averaging twenty-three kilometres per hour, before bivouacking at Vaubrun, less than thirty kilometres from Rambouillet. Completely unknown to the Allied command, the Free French were catching up with the spearhead of the Allied advance.86

  *

  Early in the morning, Gallois, Dr Monod and their German-speaking comrade, Dominique, left the barn where they had slept overnight and drove due south. Their attempt to get through the German lines to the west had failed, so they decided to try a different route. When they got to Corbeil they met up with the local FFI leader, Commander Georges. The repeated delays had made Gallois very tense, and he was relieved to find himself in the hands of a man who oozed confidence. The problem, Georges explained, was that they had tried to be too cunning. The only way to get through the German lines was by force, he said. To do that, he went on, you needed to be up for it, which in turn meant having a good meal. So he took the three hungry men to a small restaurant in the Essonne valley where they were stuffed full of food and wine. After the meal, they inspected an honour guard of Commander George’s FFI fighters, and Gallois made a brief speech. Then Gallois and Commander Georges, accompanied by a résistant and a gendarme armed with a submachine gun, got into a baker’s van and drove southwest towards Etampes, while Dr Monod and Dominique returned to Paris.

  Commander Georges was well known in the region, and in each village he got out of the car to ask about the position of the German troops and have a glass of wine. Finally, in the late afternoon, they learnt that only a German machine-gun post, composed of seven men, stood between them and the US troops a kilometre or so away. Perhaps souped up by all the wine, Commander Georges simply said, ‘Let’s go. Watch out for
the bullets!’ And with that the van roared past the surprised Germans without a shot being fired. A few minutes later, Gallois was in the hands of the Americans.

  The French envoy was interrogated by a series of Army intelligence officers as they checked out his story. Gallois did not look much like a staff officer – unshaven, exhausted and in rumpled civilian clothes, he felt he resembled a tramp. The most intense interrogation took place in a tent in Third Army headquarters, where Gallois was questioned for over two hours. To his amazement, the intelligence officer had files on all of Gallois’ contacts, one of whom had made his way through the lines nearly two weeks earlier. Once the Americans were satisfied that the young Frenchman was who he said he was, at around midnight he was taken into a tent to see ‘the general’.

  This was the whole point of the mission Rol had given Gallois the day before: to convince the Allied command to send an armoured column to Paris as soon as possible. Gallois did his best, but the general remained unconvinced. The US officer explained that his priority was to get to Germany as soon as possible and destroy the Nazi regime. Nothing – not even the liberation of Paris – would get in the way. ‘You chose when to launch the insurrection,’ said the American officer bluntly, ‘but if you thought you would need us, you should have waited for our instructions.’ Gallois was crushed; the American repeated that the Allies could do nothing for Paris at the moment, and that the Frenchman’s mission was over. In a final throw of the dice, Gallois asked whether, as a personal favour, he could see General Leclerc. The general went out of the tent for a moment and then returned. ‘Are you too tired to make a long journey?’ asked the American. ‘Not at all,’ was Gallois’ reply. ‘In that case,’ said the general, ‘get ready for a drive.’