At the Place de la Concorde de Gaulle remounted the black open-top Hotchkiss. Raymond Dronne’s Spaniards were now relieved by Colonel Peretti’s security team. But, just as Peretti took over de Gaulle’s protection, gunfire broke out. “It was in front of us, stretching along the Rue de Rivoli, reaching the Place de la Concorde and up the Champs Élysées,” wrote Dronne. “Gun shots seemed to be coming from everywhere. Panic-stricken people were running in all directions, falling in the gutters, lying down in dried-out fountains, huddling behind trees, flower-troughs and even behind our vehicles.”79
In her memoirs, Pascale Moisson writes unequivocally that Miliciens were behind the gunfire. Dronne believed that isolated pockets of gunmen, probably very few, shot into the crowd, possibly aiming at de Gaulle. Some were perhaps suicidally fanatical Germans as well as Miliciens, possibly both. “The Place de la Concorde was rapidly transformed into a battlefield,” wrote Pascale. “Having earlier that afternoon wished my parents were there, now I was glad they were far away. Pushed by several others, I found myself pressed underneath one of the tanks. What a noise! Everyone, albeit without that much panic, was hitting the deck.” Then, just for long enough for people to think it safe to move, the gunfire ceased. Pascale and others got up, just as tanks and soldiers began firing back. Again the crowd threw themselves to the ground. “Like everyone else,” wrote Pascale, “I pressed my nose into the dirt, my ear against someone’s leg; not quite what a young woman would choose.” Lifting her head, Pascale saw white-clad brancardiers running with stretchers. Eventually Pascale and Marcelle found shelter in a building off the Place de la Concorde. Although German stragglers and Miliciens were the obvious suspects, abandoned weapons had undoubtedly fallen into irresponsible hands. The French fired back anywhere they perceived or misperceived a threat.80
AT 2.30PM A 2e DB JEEP PULLED UP OUTSIDE 30 Rue Barbet-de-Jouy carrying Bishop Rodhain, now wearing a military chaplain’s uniform, accompanied by Leclerc’s head chaplain, Père Houchet. Both priests were concerned over who should act as celebrant for the Liberation Te Deum.
“Eminence, we’ve come to find you,” Rodhain told Cardinal Suhard. “We’re going to drive you by Jeep to Notre Dame. We’ll brush past any barricades we have to.”
Cardinal Suhard looked visibly pained.
“Thank you, dear child,” he said. “But we can’t go to Notre Dame because I am under house arrest.”
Rodhain’s next words must have refreshed Suhard’s hopes of taking the service, because he began robing up. Next the new Commissioner of Police, Monsieur Pinault, arrived, accompanied by two inspectors and his secretary.
“The General’s secretary has rebuked us for appearing to go back on this,” Pinault told Père Le Sourd. “What is decided is decided.”
“Wait a moment,” said Le Sourd, departing briefly and returning, accompanied by Pères Delouvrier and Bohan and Monsignor Chappoulie. “His Eminence still has every intention of going to Notre Dame for the Te Deum at 4.30pm.”
But Commissioner Pinault was adamant that Cardinal Suhard was barred from taking any part in the Liberation Te Deum that afternoon. With that, Le Sourd presented Pinault with Cardinal Suhard’s formal protest on paper bearing the coat of arms of the Archbishop of Paris. It read as follows: “The Cardinal Suhard, Archbishop of Paris, protests the measure preventing him from appearing in his own Cathedral. He does not accept the given pretext relating to his security. [Signed] H. Le Sourd. Personal Secretary.”
After Pinault left, Suhard asked Le Sourd to call Père Depierre.
DESPITE HER SIZE AND SERENITY, as August sunshine bounced off her flying buttresses, chaos reigned in Notre Dame’s Sacristy. Resistance chaplain Père Bruckberger arrived to enrobe for what he believed was his big moment, assisting at the Liberation Te Deum, a role that would normally go to a higher ranking priest. But Monsignor Beaussart, who was involved in Henriot’s funeral, was already there.
“Mon Père,” began Beaussart. “I am sure your friends in the [provisional] government would permit you to tell me. Why has the Cardinal been placed under house arrest?”
“The government does not want the General to be received by someone who has welcomed the German governor of Paris into Notre Dame. The government would prefer that you resigned.”
“That’s an abuse of power,” replied Beaussart. “The Cardinal is appointed by the Pope, not the government.”
“He [the General] is well aware,” said Bruckberger. “As soon as the Nuncio arrives in Paris he will be asked to advise the Vatican of this wish.”
“The government is taking on its shoulders a heavy responsibility in taking such an anti-religious attitude.”
“Monsignor,” said Bruckberger, “you are wrong. There isn’t one member of the government who entertains anti-clerical sentiments. It’s a question of personalities.”81
Fascinated by this conversation, other priests were listening from the corridors. About then Monsignor Brot arrived in the Sacristy. Bruckberger reminded Beaussart how he edited the film Les Anges du Péché to satisfy the Occupation authorities.
“I couldn’t have done otherwise,” said Beaussart.
“Well, there you are then,” said Bruckberger. “If you had des rapports with the Occupation authorities, the Cardinal, him even more so, couldn’t have done otherwise and over far more serious matters.”
“I’ve had enough,” said Beaussart. “My political role is over. I am going to become a padre with the Division Leclerc.”
This remark was heard by the 2e DB’s Père Houchet, who said, “To become one of our padres you’ve got to get past me and I strongly advise you not to try.”82
Their arguments were curtailed by the sound of gunfire outside. Furthermore it became clear that gunfire was coming from inside the Cathedral, from the King’s Gallery and other places.
Of the Suhard affair de Gaulle wrote, “At 4.30pm I went, as planned, to Notre Dame. At the appointed time, on the Rue de Rivoli, I got into a car and, after a short stop-off at the steps of the Hôtel de Ville I arrived at the esplanade (of Notre Dame). The Cardinal-Archbishop would not be welcoming me at the threshold of the basilica. Not because he did not want to but because the new authorities asked him to abstain from doing so. In fact, Monsignor Suhard had thought it his duty, four months previously, to solemnly receive there Marshal Pétain during his visit to German-occupied Paris, then, the next month, presided over the funeral service that Vichy wanted to mark the death of Philippe Henriot. Due to this, several among the Resistance were indignant at the idea that this priest should be present to introduce General de Gaulle [he often wrote of himself in the third person] into the Cathedral. For my own part, knowing that the Church considers itself obliged to accept ‘the established order’, not ignoring that in the Cardinal’s mind charity and piety are so eminent that they leave little room in his soul for the appreciation of temporal matters, I would have been willing to consider otherwise. But the state of tension among a large number of combatants the day following the battle and my wish to avoid any disagreeable consequences for Cardinal Suhard drove me to approve of the decision by my Delegation to bar the Archbishop during the ceremony. Subsequent events showed that this decision was correct.”83
GENERAL DE GAULLE ARRIVED AT NOTRE DAME several minutes before the Te Deum service was due to begin. With the gathering congregation talking energetically, Monsignor Brot shouted for silence.84
Outside it remained uncertain whether Germans or Miliciens were taking potshots at de Gaulle, the 2e DB and the crowd.
“Your men aren’t used to street fighting, are they?” said Colonel Rol-Tanguy.
“Mon cher colonel,” replied Guillebon. “They will learn.”85
From the choir, Monsignor Brot saw de Gaulle entering the cathedral as shots rattled around the massive carved stone ceiling. The congregation, now about two thousand, grovelled in their pews as much in fright as in prayer. Brot swiftly walked the length of the nave and introduced himself to France’s new le
ader.
“Mon général,” Brot began. “His Eminence has asked me to welcome you to Notre Dame de Paris. I should not have had this honour since it is the Cardinal Archbishop himself who should be welcoming you into his cathedral. His Eminence has asked me to protest to you regarding the treatment of which he has been a victim. Given what he has done for France during these last difficult years, he certainly did not deserve such an insult.”
Appearing unmoved, de Gaulle replied, “Monsieur l’Archiprêtre, have you noticed the gunfire going on around us? Surely it is best that the Cardinal is not here?”
“But, mon général, it doesn’t seem that the shooting is aimed at the Cardinal.”
“That may be true,” de Gaulle replied.
“Mon général,” continued Brot. “May I pass on your regrets to the Cardinal over what has happened?”
“Yes,” de Gaulle replied quietly.
“You’re giving me permission to pass on your regrets to His Eminence?”
“Yes, Monsieur l’Archiprêtre,” repeated de Gaulle. “Tell His Eminence that I regret what has happened.”86
Among the congregation sat British Intelligence officer Malcolm Muggeridge. “The Cathedral was packed tight,” Muggeridge wrote. On Monsignor Brot’s signal the Magnificat began. “The choir sang melodiously,” Muggeridge continued. “And, up in front the heads of the General and his associates could just be seen. It was at this point that someone fired a pistol; as was subsequently discovered, by mistake. The effect was fantastic; the huge congregation who had all been standing suddenly fell flat on their faces, supposing that some plot—Communist, Pétainist, Nazi, maybe even Gaullist—was about to be put into operation. There was a single exception, one solitary figure still standing, like a lonely giant. It was, of course, de Gaulle. Thenceforth, that was how I always saw him—towering and alone; the rest, prostrate.”87
“One could see more bottoms than faces,” observed André Le Troquer. With a sharp tap from his cane, General Leclerc prevented one of his soldiers from returning fire towards the ceiling’s medieval stonework, while Claude Hettier de Boislambert disarmed someone with similar intentions, saving a stained-glass window.88 In the meantime shots continued, hitting three members of the congregation, one fatally. Determined not to be intimidated, Brot tried to restart the service. But continuing gunfire made this impossible. Père Bruckberger asked to take the microphone but Brot told him tersely to be quiet. As Bruckberger retook his place, de Gaulle walked insouciantly towards the door. Considering what a wonderful target he made at that moment, several eyes welled in admiration of his bravery.89
Enquiries into the shooting inside Notre Dame elicited that, an hour before de Gaulle’s arrival, three men armed with submachine-guns—purporting to be FFI—asked to go up to the King’s Gallery to raise a Tricolore with a Cross of Lorraine on behalf of the Préfecture. That these men should also bar the main organist from reaching his perch suggests that flag-waving was not all they intended. But did they initiate the gunfire inside Notre Dame or simply draw the fire of other zealous and suspicious FFIs among the congregation?90 When the police pulled them down they claimed they were firing at “indistinct enemies”. As de Gaulle wrote, “Who could imagine that enemies would make targets of chimneys while I myself was walking around in the open?”91
After the war, Alain de Boissieu discussed the shooting inside Notre Dame with Prefect Charles Luizet. “He [Luizet] interrogated them personally and believed they had no other motive than committing an attentat (assassination) against General de Gaulle. For whose gain? Vichy, the Milice, agents of foreign powers, opponents of the CNR? I owe it to historical truth to write that Luizet inclined towards the last possibility and he had solid grounds for this; I leave to him the responsibility for this grave judgement, not having myself any appreciation of this matter.”92
De Gaulle taking power benefited neither the Left nor the collabo Right. But he was not the only target. Vengeance, paranoia and suspicion were as much a part of the Liberation as joy and relief. In one apartment building, after their concièrge assured them a sniper was on their roof, student Bernard Pierquin and his father ventured out over the leadwork and slates armed only with an old service revolver. “Pas de salopards! ”—“No bastards!”—but their appearance drew fire from other roofs. Prudently they returned inside.93
Isolated Germans were sometimes responsible; so too were Miliciens who stayed behind to make trouble, rather than decamping to remuster in the new SS Charlemagne Division. One of the men pulled out of the Hôtel de Ville’s attic was the same Milicien Mansuy who had murdered Georges Mandel in the Forest of Fontainebleau a few weeks before.94 Wearing an FFI brassard, Mansuy claimed to be defending the Hôtel de Ville. But when a résistant, a veteran of run-ins with the Milice, recognised Mansuy, the game was up. He was shot in true Milice style “while trying to escape”.95
WITH LECLERC’S PERMISSION, André Gribius missed the march down the Champs Élysées. After 1940 his parents moved to an apartment on Versailles’ elegant but modest Rue Sainte-Victoire. Gribius had never seen their new home, but towards the end of the Vichy period in French North Africa, their letters included diagrams and vivid descriptions which made him feel Rue Sainte-Victoire was the last place he saw them. Expecting them to be under-nourished, Gribius loaded his Jeep with “tinned foods, particularly beans, cheese, jam and biscuits”.
Arriving at his parents’ building, he took the stairs two at a time and rang their bell. “It was my father who opened the door. In the shadow behind him, my mother stood frail and barely recognisable. My father also appeared terribly thin, and, while taking them tenderly in my arms, with sadness for all they had endured, I was unable to speak a word.”
But, as with Christian Girard, the initial silence passed.
“They told me how they had lived during those four years, speaking of our relations and our friends. I looked around their apartment, recognising all our old furniture. I admired the taste with which my mother had arranged them.96 I asked my parents all sorts of questions about their lives, their difficult subsistence, knowing they would never have bought anything that looked ‘black market’. … If my father remained, by tradition, more trusting in Marshal Pétain, although happy, despite his worries, to have a son in the opposite camp, my mother had never ceased to listen to London, both from conviction and in the hope of obtaining, between two emissions, some news of myself. … I knew my parents well enough to know that, like so many French, they were attached to order and recognised a place for authority. And I knew at what point certain dramas would have appeared to them hard to bear. More than the lack of food, I discovered, the fear and trepidation had been the most wearing.”97
In her west Paris apartment, Greek diplomat’s widow Princess Henriette Petrocochino was also visited by a tall officer. The husband of one of her nieces, an officer with Dempsey’s British Second Army, came to check up on her welfare, bringing tea and butter, both of which had been a rarity for four years. In his honour she pulled out a bottle of good Cognac she had saved especially for the liberation.98 Even with four Jewish grandparents this splendid old woman had survived.
Between the Allied armies, American rations were more likely to be welcomed by Parisians, most of whom were not starving but had lost weight fast that last summer when the city’s food supplies were at their most erratic. Most Parisians remembered excellent French produce. They were grateful when GIs pulled oranges from their packs, but only a toddler would never have seen one before. The “compo” rations issued to British troops were nutritious, but less pleasant to eat with their hard biscuits and tinned bread with raisins.
While General Montgomery refrained from sending British combat troops into Paris, supply and logistics personnel became involved immediately, formally putting a British shoulder to the city’s food needs. One of these officers had a charming encounter with the erotic novelist Colette.
“I cannot believe, I cannot believe it, it isn’t over,” Colette moane
d when Maurice Goudeket assured her that Paris was now full of French and Allied troops.
“I shan’t believe it till you’ve brought a Scottish major here.”
“In a kilt?” asked Goudeket, dumbfounded.
“In a kilt,” insisted Colette.
“I’ll go at once,” replied Goudeket.
“I crossed the garden,” wrote Goudeket. “As it happened some British troops were stationed on the Place du Palais Royal, and I ran straight off into the most Scottish of majors, with a kilt and a little tooth-brush moustache. I fell into conversation and he told me his job was to re-victual Paris.”
“Good man,” said Goudeket. “We rather need you.”
“Yes,” replied the Scottish major. “But in the meantime, I’ve eaten nothing for twenty-four hours.”
Goudeket invited the Scot to their Palais Royal apartment where, over corned beef sandwiches, he explained that his wife was the novelist Colette.
“Have you heard of her?” asked Goudeket.
“My wife reads a lot,” he replied. “I expect she’ll know.”99
THE 2e DB’S QUAKER STRETCHER BEARERS were probably the first British troops to enter Paris.
“Paris was absolutely fantastic,” Dennis Woodcock told Henry Maule. “Men of the 2e DB could have anything they wanted, absolutely anything. Whatever shops they went into, or restaurants, or cafés, or wherever they went, the people would insist they had anything it was humanly possible to provide. The great affection and admiration the people had for the British was tremendously apparent. If they were prepared to give everything in their power to the French soldiers then it would be true to say this was doubly so as far as the British were concerned.”100
Part of GT Langlade, after the German surrender, Woodcock’s ambulance unit parked along the Avenue Victor Hugo, immediately being given champagne and bottles of scent from a nearby beauty salon. “We were continually called out to deal with casualties. … We took large numbers of Germans to hospital because there was a great deal of shooting and beating up to pay off scores. … It was important to find out routes to the hospitals quickly so we were given guides and I did very well, mine being a very charming girl.”
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