In the days following their initial arrival the Germans began requisitioning buildings throughout Paris—now the administrative hub of the Zone Occupée—for their own use. The city’s best hotels, stately homes, and office buildings were appropriated for use by senior military and political leaders, and by the various police and intelligence organizations tasked with rooting out any opposition to the occupation. Invalides was itself tapped to serve as both an administrative center for several second-tier organizations and as a housing area for troops assigned to various support units throughout the city. The Germans announced that they would occupy the western half of the complex, along the boulevard de la Tour-Maubourg, while the eastern half would remain home to various French government offices and the veterans’ hospital and accommodations.27 The first Wehrmacht troops to arrive en masse initially slept in tents erected in several of the courtyards, but after moving into the east-side barracks newly vacated by French garrison soldiers, the newcomers used the elegant enclosures for another purpose—they pulled up the lawns and planted vegetables.
Though the Germans planned to occupy only part of Invalides they quickly moved to secure the entire complex. Wooden sentry boxes were placed at every entrance, and armed soldiers checked the papers of anyone seeking to enter between the time the gates opened at 7 A.M. and when they closed for the night at 7 P.M. Twelve soldiers manned the combination vehicle gate and personnel entrance on the east side of Invalides, just north of the Morins’ apartment, though they returned to their west-side barracks each night. Because the Germans had decreed that the Office of the Architect would continue to oversee the maintenance and preservation of the buildings and the objets d’art they contained, Georges and Denise retained their joint position as “concierges” of Invalides. They also kept possession of the large ring of keys, and were authorized to continue escorting outside workers who came onto the grounds. In order to alert the French couple when workers arrived at the nearby guardhouse, the Germans manning the personnel gate continued to use the existing button that rang a doorbell in the Morins’ apartment—the bell’s tune, ironically, was the dit-dit-dit-dah opening of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in C Minor.28
Despite the Germans’ decision that the French should retain responsibility for the care and maintenance of Invalides and its treasures, the first large-scale project within the complex after the occupation of Paris was undertaken by the invaders themselves. One morning less than a week after Major Oehmichen’s sudden appearance on the Morins’ doorstep, troops of Panzerjäger Abteilung 187 drove several large military trucks through the east-side vehicle gate and backed them up in front of the steps leading into the Dôme chapel housing Napoléon’s Tomb. Alerted by the noise of the vehicles’ arrival, the Morins hurried from their home and arrived outside the chapel in time to see dozens of soldiers bearing hammers, crowbars, and other tools clambering out of the trucks and hurrying up the steps.
Understandably alarmed, Georges and Denise followed the soldiers into the building, where to their relief they realized that the men were not intent on vandalism—they were under orders to remove the sandbags covering Napoléon’s ornate sarcophagus. As the French couple watched, soldiers scaled crude wooden ladders laid against the sides of the protective pyramid and began tossing the upper sandbags toward their comrades below. The situation immediately turned comical, however—at least for Georges and Denise—because the damp and brittle sandbags burst open as soon as they left the throwers’ hands. Sand soon covered the soldiers and the floor, and a haze of dust clouded the chapel. The effort to uncover the tomb quickly devolved into what Oehmichen himself later described as a “pathetic fiasco,” and it was only the arrival of several Paris fire brigade trucks equipped with suction pumps that allowed all of the sand to finally be cleared away.29
The reason for the hurried cleanup of Napoléon’s Tomb became clear early on the morning of Sunday, June 23, when several Mercedes-Benz G4 open touring cars rolled to a halt before Invalides’ south gate.30 The quartet of German troops acting as an honor guard at the open portal snapped to attention as Adolf Hitler stepped from the lead vehicle and strode purposefully toward the steps leading into the Dôme church, closely followed by an entourage that included four of the Führer’s favorite artists—his personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann; architects Albert Speer and Hermann Giesler; and sculptor Arno Breker.31 Hitler had flown into Le Bourget airport just after dawn for a whirlwind tour of the city; Invalides was one of the final stops, and apparently one of the most meaningful for the German dictator. He stood motionless for several minutes in the circular gallery above Napoléon’s sarcophagus, his head bowed toward the final resting place of the soldier-emperor with whom he most closely identified. As the group left the rotunda to descend into the crypt before moving on to the Cour d’honneur (Court of Honor), the obviously deeply affected Führer told photographer Hoffmann that the visit to the tomb was “the greatest and finest moment” of his life.32 Minutes later, as the members of the entourage were about to board their vehicles, Hitler turned to Martin Bormann and said, “I want the Duke of Reichstadt to be brought back to Paris.”33
With that one comment regarding Napoléon’s only legitimate child, Hitler set in motion the chain of events that would result in the Morins’ first overt act of resistance.
ALTHOUGH HITLER’S REASON FOR WANTING THE REMAINS OF NAPOLÉON François Charles Joseph Bonaparte moved from their resting place in Vienna to Paris—and specifically to Invalides—are unclear, it is generally assumed to have been intended as a gesture of reconciliation toward the French.34
Though styled Duke of Reichstadt at the time of his death at the age of twenty-one, the young man had been Emperor Napoléon II for two weeks in 1815—at the age of four—following his father’s defeat at Waterloo and subsequent abdication. When France reinstated the monarchy and put Louis XVIII back on the throne, the child and his mother, the Austrian-born former Empress Marie-Louise, went into exile in Vienna.35 The boy, thereafter known as Franz, grew up in the court of his maternal grandfather, the Hapsburg emperor Francis I, who bestowed the Reichstadt title. The lad was groomed for life as a military officer, but only served for a few years before his death from tuberculosis in 1832. The ornate bronze coffin bearing his body was placed in the Imperial Crypt beneath Vienna’s Capuchin Church, where it remained undisturbed until December 12, 1940.36 On that day, in response to Hitler’s directive to Bormann six months earlier, the coffin was removed from the crypt and transported to Vienna’s main train station. Loaded aboard a boxcar that had been fitted out as an ornate mini-chapel, the casket of L’Aiglon—“the Eaglet,” as the young duke was referred to in France—reached Paris’s Gare de l’Est station on December 14.
Two events were to be held at Invalides marking the return of the former Napoléon II. The first, which took place that very night, was the actual arrival of the casket, brought from the train station atop a gun carriage towed behind a German half-track and escorted by a Wehrmacht honor guard. During a solemn, torch-lit ceremony at the bottom of the steps leading into the Dôme church, German ambassador Otto Abetz officially turned the remains of L’Aiglon over to Marshal Pétain’s representatives, Admiral Jean Darlan and General Auguste Laure, as senior French and German military and political leaders looked on. There was a brief service inside once the casket had been placed on a bier in front of the altar, but the major observance—akin to a funeral mass—was scheduled for the following day. During the latter service, huge wreaths from Pétain and Hitler were to be placed on either side of the casket as both a sign of respect and as a visual representation of Franco-German cooperation. Many smaller wreaths and other types of floral tributes would then be ceremonially arranged around the bier.
In the afternoon before the nighttime ceremony Georges, Denise, and Yvette Morin had been directed to arrange the many wreaths and floral tributes to be used the next day in orderly rows in a small alley off to the side of the Dôme church. The largest
of the wreaths was a huge swastika made of black pansies and bearing a ribbon inscribed “From Chancellor Hitler to the Duke of Reichstadt” in French. The obscene wreath—and its proximity to the final resting place of so many of the nation’s heroes—infuriated the Morins, though they could do nothing about it with so many German troops in the area preparing for the event. Later, as darkness fell and before the torches were lighted for the ceremony, Denise left the warmth of home and carefully made her way through falling snow to where the Hitler wreath stood. Whether out of repugnance for the Germans or as a gesture on behalf of her deeply patriotic father—who had died just over a month earlier—Denise impulsively grabbed the offensive wreath and carried it home. Minutes later the hated symbol was burning in the fireplace. Later that night, when the ceremony in the church was over and the complex was quiet, Georges pulled the wire frame of the wreath from the hearth and buried it at the foot of a tree in one of the nearby gardens.37
Denise’s spontaneous act of resistance was incredibly dangerous, of course, for had she been discovered she would undoubtedly have been turned over to the Gestapo, the Germans’ dreaded secret police.38 Georges and Yvette would also likely have been arrested, and all three would almost certainly have faced torture and eventual execution. Denise was not caught in the act, however, and the removal of Hitler’s wreath was not discovered until the following morning, when dignitaries began arriving for the church service. Those attending the ceremony included many of the same French and German luminaries who had witnessed the casket’s arrival the night before—including Abetz and Darlan—who were joined by such others as the Archbishop of Paris; Lieutenant General Otto von Stülpnagel, the military governor of Occupied France; the disabled French general Augustine Mariaux, director of Invalides; and various distant relatives of Napoléon. As the attendees filed in, German protocol officers realized the Führer’s floral tribute was missing, and despite frantic searching found no trace of it (and, thanks to the snow that had fallen overnight, there were no telltale footprints leading back to the Morins’ home). The arrangement’s absence became something of a diplomatic incident when, at the end of the service, Darlan placed a huge wreath bearing a French tricolor and the words “Maréchal Pétain” next to Napoléon’s sarcophagus. Abetz, visibly furious at the absence of Hitler’s floral offering, could only stand by, empty-handed.39
AS HELPFUL AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN IN PREVENTING THE GERMANS FROM DISCOVERING the Morins’ role in the disappearance of Hitler’s wreath, the snow that fell on Invalides the night before the church service was not a sign of divine intervention. It was, in fact, yet another unwelcome reminder of how harsh and unforgiving the first winter of the German occupation was for the people of Paris. The fall rains had come early, and had quickly given way to frigid temperatures, ice storms, and snowfall that was both deeper and more frequent than most of the capital’s residents had ever experienced. The punishing weather only exacerbated the already severe conditions caused by the Germans’ continuing expropriation of Occupied France’s agricultural goods and energy sources.
While life was certainly difficult for the Morins during the winter of 1940–1941, it was not as bleak as it might have been, for two reasons. The first, ironically, was the largesse of the Germans themselves.
After the men of Major Oehmichen’s Panzerjäger Abteilung 187 had removed the protective sandbag pyramid covering Napoléon’s sarcophagus, they had piled the wood planks and beams that had made up its frame in one of the storage areas near the Morins’ home. Protective barriers around other immovable objects on the grounds and from nearby neighborhoods were torn down over the course of the spring and fall and added to the growing storage pile, as were the dismantled crates and pallets that had borne the now-returned objets d’art evacuated during the spring. As the weather turned increasingly bitter, the Morins were permitted to use some of the wood for their home fireplace and cook stove—so long, the Germans warned, as they didn’t overdo it.
The Boche also contributed to the Morins’ well-being in another way, though the donation was unwitting and indirect. The troops billeted within Invalides ate well—so well, in fact, that the refuse bins outside their barracks on the west side of the complex often overflowed with discarded potatoes, carrots, and other vegetables. Denise and Yvette were regular visitors to the bins, where they scavenged every remnant of vegetable they could find. The scraps were not for their own consumption, however.
During the mass civilian exodus through Paris that accompanied the German advance in May and June 1940, many of the refugees from rural areas who sought temporary shelter within Invalides brought poultry and rabbits with them, carried in small wire cages. One morning, just days before the arrival of Panzerjäger Abteilung 187, Denise had found a hugely pregnant female rabbit hiding beneath a shrub in one of the areas in which refugees had been housed. Knowing a providential sign when they saw one, Denise and Georges built a basic hutch inside one of the now vacant garage spaces near their apartment and installed the four-footed mother-to-be. Fed on a combination of grass taken from Invalides’ lawns and discarded German vegetables, that first rabbit and her offspring quickly multiplied into a reliable and much-needed food source for Georges, Denise, and Yvette.40
But the Morins would not be the only ones to gain sustenance from the rabbits, for the French family would soon be playing host to a series of young, frightened, and very hungry men on the run.
Chapter 3
A BAD DAY AT LE BOURGET
THE JUNE 13, 1943, MISSION TO KIEL HAD BEEN AN UNQUALIFIED disaster for the 94th Bomb Group. Nine B-17s and ninety men had gone down over the German port city or on the return flight to England, bringing the unit’s total losses since its combat debut to sixteen aircraft and nearly 160 men dead or missing in action.1 Some twenty-five additional airmen were wounded on the raid, and eight aircraft were damaged to the point that they needed extensive repairs before going back on operational status.
As Joe Cornwall and his crewmates had anticipated, the beating Natural had taken on the Kiel strike led to their being assigned another Fortress. Though slightly older than the machine it replaced, the second aircraft was an essentially identical B-17F and bore the serial number 42-3331.2 Ed Purdy and his men discussed a variety of possible names and nose art designs for their new mount, but ultimately decided on variations of those that had graced their first bomber. The name emblazoned on the replacement’s nose—this time on the left side rather than the right—was the plural Naturals.3 And rather than attempting to reproduce the first Fortress’s gaudy image of the kneeling African-American man, the crew instead opted for two white dice, their faces still showing 7 and 11, caught in midroll within an offset black cube applied just aft of and slightly below the aircraft’s name.
Though Purdy and his crew had assumed they would take Naturals into combat sooner rather than later, bad weather over most of western Europe—coupled with the need to replace its losses in men and aircraft—kept the 94th Bomb Group on the ground for more than a week after the Kiel debacle. The lull might have helped revive the unit’s flagging morale, had it not been for a decision made by General Ira Eaker a few days after the Kiel raid. Apparently believing that the heavy losses the 94th had experienced since its arrival in England were the result, at least in part, of inadequate leadership by “Dinty” Moore, on June 20 the Eighth Air Force commander relieved him of duty and assigned him to a staff position at Elveden Hall. Moore’s sudden departure was a huge shock to the men of the 94th, who revered him as both a leader and as something of a father figure.4
Nor were the aviators at Rougham initially impressed with the man who arrived late on June 21 to replace Moore. Colonel Frederick W. Castle had been a staff officer at Eaker’s headquarters, and most of the men in the 94th assumed he was a “desk jockey”—though in reality he was an accomplished pilot who had already flown eight combat missions. Castle’s brief from Eaker was to “tighten up” the 94th, to reintroduce “standards for appearance, social and p
rofessional conduct, and mission dedication” to a unit whose flying personnel “felt that with combat came the privilege of being a swashbuckling warrior with little regard” for the niceties of military discipline.5 Though calm and soft-spoken, Castle began the tightening-up process immediately upon his arrival, announcing that all regulations pertaining to uniforms and military courtesy would be strictly observed, and that violations would result in fines or the loss of leave and pass privileges. And to the surprise of many in the 94th, the new commander also announced that he would lead the group’s next mission, which would take place the following day.6
Castle not only led the 94th in the June 22 raid against the rubber factories in and around Hüls, Germany, he also commanded all but two of the subsequent six missions against targets in the Reich and France. On the July 4 mission to bomb the harbor facilities at La Pallice, Castle flew as an observer in the lead aircraft of “Salty” Saltsman’s 331st Bomb Squadron, which had been tapped to lead the group. Saltsman, in turn, chose Naturals to lead both the squadron and the group, with himself flying as pilot in command and Ed Purdy as copilot. In recognition of the honor, and as a sign of their admiration and respect for their squadron leader, Purdy and his men unanimously agreed to slightly modify the name of their bomber. Just before takeoff on the morning of July 4, the crew gathered near the nose of the B-17 and, with Saltsman looking on, applauded as a mechanic atop a ladder used a small can of white paint to hastily add the 331st commander’s nickname just above and slightly forward of Naturals. From that point on the Fortress was known throughout the squadron as Salty’s Naturals.
Castle’s leadership style apparently had a salutary effect on the 94th Bomb Group, for though two aircraft went down on the June 22 mission, none were lost on the six missions that were flown between June 25 and July 10. All of the raids were flown as part of the USAAF’s contribution to what Allied military leaders referred to as the Combined Bomber Offensive—the round-the-clock Anglo-American bombardment of enemy targets in Germany and Occupied Europe—that had officially begun on June 10. The stated purpose of the offensive was “the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic system, and the undermining of the morale of the German people to the point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened.”7
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