Escape from Paris

by Stephen Harding

  14. For a very thorough and enjoyable recounting of the 94th Bomb Group’s formation and wartime experiences, see Harry E. Slater’s excellent Lingering Contrails of the Big Square A, from which much of the 94th-specific material in this chapter was drawn.

  15. Eighth Air Force crews used two main terms to refer to enemy antiaircraft fire. The first, “ack-ack,” was borrowed from the British and was more commonly used during the early USAAF missions over the Continent in 1942. The second term, flak, was a contraction of the German Flugzeugabwehrkanone, literally antiaircraft cannon, and was more popular among later-arriving crews.

  16. Though initially thought to have been killed in action, Rosener survived the downing of his aircraft and spent the remainder of the war in Germany’s Stalag Luft III POW camp—where he was eventually joined by his younger brother, Niel, who was also a B-17 pilot. Maurice Rosener went on to serve in the postwar U.S. Air Force, and died in 2004 at the age of eighty-five.

  17. Pinetree was opened by then Brigadier General Ira C. Eaker in mid-May 1942 as the headquarters of VIII Bomber Command. The organization occupied the former Wycombe Abbey girls’ school in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, some thirty miles northwest of London.

  18. Though designated Saint-Omer-Longuenesse in Eighth Air Force records of the period, the airfield is usually referred to as Saint-Omer-Wizernes in World War II German documents. It is actually closer to Longuenesse than to the Saint-Omer suburb of Wizernes.

  19. Drawn from Lawrence Templeton’s article “If Memory Serves Me Correctly,” published in the March 1980 issue of Nostalgic Notes, the 94th Bomb Group Association newsletter.

  20. When Anderson moved up to take over VIII Bomber Command in July 1943 his replacement was a pugnacious, cigar-chewing colonel named Curtis E. LeMay, who had arrived in Britain in October 1942 as commander of the 305th Bomb Group (Heavy) and who is widely credited for developing the combat box formation. LeMay did not believe in opulent quarters for servicemen of any rank, and of his lodgings at Elveden Hall he later wrote, “Now I found myself with a copper dome over my head and God knows how much ‘richly veined marble’ staring me in the face.” LeMay would go on to play a leading role in the USAAF bombing campaign against Japan (and ultimately become head of the U.S. Air Force’s Strategic Air Command). For more on his career, see Warren Kozak’s LeMay: The Life and Wars of General Curtis LeMay.

  21. For a more detailed overview of the Kiel mission, see Ralph H. Saltsman Jr.’s “Air Battle at Kiel” in the Summer 1989 issue of the journal Air Power History. Hereafter cited as “Air Battle at Kiel.”

  22. Drawn from Saltsman’s original typewritten manuscript for what became his article “Air Battle at Kiel.”

  23. Built to a standard RAF design in 1941–1942, the field had three intersecting runways laid out in a roughly triangular pattern. The 2,000-yard-long main runway ran east to west and was fifty yards wide. The second runway was 1,400 yards from north to south, and the third was also 1,400 yards north to southeast. While the station was officially called Bury St. Edmunds, local people always called it Rougham Airfield (and still do). With the arrival of the 94th the field was extended to fifty hard-standings and dispersal areas, three of which were diamond shaped to give capacity for fifty aircraft.The 94th was not the only group involved in the July 13 mission that had been directed to change base locations. The 96th had moved into its new airfield on June 11, and the 95th was scheduled to relocate on June 15. The swaps were intended to give the B-26 and B-17 groups operating locations that better suited each, in terms of runway length, personnel accommodations, and so on.

  24. “Air Battle at Kiel.”

  25. Despite the extent of the damage inflicted on 42-29711, the Fortress was eventually repaired (but only after Larry Templeton convinced one of the mechanics undertaking the restoration to remove its nose art, which remained in Templeton’s family until after his death in 1999). The former Natural was transferred to the 91st Bomb Group’s 322nd Bomb Squadron, and returned to combat duty with the name Chief Sly II. Unfortunately, its reprieve did not last long—the Fortress was shot down into the Baltic Sea on September 10, 1943, with the loss of its entire crew.

  26. The story of Cornwall and Davitt’s encounter with the MP was written up by a USAAF public affairs officer (who managed to misspell Joe’s last name as “Cronwall”) and distributed to several British and American wire services. The article ran in some forty newspapers across the United States during the first week of August.

  CHAPTER 2

  1. There is often confusion between this first, impromptu parade reviewed by Bock, and a later and far more lavish parade—complete with bands—reviewed by one of Bock’s subordinate commanders, General der Infanterie Kurt von Briesen. Though newsreel images of the mounted World War I veteran and holder of the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross taking the salute of his passing troops were seen around the world, Briesen didn’t have long to savor his triumph—he was killed in action on the Russian Front in November 1941. Bock, for his part, died on May 4, 1945, the day after the car in which he was a passenger was strafed by an Allied fighter.

  2. A pejorative term used by the French to refer to Germans, especially soldiers.

  3. Though during the Nazi period the term Wehrmacht referred to Germany’s unified military forces—Heer (army), Luftwaffe (air force), and Kriegsmarine (navy)—it is commonly used to refer to the combined Heer-Luftwaffe forces that undertook most of Germany’s ground offensives. It is so used throughout this volume.

  4. Between May 15 and 17 French tanks—largely the heavily armored Char B1-bis—had managed to hold the line against the advancing Germans, inflicting heavy casualties and surprising General Heinz Guderian, Germany’s preeminent armor commander. The small village of Stonne changed hands repeatedly, finally falling to the Germans on the afternoon of the seventeenth.

  5. At that point in time, of course, most people in France were unaware that Operation Dynamo, the evacuation at Dunkirk, also moved more than 120,000 French troops to Britain. Many of those soldiers would later form the core of the Free French forces that would liberate Paris in 1944.

  6. Having fled Paris for Tours, Reynaud and most members of his government moved on to Bordeaux on June 13.

  7. For an in-depth look at the turmoil within the Reynaud government on the eve of France’s collapse, see the author’s 2014 book The Last Battle: When U.S. and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe.

  8. The railcar was historic, of course, in that it was the same carriage in which Germany had signed the 1918 armistice. The car had been on display at Invalides’ Musée de l’Armée for several years, until ultimately being refurbished and housed in a purpose-built museum building at Compiègne. The Germans had it moved back to the exact spot where the World War I event had been held, their intent being to both underscore their victory and thumb their collective nose at the French. Following the 1940 ceremony the carriage was moved to Germany, where it was ultimately destroyed. A replica was built after the war and installed in the small museum at Compiègne.

  9. As John Goldsmith recounted in his wonderful memoir Accidental Agent: Behind Enemy Lines With the French Resistance, “The Nazi bureaucrats inflicted many humiliations and indignities on Occupied France, but this was one of the most stupid. Wine is part of a Frenchman’s soul. It is indispensable. It is sacred.… Only the dull, humourless Master Race could have been so insensitive to a national characteristic as to invite the further wrath of an oppressed people.”

  10. Created Marshal General of France by King Louis XIV, Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne (1611–1675) was arguably France’s most able military commander of the pre-Napoleonic period. Turenne’s remains, like those of Napoléon, reside at Invalides.

  11. Following France’s defeat by Prussia and the North German Confederation in the 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War, the regular French army was disbanded in accordance with the armistice terms agreed to by the leaders of the
French Third Republic. The largely working-class members of the National Guard—the militia force tasked during the war with the defense of Paris—refused to accept disbandment and rebelled. Popular elections in Paris brought the revolutionary Commune to power in the city. The national government, based temporarily in Versailles, reformed elements of the regular army and, on May 21, 1871, sent them into the streets to put down what was seen as a proletarian rebellion; thousands were killed in the resulting battles throughout Paris.

  12. The story of Georges’s early life and service in World War I as presented here is built upon information provided by his daughter during in-person interviews with Ellen Hampton in February 2017 (hereafter cited as Hampton-Claerebout 2017) and with the author in June 2017 (hereafter cited as Harding-Claerebout 2017), as well as upon service records held by France’s Service historique de la défense, Fondation de la résistance, and la Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine.

  13. Within the Morin family it is popularly believed that Georges enlisted at the age of seventeen, having lied to recruiters about his age. However, his military records—held at the Service historique de la défense in Vincennes—clearly indicate that he enlisted in 1917, at eighteen.

  14. Hampton-Claerebout 2017.

  15. The organization was created in 1916 and attached to the Ministry of Labor.

  16. This line of structures had originally been built as workers’ quarters during the construction of Invalides, and had been modernized over the years. Details on the Morins’ apartment and the surrounding structures are taken from Justification du Projet et Definition des Travaux Proposes (the 1988 document outlining the extensive alterations made to the southwest corner of the complex, which among other things resulted in the demolition of the Morins’ former home), and from Hampton-Claerebout 2017.

  17. Though the Morins lived within the Invalides complex, the address of their apartment was listed as 2, avenue de Tourville. The street runs parallel to the southern side of the Invalides complex, beginning at the place de l’École Militaire in the west and ending at the boulevard des Invalides in the east—some 200 feet south of where the Morins’ home was located.

  18. The author was honored to be given a rare personal tour of both the attic of Saint-Louis-des-Invalides and the rooftop area between the cupola and the dome, and can attest to both the fantastic view and the potential hazards of the latter.

  19. In 1946 the organization was again renamed, becoming the Office national des anciens combattants et victimes de guerre (National Office for Veterans and Victims of War), which it remains as of this writing.

  20. The Anschluss (“joining”) saw Austria annexed to Nazi Germany. Renamed the province of Ostmark, the country was divided into seven administrative districts and its armed forces became part of the Wehrmacht.

  21. The 1924 “Treaty of Alliance and Friendship” between France and Czechoslovakia was one of three similar treaties Paris concluded with the smaller central European states that were attempting to resist the growing power of Hungary and the possible rebirth of a Hapsburg empire.

  22. Harding-Claerebout 2017.

  23. Paris at War, 15.

  24. The mass confusion that engulfed France’s road network as a result of the Luftwaffe attacks resulted in many of the Musée de l’Armée’s treasures being abandoned along a stretch of road near Étampes, some thirty miles southwest of Paris. Two trucks bearing such priceless items as the hat Napoléon wore during the 1812 retreat from Moscow, his medals, Empress Josephine’s jewels, and pistols inlaid with gems and ivory were among a group of vehicles attacked by Ju 87 Stuka dive-bombers on June 13. Both trucks were disabled in the assault, and the following day they were abandoned by their panic-stricken drivers. A Wehrmacht officer, Lieutenant Colonel Oberneburg of the predominantly Austrian 44th Infantry Division, discovered the scattered items. An apparently cultured individual, he recognized some of them. When his guess about their provenance was validated by the words “Hôtel des Invalides” stamped on a section of destroyed crate, he immediately ordered his soldiers to secure the items and load them aboard a Wehrmacht truck. The items were temporarily stored at the hospital in Étampes, and eventually turned over to Versailles mayor Gaston Henry-Haye, who safeguarded them until they were returned to Invalides. (Henry-Haye, a longtime politician and former member of the French Senate, was later named Vichy France’s ambassador to the United States.)

  25. Among the objects Denise was able to hide in the days before the Germans arrived were dozens of large, ornate, porcelain apothecary jars that had been kept in the hospital’s pharmacy. The pharmacist, Madame Ferré (sometimes rendered as “Ferret”), had not had time to crate the jars for shipment and was afraid the antique and very valuable containers would be stolen by the Germans. Over the course of a very long day Mme. Ferré and Denise moved the jars into an out-of-the-way storeroom and locked them in. Harding-Claerebout 2017.

  26. Panzerjäger Abteilung 187 was a specialized antitank unit assigned to the 87. Infanterie-Division. Oehmichen and his men were among the first German troops to enter Paris, and in addition to Invalides the unit’s companies were tasked to secure the Eiffel Tower, the École Militaire, the military barracks facing the Champs de Mars, the government ministries along the quai d’Orsay, and the Hôtel de Ville (Paris city hall) on the Right Bank.

  27. Evacuated during the Germans’ June advance on the capital, the veterans began trickling back to Invalides following the June 22 signing of the Franco-German armistice.

  28. It is unclear whether the Germans chose the tune, or just continued using an existing one. The irony, of course, is that beginning in 1941 the Allies used the four notes as an audible representation of the “V for Victory” hand gesture and slogan—dit-dit-dit-dah being the letter “V” in Morse code. Harding-Claerebout 2017.

  29. Oehmichen related the story in detail in his postwar memoir Der Weg der 87. Infanterie-Division.

  30. There is an ongoing debate among historians regarding the date of Hitler’s June visit to Paris. In his postwar memoir, Albert Speer said the visit took place on Friday, June 28, yet Breker, Giesler, and others in attendance remembered it as June 23. The latter date is the most likely, given that most sources agree the visit took place on a very quiet Sunday morning.

  31. The group also included General Hans Speidel, 18th Army chief of staff, and General Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (supreme high command of the German armed forces). Contrary to popular belief, Keitel was not a field marshal at the time of the Invalides visit; he was not promoted to that rank until July 19, 1940.

  32. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 223.

  33. Hitler’s Propaganda Pilgrimage, 108. SS-General Martin Bormann was head of the Reich Chancellery and also acted as Hitler’s private secretary. He was tried for war crimes in absentia at Nuremberg and sentenced to death, though in 1998 it was conclusively proven that he had died in Berlin in 1945. In his postwar memoir Paris, Hitler et Moi, Arno Breker remembered the events at Invalides slightly differently, saying that Hitler spoke of the Duke of Reichstadt while the party was still staring down at Napoléon’s sarcophagus and issued the order at that point.

  34. For the complete story of the political machinations—both French and German—behind the transfer of the young duke’s remains from Vienna to Paris, see Georges Poisson’s Hitler’s Gift to France: The Return of the Remains of Napoléon II.

  35. Louis XVIII came to the throne in April 1814 after spending most of his life in exile. The king was briefly replaced by Napoléon after his return from Elba, but following Waterloo Louis XVIII returned to Paris and reigned until 1824. Marie-Louise was Napoléon’s second wife.

  36. In keeping with Hapsburg tradition, the young duke’s heart and intestines were removed during his embalming; the silver urn containing his heart is in the Loreto Chapel of Vienna’s Augustinian Church (along with some fifty other urns containing the hearts of various Hapsburgs), and the copper vase cont
aining his intestines is in the Ducal Crypt beneath Vienna’s Saint Stephen’s Cathedral.

  37. Harding-Claerebout 2017. Denise’s exploit is also recounted in slightly different forms in Hitler’s Gift, 93, and Histoire des Invalides, 291–293. The latter incorrectly cites Denise’s father as the one who buried the wire frame; he died on November 17, 1940.

  38. Gestapo is an abbreviation of Geheime Staatspolizei, literally secret state police. It was considered a sister organization to the Sicherheitsdienst, the security service of the SS. Both organizations were administered by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office), itself subordinate to Heinrich Himmler in his capacity as the chief of all German police forces and the head of the SS.

  39. Hitler’s Gift, 103–104; Histoire des Invalides, 292–293.

  40. The story of Denise’s discovery of the rabbit, and the importance it and its descendants made in the Morins’ lives, is chronicled in Histoire des Invalides and other sources. It was also recounted to the author in Harding-Claerebout 2017. As a point of interest, the rabbits that are found around Invalides to this day are believed to be descendants of that first pregnant female.

  CHAPTER 3

  1. Loss numbers are drawn from Lingering Contrails, 358 (though the author listed the nine Kiel losses as having occurred on June 6, rather than the correct June 13); Pictorial History of the Men and Aircraft of the 94th Bombardment Group (H), 1943–1945, pp. 370-371, hereafter cited as 94th Pictorial History; and figures given in War Diaries, 331st Bomb Squadron, 94th Bomb Group, May and June 1943, hereafter cited as 94th War Diary May 1943 and 94th War Diary June 1943.