Americans in Paris_ Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation - Charles Glass [174]
Clara watched relief teams speeding to ‘the fallen houses, burning buildings, flooded cellars, and ruptured waterpipes in the unending effort to find the dead, transport the wounded, and lodge the homeless’. Among the dead were two American friends, Miss Lewandowska and Mrs Mygatt. René arranged the funeral for Mrs Mygatt, ‘as he did for all my fellow-countrymen and -women, in the crypt of the American Cathedral under the Stars and Stripes’.
The BBC warned people to evacuate ahead of the raids, but Clara thought the advice was useless. Most Parisians had nowhere to go. Food ration coupons were invalid outside the neighbourhoods where they were issued, so those who left risked starvation. And, as in 1940 when the Germans were advancing on Paris, escape could be more dangerous than staying home: ‘It was an ironical consolation to be told to leap on a train when you knew at the same time that all trains and locomotives would also be destroyed. The Germans, rich in trucks and gasoline, were practically independent of rail transportation; that is why the large death toll was borne by French civilians.’
Clara did not go to La Chapelle, near Montmartre, to see the worst of the destruction. Another American, Alice-Leone Moats, did. The gutsy Madrid correspondent of the New York Herald Tribune, following her perilous border crossing and meetings with American airmen in Pau, was in Paris in late April and early May. Her fluent French and German allowed her to speak at length with French collaborators and résistants, as well as German officers and soldiers. She hired a horse-drawn cart to take her up the hill to La Chapelle.
The quarter presented a gruesome sight. On every street there were houses that had been destroyed. Very little seemed to have been done to clear up the debris. Digging was still going on to get bodies out of the cellars. I overheard a woman saying, ‘The cries and moans stopped yesterday. I guess they’re all dead now.’ Just then a corpse was carted out. The men doing the work were slow and obviously not trained for the job …
Men and women and children stood about watching the proceedings. The faces all showed the same dazed look of suffering. I spoke to several of them to find out how they felt about the raids. I got the same answer as in Biarritz: ‘We can forgive the raids if they are to some purpose, if they really are a preparation for the invasion.’
A man in overalls said, ‘The Allies have sent out warnings that everyone is to move away from the vicinity of railways and factories. But what are you to do if you work in a railway or a factory? Move to the Ritz? A man has to have his home near his work.’
When Alice-Leone asked a dry cleaner whether the people of the quarter supported the Allies, he answered, ‘People in this quarter, Madame, don’t advertise their political opinions.’
Neither the bombardments nor German retaliation for the increasing number of Resistance attacks prevented the Paris beau monde from enjoying life. Alice-Leone observed them at Maxim’s, where she and a companion lunched on pâté de foie gras, boeuf à la mode, salad and wild strawberries with a bottle of Nuit Saint-Georges 1934. Maxim’s was a favourite of René and Josée de Chambrun. Josée still bought her dresses from the salons of fashion houses Rochas and Schiaparelli, whose seasonal shows and access to scarce cloths were not interrupted by the occupation. On 9 April, she and René spent the day at the Auteil races where René won 260,000 francs. In celebratory mood, they went with Pierre, Duc de Brissac, to the Théâtre de La Michodière to see Jean Anouilh’s Le Voyageur sans bagages. The next night, René’s luck brought him 240,000 francs at poker. It was a time of French theatrical revival for a public desperate for entertainment and diversion. Paris saw 400 productions under the occupation, including new plays by Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Cocteau and Jean Anouilh. American Florence Jay Gould’s salon for German and French writers was thriving in her avenue Malakoff apartment. Jean Cocteau,