Americans in Paris_ Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation - Charles Glass [73]
The occupation did not interrupt the board’s monthly meetings. On 26 July, most of the board appeared for the 6 p.m. conference at 25 avenue des Champs-Elysées. Count de Chambrun was in Le Puy, but Dr Edmund L. Gros, the hospital’s chief of staff, attended ‘by invitation’. ‘At present,’ the minutes noted, ‘we have approximately 125 serious fracture cases in the Hospital, most of which will take several months to recover.’ The first item of business was to order a plaque in memory of Dr Thierry de Martel. The governors voted to pay salaries of 5,000 French francs monthly to Miss Elisabeth Comte, assistant to the director, and Mr Otto Gresser, chief superintendent. The Count de Chambrun had praised the two Swiss nationals for their ‘intelligence, courage and exceptional devotion’. The board also recommended that the managing governor ‘should endeavor to slow down our gratuitous activities vis-à-vis soldiers and an endeavor should be made to reduce our expenses in connection with this work, the principal reason being that we at the present time cannot see ahead nor formulate any definite financial program for the future due to conditions brought about by the present situation’.
In August, Dr Sumner Jackson’s wife and son, Toquette and Phillip, returned to Paris from the lake house at Enghien. Sumner wanted them back to protect their empty apartment in the avenue Foch from requisitioning by the Germans. Even with a red US Embassy seal, the Jacksons’ apartment in the avenue Foch was vulnerable if no one lived in it. The Nazis had already taken houses in the avenue Foch for the Gestapo and Sicherheitsdienst, the party’s secret police known as the SD. At the same time, Sumner asked Toquette’s sister Alice, nicknamed Tat, to remain at Enghien to protect the vacation house from seizure. Dr Jackson continued to sleep at the hospital in case of emergencies. He tried to get home at weekends, and Toquette and Phillip visited him in Neuilly.
Like most other Parisians, the Jacksons made the transition from driving cars to riding bicycles. Jackson ordered an extra large bike, because he was too tall for those made for the average Frenchman. The family cycled everywhere, even an hour away to Enghien. While visiting the lake in the late summer, Sumner and young Phillip cut firewood to be ready for winter.
The board of governors met again in September amid the uncertainty of an occupation that was making new rules every week, closing theatres and allowing some to reopen with German licences, changing the hours of curfew, gradually tightening the restrictions on Jews and permitting different German bureaus to set conflicting policies. The board had urgently to decide how the hospital would manage if the governors were forced to leave France. More than 2,500 American civilians and many French and British prisoners of war depended on the facility. The governors unanimously approved a motion that ‘in the event of prolonged illness, absence or inability to act for any other reason of Mr. Edward B. Close, Aldebert de Chambrun be and hereby is appointed Managing Governor ad interim in the place and stead of Mr. Close, with the same powers as those now held by Mr. Close’. Eddie Close told the board that Wayne C. Taylor of the American Red Cross had asked him to increase the number of beds for military use to 200, effectively adding fifty beds for French and British war casualties. The board ‘unanimously carried’ a resolution to make the 200 beds available and ‘not to call upon the Red Cross for financial assistance at this time’. Fortunately for the hospital, the American Society for French Medical and Civilian Aid, a fund-raising committee that Bullitt had asked Winthrop Aldrich of the Chase National Bank to establish in New York at the beginning