Americans in Paris_ Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation - Charles Glass [88]
The American Hospital’s board of governors’ meeting in Aldebert de Chambrun’s offices on the Champs-Elysées on 13 February 1941 officially appointed Dr Sumner Jackson Médecin Chef (Chief Physician) ad interim to replace Dr Edmund Gros, who was too ill to return to Paris from the United States. At the time, the hospital was caring for seventy French soldiers, twenty-five British patients and sixty ‘needy French children’. Dr Jackson and Aldebert de Chambrun worked together to keep a patient in every bed so that the Germans would have no excuse to take over the institution. A month later, Edward B. Close reported to the board: ‘Another hospital year, and probably the most difficult in the history of The American Hospital of Paris, has again come to an end.’ He stated that the number of patient days over the previous year came to 38,952 for wounded French soldiers and 14,103 for civilians. He added, ‘I report with great pleasure that we were able, during the year, to care for all American citizens who applied for treatment in our Out-Patient Department or for admission, and that those, who were not able to pay, were treated absolutely free.’
SEVENTEEN
Time to Go?
IN APRIL 1941, Aldebert and Clara de Chambrun invited the ranking American diplomat in Paris, Maynard Barnes, to lunch at 58 rue de Vaugirard. Barnes had been chargé d’affaires in Paris and at the Château de Candé since Ambassador Bullitt’s departure a year earlier. The Chambruns had regarded him as a friend for some years, and they believed he understood France better than his colleagues. In Vichy, Bullitt’s successor as US Ambassador to France, Admiral William D. Leahy, thought Barnes ‘had a higher opinion of Laval than prevailed generally’. Over the modest, rationed lunch, Barnes told Clara and Aldebert that the United States would undoubtedly declare war on Germany. ‘Please tell her not to delay much longer,’ General de Chambrun admonished the diplomat. Clara shared her husband’s view that America must, at last, fight for the Allied cause. This was a change from her conviction in October 1939 on a visit to the United States for the publication of her History of Cincinnati, when she told the Cincinnati Times-Star, ‘Why should the United States even consider getting in the war? The question should be decided purely on the grounds of American trade and American rights … As for the allies wanting America to enter the war, they already have more men to feed than they need to maintain what can only be a deadlock.’ After the Germans broke the deadlock in the spring of 1940, the occupation of France made American intervention acceptable to Clara. At lunch, she pressed Barnes on American intentions. ‘Do not worry,’ he told her. ‘We will be there even if England is beaten. We cannot afford, after the war, to see our trade cut off from Greece, Italy, Spain, France, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Holland, and the Scandinavian Peninsula.’ Barnes, who was preparing to close the Paris embassy under orders from the Germans, asked whether the Chambruns wanted to send anything with him to the United States. Aldebert entrusted him with two Purdey shot-guns that had been made for him in London. If the Germans found them hidden in the linen cupboard, he and Clara would be sent to prison.
While America remained neutral, Clara wrote, ‘Extreme politeness was still the rule towards citizens of a country that Hitler hoped would stay out of active warfare.’ She added, ‘A considerable number of American businessmen remained and continued to work under these new conditions … American residents contributed generously to the “Secours National [National Aid],” organized by the Marshal [Pétain], and which helped almost miraculously to keep up the morale of the unfortunate, and