D-Day_ The Battle for Normandy - Antony Beevor [268]
For the Parisians in the streets, this was not an Allied victory, it was entirely French. The shame of 1940 and the Occupation seemed to have been obliterated. One young woman remembered glowing with pride at the sight of the Sherman tanks, with their French names: ‘Victorious, Liberty advanced on their tracks. France delivered by France. It was exalting to be part of that nation.’ The fact that the 2ème DB would never have reached France in its present form without American help was entirely overlooked in the delirious patriotism of the moment.
The leading American elements from the 38th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron and the 4th Infantry Division also entered Paris at 07.30 hours from the southern side. They found ‘the people bewildered and afraid of us. They were not sure whether we were Americans or Germans. ’ But once they were convinced of the Americans’ identity ‘then the fun started’. Civilians helped pull aside the barricades to let them through. Within an hour, they were outside Notre-Dame. Having been told that the Parisians were starving, American soldiers thought that they looked healthy. ‘French girls, beautiful girls, were climbing all over us and giving us flowers,’ a staff sergeant wrote. ‘Some of those girls had the most beautiful teeth. They must have been getting good food somewhere.’
Their progress had been slow through crowds shouting, ‘Merci! Merci! Sank you, sank you! Vive l’Amérique!’ ‘At every one of the numerous halts,’ Colonel Luckett of the 12th Infantry Regiment recorded, ‘mothers would hold up their children to be kissed, young girls would hug the grinning soldiers and cover them with kisses, old men saluted, and young men vigorously shook hands and patted the doughboys on the back.’ Unlike General Gerow, their corps commander, Luckett and his men did not seem to mind that the 2ème DB were the stars of the show. The 4th Infantry Division freely recognized that ‘Paris belonged to the French’.
General Gerow entered the city at 09.30 hours and also headed for the Montparnasse railway station to keep an eye on Leclerc. Gerow had the same reaction as his soldiers that the accounts of mass starvation had been somewhat exaggerated. ‘The people of Paris were still well dressed and appeared well fed,’ he reported at the time, but later amended this by saying that ‘there were no signs of a long-standing malnutrition except in the poorer classes’. Americans simply did not appreciate how much physical survival during the Occupation had depended either on paying black-market prices or on having contacts in the countryside. Poorer Parisians had indeed suffered greatly.
The triumphal processions changed rapidly when columns approached the centres of German resistance. On the south-western side of Paris, Massu’s men cleared the Bois de Boulogne, then Langlade’s units advanced through the 16th arrondissement towards the Arc de Triomphe.
Colonel Dio’s groupement tactique had some of the most heavily defended German strongpoints as their objectives - the Ecole Militaire, the Invalides and the Palais Bourbon of the Assemblée Nationale. Meanwhile, Capitaine Alain de Boissieu, with a squadron of Stuart light tanks and some Shermans from the 12ème Cuirassiers, headed towards the Boulevard Saint-Michel to tackle the German defences in and around the Palais de Luxembourg, which housed the Senate. The young cavalry officer was slightly surprised to find himself reinforced by the ‘Fabien’ battalion of the Communist FTP.
In the meantime some Staghound armoured cars manned by Spahis Marocains had already reached the Boulevard Saint-Michel, having come from the east via the rue Saint-Jacques. The diarist Jean Galtier-Boissière was in his bookshop near the Sorbonne when he heard that Leclerc’s troops had arrived. He hurried out with his wife to see what was happening. ‘A vibrant crowd,’ he wrote, ‘surrounds the French tanks draped in flags and covered in bouquets of flowers. On each tank, on each armoured car, next to crew members in khaki overalls