• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 923 0

to be magnanimous towards de Gaulle, was in a state of subdued frenzy waiting for the invasion. With a disastrous lack of tact, he told de Gaulle that he had sent for him to broadcast to France. Even the more diplomatic Eisenhower, under renewed pressure from Roosevelt, reverted to the American position that de Gaulle and his colleagues counted for nothing until elections were held. On the morning of the invasion, Churchill heard that de Gaulle had refused to broadcast to the French people or to provide liaison officers to accompany the Allied forces. All his resentment and frustration burst forth. He accused de Gaulle of treason to the cause and raged about sending him back to Algiers in chains. American and British officials were horrified that the volatile chemistry between national leaders should have exploded at such a moment. ‘It’s pandemonium,’ a senior French diplomat noted in his diary. Finally Eden calmed Churchill, while Viennot, de Gaulle’s ambassador, and Duff Cooper persuaded de Gaulle to send liaison officers.

On 14 June 1944 de Gaulle crossed the Channel in the French destroyer Combattante. His party included Gaston Palewski, the ambassador Pierre Viennot, and Generals Koenig and Béthouart. One of them, hoping to lighten their leader’s mood, said to him: ‘Has it occurred to you, General, that four years ago to the day the Germans marched into Paris?’

‘Well! They made a mistake!’ came the inimitable reply.

De Gaulle relaxed only after the party had landed on a beach near Courseulles in Normandy and visited General Montgomery in his caravan. He then went on to meet civilians on French soil for the first time since 1940. These rather dazed citizens all knew his voice from the nocturnal radio broadcasts, but nobody recognized his face: Vichy had never allowed the publication of his photograph. News spread rapidly. The local curé, Father Paris, came cantering up on his horse to reprove the General for not having shaken his hand. De Gaulle climbed out of the jeep he was in. ‘Monsieur le curé,’ he said, opening his arms, ‘I do not shake your hand, I embrace you.’ Two gendarmes then appeared on bicycles, which wobbled as they tried to salute. They were sent on ahead to Bayeux, heralds of the General’s coming.

Here the emotional reaction to de Gaulle’s appearance was muted by the usual Norman reserve. One old woman, however, became confused in the enthusiasm of the moment, and cried out, ‘Vive le Maréchal!’De Gaulle, on hearing this discordant note, is said to have murmured, ‘Another person who does not read the newspapers.’ Gaston Palewski, when told of the approach of the Bishop of Bayeux and Lisieux ‘to greet the Liberator’, was certain they had finally won: ‘the clergy does not take risks’.

The sub-prefect appointed by Vichy, wearing his red, white and blue sash of office, welcomed de Gaulle’s party. But the change of regime had been too abrupt for him. He suddenly remembered the portrait of Marshal Pétain in the salle d’honneur and dashed off to take it down. It was four years and three days since the General and the Marshal had met on the steps of the Château du Muguet.

4

The Race for Paris

On 31 July, General Patton’s Third Army began the breakout from Normandy at Avranches. Encircling the Germans from the west, his right hook brought the Allies to Argentan, 167 kilometres from Paris.

For General de Gaulle, there was only one formation which merited the honour of liberating the capital of France. This was the Deuxième Division Blindée, the French 2nd Armoured Division, always known as the ‘2e DB’. Its commander was General Leclerc, the nom de guerre of Philippe de Hauteclocque.

Much larger than most divisions, the 2e DB was 16,000 strong, equipped with American uniforms, weapons, half-tracks and Sherman tanks. Its core consisted of men who had followed Leclerc from Chad across the Sahara, besieged the Italian garrison at Koufra and gone on to join the British. In its ranks served regulars from the metropolitan army, including cavalrymen from Saumur, Spahis (colonial troops), sailors without