SAVING THE LIGHT AT CHARTRES
How the Great Cathedral and Its Stained-Glass Treasures Were Rescued during World War II
VICTOR A. POLLAK
STACKPOLE
BOOKS
Guilford, Connecticut
Published by Stackpole Books
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Copyright © 2020 by Victor A. Pollak
Maps created by Mary Lee Eggart
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
Names: Pollak, Victor A., 1948– author.
Title: Saving the light at Chartres : how the great cathedral and its stained-glass treasures were rescued during World War II / Victor A. Pollak.
Description: Guilford, Connecticut : Stackpole Books, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “The cathedral at Chartres survived World War II thanks to the efforts of French citizens and an unrecognized American officer. In a book written in the spirit of The Monuments Men, Victor Pollak describes the efforts to save Chartres Cathedral”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019038528 (print) | LCCN 2019038529 (ebook) | ISBN 9780811739016 (cloth) | ISBN 9780811768979 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Stained glass windows—France—Chartres. | Cathédrale de Chartres. | Art treasures in war—France—Chartres—History—20th century. | Cultural property—Protection—France—Chartres—History—20th century. | Griffith, Welborn Barton, 1901–1944.
Classification: LCC NK5349.C5 P65 2020 (print) | LCC NK5349.C5 (ebook) | DDC 748.50944/51240904—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019038528
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019038529
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
For Elizabeth Russell Pollak
CONTENTS
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Preface
Prologue—Reims, a Burning Symbol of Hope for Preservationists
PART I: WORLD WAR I CHAPTER 1: Chartres Cathedral and Its Windows
CHAPTER 2: Groceries: Quanah, Texas, 1914–1918
CHAPTER 3: Risks: Paris and Chartres, 1915–1918
CHAPTER 4: Griffith Faces the World: Texas, New York, Manila, and Shanghai, 1918–1935
CHAPTER 5: Warming Cauldron: Paris and Chartres, 1919–1936
PART II: THE INTERWAR YEARS CHAPTER 6: Spy Hap: Shiojiri, Japan, 1935
CHAPTER 7: Zay Transcends Confrontation: Paris and Chartres, Spring 1935–1937
CHAPTER 8: Griff in Training . . . But for What? Wyoming to Georgia, August 1935–January 1940
CHAPTER 9: Jump-Start: Chartres, September 1938–January 1940
CHAPTER 10: Removal: Chartres, August 1939–January 1940
PART III: WORLD WAR II CHAPTER 11: Fort Hood and Leavenworth Faculty, with Nell: Texas, Kansas, and California, Fall 1940–1942
CHAPTER 12: Stunned into Action: Chartres and Paris, September 1939–June 1940
CHAPTER 13: Transport: Chartres and Berchères-les-Pierres, June 1940
CHAPTER 14: To Quarry or Back to Crypt, for a Long Wait: Fongrenon and Chartres, June 1940
CHAPTER 15: Maneuvers: Kentucky to New York, April 1943–February 1944
CHAPTER 16: Goodbye to Both: New York City, Early February 1944
CHAPTER 17: War Hits Again: The Dordogne and Chartres, June 1940–May 1944
CHAPTER 18: Collared at HQ: Marlborough, UK, and Normandy, Spring 1944–July 1944
CHAPTER 19: Race across France, Resistance Meetup: Normandy, July–Early August 1944
CHAPTER 20: Battle Prelude, First Probe of the Cathedral: La Ferté-Bernard and Chartres, August 1944
CHAPTER 21: Clearing the Church: Chartres, August 16, 1944
CHAPTER 22: In Command at Lèves: Chartres and Lèves, August 16, 1944
CHAPTER 23: Aftermath—Snipers and a Scrappy Lieutenant: Chartres, August 16–19, 1944
PART IV: POSTWAR CHAPTER 24: Light Returns to Its Shrine: Fongrenon and Chartres, Winter 1944–1945 to November 1950
Epilogue—Chartres and the United States of America: Spring 1944–1995
Afterword: Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Notes on Sources
Bibliography
About the Author
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Guide
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Preface
Prologue—Reims, a Burning Symbol of Hope for Preservationists
Start of Content
Epilogue—Chartres and the United States of America: Spring 1944–1995
Afterword: Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Notes on Sources
Bibliography
About the Author
Chartres and Vicinity
Western Dordogne and Fongrenon Castle (Château de Fongrenon)
PREFACE
IN MAY 2013, MY WIFE AND I DROVE A GOOD PORTION OF THE ROUTE of what would be that year’s Tour de France, its hundredth running, taking a path through a countryside abundant with landmarks of historical significance to the race, to France, and to the world: Nice, Marseilles, Ax 3 Domaines, Saint-Malo, Mont-Saint-Michel, Lyon, Mont Ventoux, Alpe d’Huez, and of course the fabled cobbles of the Champs-Élysées in Paris. There was so much to see in this beautiful country, so many treasures like the Bayeux Tapestry, châteaus and vineyards and mountains and cathedrals—all of them jewels to our eyes—but something in Paris struck me as particularly poignant: I remember standing inside Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, with its medieval stained-glass windows that transformed daylight into lilac. We were bathed in majesty and from this feeling coming to a profound understanding: a cultural monument—a cathedral, a statue, a bicycle race—is a jewel for the world to keep and to cherish for as long as humans live on this earth.
A year later, I was in my living room watching a CNN newscast when crackles of an explosion resounded from my TV. A stone building erupted in the Iraqi desert from a bomb blast deep in the ground, sending a shock wave of black-gray dust and smoke over a dry field. Cannonballs of sandstone fragmented in all directions. The voice-over reporter spoke: “More than three thousand years of history obliterated in seconds. This video was released by ISIS. CNN cannot independently verify its authenticity, but it purports to show the radicals destroying Nimrud, one of the most important archaeological sites in Iraq.”
In the video, I saw a bearded youth wielding a sledgehammer and smashing it into a stone wall covered with relief carvings. Pieces fell to the floor. He struck again and shoved it off the wall. It crashed onto the stone floor and scattered fist-sized chunks and dust.
Another man on a ladder swung a hammer and severed a white plaster sculpture from a wall. It was a man’s face, flat and round, with prominent forehead, Roman hair, and dark holes for eyes, which looked straight forward, almost smiling. When th
e blow struck, the eyes looked down despondently, while the face ripped loose and crashed to the ground, breaking into chips and dust.
Again, the voice-over: “These are remnants of the ancient Assyrian civilization. Nimrud used to be its capital. They’ve stood since the thirteenth-century BC and survived many wars but were destroyed by the militants—probably in less than a day.”
ISIS had posted this video within weeks of the destruction.
The following year, in the public square under the ancient Arch of Triumph in Palmyra, in Syria, built in the second millennium BC, ISIS publicly beheaded Khaled al-Asaad, a university professor and Palmyra’s general manager for museums. He had spent his life preserving antiquities. “His crime,” according to a Syrian official, “was refusing to pledge allegiance to ISIS and refusing . . . to reveal the location of archaeological treasures and two chests of gold” that ISIS thought were in the city.
ISIS claimed that it destroyed the antiquities out of religious duty, but its real motivation was purely financial and hypocritical: “looting archaeological sites to support its thriving illegal trade in antiquities.” When I saw the CNN video, a sense of loss and anger welled up inside me. Elise Blackwell wrote, “It is a tragedy when human gifts that have survived across generations are disrespected for any reason short of basic survival. To loot artifacts for spending money—or to allow that to happen—is a violation of history.”
Around the same time, I’d also been listening to some lectures about great cathedrals, including Saint-Denis, Notre-Dame de Paris, Reims and Rouen Cathedrals, and Notre-Dame de Chartres. In World War II, the lecturer noted, Chartres’ stained-glass windows had been removed and hidden in the countryside to protect them from war damage.
I was amazed. I wondered how a project of such magnitude could be accomplished. I imagined scores of French workers in 1939, under threat of German invasion, working through the night—hoisting cranes, scaffolding, cables, and packing cases from trucks into the cathedral, and then craftsmen dismantling and removing thousands of glass pieces to be packed and transported. Where did they hide them? Who planned the project, and who did the work?
Unconnected in space and loosely connected in time, these three experiences are how this book started.
Over the years, I’d heard of cultural monuments and artworks under attack during World War II. Yet hearing of Chartres in the wake of seeing that ISIS video propelled me to learn more about what’s been done in the past to protect cultural treasures. How have people prepared to avoid such destruction and looting?
Chartres’ 176 windows are the largest collection of twelfth- and thirteenth-century stained glass in one place on Earth, consisting of twenty-seven thousand square feet of glass. Many individual windows are more than a dozen feet wide and twenty feet tall and have as many as fifty panels. The collection comprises 5,500 panels.
But among the thousands of books written about the nine-hundred-year-old Chartres Cathedral—and the many about its windows—none describes this story of the windows’ removal during the war.
What better demonstration of reverence for the distinctly human achievement the windows represent than to dismantle, pack, and transport them to secret locations to protect them? That task, I later learned, had also been accomplished in World War I at Chartres Cathedral, another chapter in the nine-hundred-year story of the windows’ survival through religious wars, fires, and revolutions.
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