Saving the Light at Chartres

by Victor A. Pollak

  Certain members of Colonel Griffith’s Texas-originated nuclear family—Griff’s great-nephews, David Coffey and his brother, Kevin Coffey, grandsons of Griff’s sister Dorothea Humphrey, the older of Griff’s two sisters—revealed that there was perhaps another side to Colonel Griffith’s character. David Coffey, a professor of military history, wrote to me in 2014. “From an early age,” he said,

  I was attracted to the whole idea of [Colonel Griffith]. He became something of a hero to me. But as I grew older and became an academic historian, I came to wonder if there might be a bit of hagiography involved. I say this only because my main sources of information were his adoring sisters Dorothea (my grandmother) and Harrison [Griffith’s sister Tiny]. There was a fierce bond among those Griffith siblings. . . .

  I have questions about the story. Certainly, some things don’t make a lot of sense. Why would an essential, high-ranking staff officer take such action? What prompted him to grab an M1 and jump on a tank, knowing he was an easy target? He was no doubt destined for higher rank and responsibility. These are questions I can’t answer. . . .

  Clearly, there were some issues in Colonel Griffith’s own family that resulted in separation and divorce. My brother and I have speculated that Colonel Griffith may have been depressed, even reckless as a result. But this doesn’t seem to jibe with his career arch or his performance, which from what I do know was well regarded.

  Kevin Coffey, David’s brother, who later corresponded with me from Scotland, maintains that he is the person of his generation who has showed the most interest in Griff, having talked with Dorothea about Griff, and to a lesser extent with Griff’s brothers and sister. Kevin had also met Eugene Schulz and spoken and corresponded with him about Colonel Griffith, including about the different perception of the colonel held by Kevin’s side of the family. Kevin wrote:

  One thing that was always clear from my grandmother . . . is that the main reason for not only the split in his marriage to Alice’s mother but also for the subsequent cool relations between Griff’s family and Alice and family was . . . that her parents might have been less than thrilled and she too might have wondered what she had done [in marrying Griff] once the heady period of infatuation was over. I must stress that this was my grandmother’s perception and it might be unfair to the other side. But certain other factors and testimonies over the years lead me to believe it’s probably fairly accurate.

  Kevin reported that one of Griff’s brothers, Lawrence, used to refer to the colonel’s death as “Webb’s suicide” (Colonel Griffith’s siblings called him Web or Webb). Kevin described Colonel Griffith as “pretty taciturn,” and he went on to say,

  [Griffith] was a pretty quiet and reserved man. Kind but commanding. The Griffiths were tough people. . . . They were self-sufficient, capable, strong-willed people with a fierce sense of duty and loyalty—to family, to country, to community and friends. They did what needed to be done. There was sometimes a ruthless streak, which surfaced most noticeably in the second born, Lawrence, who was an independent oil man and who was very hard to warm to, but it was present to some extent in all of them. . . .

  But I seem to recall that my Aunt Jane (my mother’s surviving sister, born the same year the colonel was killed) [said] that the 2nd marriage was no more successful than the first . . . in relation to the “suicide” claim, I seem to recall a hint that perhaps the Colonel was unhappy in his personal life—couldn’t get it right. . . .

  It’s easy when one reads the account given by Foree, which my grandmother and uncles Lawrence and Philip all believed was accurate, to understand why Lawrence referred to Web’s death as suicide.

  Griffith’s in-law families, both eastern, can be seen in a light somewhat different from his Texas-originated nuclear family. Griff’s first wife, Alice, married four more times.

  Griff’s own family knew him longer and in a sense more intimately. They adored Griff throughout his life, but they knew a private side of him, not necessarily the big bulldog, driving, fighting military training expert who had so much punch that at times he had to be held back.

  In 1961, seventeen years after Griffith’s death, local leaders in Lèves unveiled an engraved chest-high marble plaque on the wall of the building on the side of the street where Griff had been found dead. The plaque reads, “Ici fut tué le 16 aôut 1944 le Colonel Américain Welburn” (Here was killed on August 16, 1944, the American Colonel Welburn).

  Based probably on Griffith’s dog tags, someone had mistaken his first name for his last and misspelled it (reading “Griffith, Welborn B. Jr.” as “Colonel Welburn”). Since 1961, on every August 16, the town’s residents have gathered and placed flowers at the memorial, but Griffith’s true identity had remained a mystery to the townsfolk.

  Bertrand Papillon—witness as a teenager in 1944 to some of the events surrounding Griffith’s death and still a resident of Lèves—had become an amateur historian and had founded a single-room museum in Lèves with memorabilia from the world wars. For years, he had known of the marble plaque that bore the name “Colonel Welburn” but had been unable to learn more about the colonel. Papillon had for years conducted research concerning the liberation of Lèves and had written to governmental and military agencies, both in France and in the United States, seeking information concerning the colonel, without success. He enlisted the help of Marianne Pradoura, an American living in Chartres married to a Frenchman, to translate Papillon’s letters into English. With a stroke of luck, he contacted a diligent archivist at the US Army Personnel Records Center in Saint Louis who consulted an Army history volume using the colonel’s unusual first name, Welborn, and found that a Colonel Welborn Barton Griffith had been killed in Lèves on August 16, 1944.

  With more help from Mrs. Pradoura, he placed an “In Search Of . . .” ad in the April 1995 Retired Officers Association magazine.

  Nell Griffith, then eighty-three, and General Griffin both read the magazine. By mid-March, letters and phone calls to Lèves had finally led to the family learning what happened to Colonel Griffith, and the people of Lèves finally learned that the American who had been killed liberating their town had also been the man credited with saving the cathedral.

  Chartres and Lèves officials invited Alice and General Griffin and their families to be honored in three ceremonies in Chartres and Lèves on the August 16, 1995, anniversary of Griffith’s death. At the cathedral, by special invitation, they passed in procession through the Royal Portal and then heard the “Star Spangled Banner” performed on the cathedral’s organ for only the second time in history. Canon Legaux welcomed the guests with a speech, expressing regret that Nell had been too frail to attend, and thanking Mrs. Pradoura and Mr. Papillon for their assistance. He paid homage to all soldiers of the liberation, including those of the Resistance, and said,

  May this moment of shared friendship be not only a moment of remembrance but also an appeal so that no matter where we are or who we might be, we will become artisans of peace in the mutual respect of our differences. . . .

  A phrase from Andre Malraux seems to me to be particularly appropriate for the ceremonies today. He wrote: “The only tomb worthy of a hero is in the hearts of the living.”

  What lessons emerge from the story of the Chartres windows, and Griffith and the cathedral?

  One is that we cannot let our differences divide us, because they will, if left unchecked. When people of good will work together and agree to tolerate, listen to, and compromise with each other, humankind can accomplish great things and save the world—or at least a small slice of it.

  Griff brings to mind one of Shakespeare’s unsung characters, the servant in King Lear, one of Cornwall’s minions who was long accustomed to doing Cornwall’s bidding but who objects to Cornwall’s torture of Gloucester and speaks up, compelled to stop what he is witnessing. In response, Cornwall runs the servant through with his sword, killing him.

  Griff’s situation is different, of course, but we feel Griff’s loss no less.
Scholar Stephen Greenblatt explains, “Shakespeare did not believe that the common people could be counted upon as a bulwark against tyranny. . . . In King Lear’s nameless servant, however, he created a figure who serves as the very essence of popular resistance to tyrants. That man refuses to remain silent and watch. It costs him his life, but he stands up for human decency. Though he is a very minor figure with only a handful of lines, he is one of Shakespeare’s great heroes.”

  Griff, too, was not of the elite military class. He was of the common people. Yet he spoke up and gained perhaps an uncanny sense of inner strength that almost catapulted him into action—leading the way for the armored column in a manner that took him out of his element and cost him his life. That he stumbled in that process, by perhaps needlessly exposing himself to danger, does not require that we honor him less.

  A person may be remembered, may leave a mark or a message, not only by what he writes but also by other art he creates or by his actions. Colonel Griffith will be remembered for his actions.

  Griffith’s story is one of loss and sacrifice, but also, if Griffith consciously acted to save the cathedral, his sacrifice is akin to the stories of miracles, blessings, healings, birth, death, and resurrection reflected in Chartres’ very windows for nine hundred years.

  AFTERWORD: AUTHOR’S NOTE

  THIS IS A WORK OF NONFICTION. MY SOURCES HAVE BEEN NOTED IN THE text, notes, and bibliography. I have considered the correctness and reliability of various sources and compared them to each other and have drawn inferences based on the entirety of what I have uncovered and application of my common sense. In certain segments, I have told the story as I believe it happened. In some contexts, I have reasoned from historical context and included details that I believe would have been present, including, in a few instances, adopting names for characters who are known to have existed and for whom I deemed selecting a name necessary in order to communicate the story with reasonable efficiency, avoiding qualification that would have detracted from my ability to communicate what happened. That is, as Professor Mazzeo has written, the “details are, in all cases, based on the scaffolding of known facts, but where there are gaps in the scaffolding—and some gaps are signifi-cant—I have made the leap of inference based on my best judgment and larger knowledge of the period and the people about whom I am writing” (Mazzeo, Irena’s Children, 267).

  I have also, in isolated cases, offered a description of what I believe were certain characters’ own ideas or concerns or sensations, and I reframed or created some limited dialogue. In each such case, this again is based on my extrapolation from the “factual scaffolding,” as Mazzeo would put it, and my sense of the speaking character based on my research, including witnesses’ recollections. For any readers who care to evaluate the record on their own, I can be reached through the publisher.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  IN MY RESEARCH FOR THIS BOOK, THE GRIFFITH FAMILY MEMBERS were kind, generous, and helpful, beginning with the colonel’s daughter, Alice Irving, and her husband, Frederick Irving (US Army, ret.), and including offspring of the colonel’s siblings and in-laws—Kevin Coffey, David Coffey, Dick Griffith, Jane Henegar, and Thomas N. Griffin (US Army, ret.). In addition, Gary Hendrix, husband of a deceased niece of the colonel, provided immeasurable help to me by assembling items collected from the family and selecting from voluminous correspondence by Virginia Harrison (Tiny) DeKay, a priceless resource. I am grateful to the family for sharing with me their memories, impressions, photos, and documents. I also owe gratitude to Eugene Schulz for relating to me his World War II experiences, including from his time working for the colonel, and for producing his memoir.

  I also thank Alice Irving for acquainting me with Bertrand Papillon and thank Thomas Griffin for introducing me to Marianne Pradoura. I thank Mr. Papillon for generously guiding me and my wife through his museum, Lèves, and the cathedral. And I am grateful to Mrs. Pradoura for producing her translation of the diary of Father Douin and for sharing with me the remarkable story of discovery of the diary.

  For her excellent research assistance and translation work, I am grateful to Crystal Bennes, who is also a talented stained-glass artist.

  All translations from the original French of quoted writings of Achille Carlier, Jean Zay, Jean Moulin, and Jean Trouvelot (except for the Trouvelot Passive Defense Report) are by Crystal Bennes. Translations of excerpts from Theirry Baritaud’s La Depose brochure are by Noelle Britte. All other translations from the original French are by me, for which I employed open-source tools (and in addition, for translation of the Trouvelot Passive Defense Report, French transcription assistance of Eva Morath), and for any errors in all such translations I assume sole responsibility.

  I am deeply grateful to Mike Magnuson for his mentoring and editorial consulting that improved most pages of this manuscript, and I thank Scott Korb, Sanjiv Bhattacharya, and Debra Gwartney—together with Mike and members of the faculty of the Pacific University MFA faculty—for their guidance.

  My thanks also to Timothy K. Clark and Luke Norczyk for reading my manuscript and sharing their insightful comments.

  I also thank Michael Clement, Patrick Cointepoix, and Thierry Baritaud for generously furnishing photographs.

  Time and again, people who did not know me generously answered my questions and introduced me to other resources. They included writers Bill Neal, Elizabeth Karlsgodt, Mary Clooney-Robinson, Michael J. Klug, Claudine Lautier, and engineer/writer Thierry Baritaud. The staffs of the following institutions also graciously aided me: in Paris, the Médiathèque d’accueil et de recherche des archives nationales, Mediathèque Charenton, and Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine; in Chartres, Archives départmentales de la Eure-et-Loir, International Stained-Glass Centre, and Diocese of Chartres. In the United States, I sought information from the United States Military Academy at West Point; US National Archives and Records Administration; Twentieth Corps Association; Cushing Memorial Library; Archives of Texas A&M University; Corps of Cadets Center at Texas A&M University; Firestone Library of Princeton University; Salt Lake City Public Library; Library of Congress; Monuments Men Foundation; Goldsboro News-Argus, North Carolina; and in Quanah, Texas: Hardeman County Historical Museums, Thompson Sawyer Public Library, and Quanah Tribune-Chief.

  My deepest gratitude goes to my wife, Elizabeth Russell Pollak, lost to cancer in 2019, to whom I dedicate this book. I cherish her, and we miss her more than words can express. She lived and breathed this project alongside me from the beginning. Without her steady support—giving me space and sustaining inspiration—this book would not have emerged.

  I endeavor to stand, of course, on the shoulders of the thousands of writers and scholars who have devoted energy, passion, time, and effort to studying and writing about Chartres Cathedral. The concept of dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants has been traced to Bernard of Chartres in the twelfth century and repeated often. A 1989 bibliography of publications concerning the cathedral consumes nine hundred pages: Jan van der Meulen, Deborah Cole, and Rüdiger Hoyer, Chartres: Sources and Literary Interpretation; A Critical Bibliography (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1989).

  NOTES ON SOURCES

  NOTES TO PREFACE

  “More than three thousand years”: Susannah Cullinane, Hamdi Alkhshali, and Mohammed Tawfeeq, “Tracking a Trail of Historical Obliteration: ISIS Trumpets Destruction of Nimrud,” CNN, April 13, 2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/09/world/iraq-isis-heritage/.

  “He had spent his life preserving antiquities”: Frederik Pleitgen, “Saddest Job in the World? The Race to Save Syria’s History from Obliteration,” CNN, August 20, 2015, https://www.cnn.com/2015/08/19/middleeast/syria-antiquities-damascus/index.html.

  “Syrian official”: Syria’s director of the General Department of Antiquities and Museums, Maamoun Abdulkarim, quoted in Pleitgen, “Saddest Job in the World.”

  “Refusing to pledge allegiance to ISIS”: Don Melvin, Ralph Ellis, and Salma Abdelaziz, “Group: ISIS Beheads Expert Who
Refused to Reveal Location of Valuable Antiquities,” CNN, updated August 20, 2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/18/middleeast/isis-executes-antiquities-expert/.

  “Looting architectural sites”: Melvin, Ellis, and Abdelaziz, “ISIS Beheads Expert”; Cullinane, Alkhshali, and Tawfeeq, “Tracking a Trail,” quoting Stuart W. Manning, director of the Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies and chair of the Department of Classics at Cornell University.

  “Violation of history”: Elise Blackwell, Hunger (New York: Little, Brown, 2003), 135.

  “Lectures about great cathedrals”: William R. Cook, The Cathedral, DVD lecture series (Chantilly, VA: Teaching Company, 2010).

  “Multiple blog references”: For example, Steven Payne, “Top Comments: The American Solider Who Saved Chartres Cathedral,” Daily Kos, December 20, 2014, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/20/1350669/-Top-Comments-The-American-GI-who-saved-Chartres-Cathedral. This is one example of many similar blog posts. Another, with links to more, is by Dennis Aubrey, “The Monuments Man of Chartres,” American Friends of Chartres, accessed March 28, 2019, http://www.friendsofchartres.org/aboutchartres/colonelwelborngriffin/.

  “Common source”: His citation reads as follows: The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pride in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross (Posthumously) to Colonel Welborn Barton Griffith, Jr. (ASN: 0-16194), United States Army, for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy while serving as Operations Officer (G-3) with Headquarters, XX Corps, in action against enemy forces on 16 August 1944 at Chartres and Lèves, France. On 16 August 1944, Colonel Griffith entered the city of Chartres, France, in order to check the actual locations and dispositions of units of the 7th Armored Division which was occupying the city. Upon observing fire being directed at the cathedral in the center of the city, with utter disregard for his own safety, Colonel Griffith, accompanied by an enlisted man, searched the cathedral and finding that there were no enemy troops within, signaled for cessation of fire. Continuing his inspection of outlying positions north of the city, he suddenly encountered about fifteen of the enemy. He fired several shots at them, then proceeded to the nearest outpost of our forces at which point a tank was located. Arming himself with an M1 rifle and again with complete disregard for his own safety, Colonel Griffith climbed upon the tank directing it to the enemy forces he had located. During the advance of the tank he was exposed to intense enemy machine-gun, rifle, and rocket-launcher fire and it was during this action, in the vicinity of Lèves, France, that he was killed.