Saving the Light at Chartres

by Victor A. Pollak

  “Each tent contained cots surrounding a stove”: Eugene G. Schulz, The Ghost in General Patton’s Third Army: The Memoirs of Eugene G. Schulz during His Service in the United States Army in World War II (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2012), 11–13.

  “Lifetime of honorable dealings”: Humphrey wrote in part, In these days when honor among nations has become a lost virtue, I think any citation, in the realm of honor, no matter how local, should not go unspoken.

  I have in mind a man to whom honor was not a creed but a habit.

  Honorable dealing was the basis of his business and professional life.

  Cheating, a penny either one way or the other, was unthinkable.

  Honor extended farther than business transactions, however. It extended to thinking and believing. It extended to all human relationships.

  It was a virtue that never was compromised. It almost was a way of life.

  In involved straight thinking and straight talking. Where the chips fell was only incidental.

  Honorable dealing, to this man, involved no dodges, no subterfuge, no saying-one-thing-while-thinking-another, because honor, truth, and straightforwardness went hand in hand. . . .

  I never heard him mention honor. It wasn’t something to be talked. But you knew what he felt about men in places of responsibility who lacked it.

  It belonged in business, in public life, in community dealings, in private life. The world needs more men with that ideal.

  Through a long life, W. B. Griffith contributed that, more than anybody else, to his community. And although I have had the honor to be his son-in-law, I could have said these things just as freely, if not more freely, if I hadn’t been.

  Walter R. Humphrey, “The Home Towner,” Temple Daily Telegram, September 8, 1942.

  “The normal pattern”: The training—in the toughest desert conditions with infantry, artillery, tanks, and aircraft—included forced marches day and night, firearms disassembly and reassembly, hand grenades and explosives, chemical weapons, communications linkage and cabling, art and application of camouflage, bridge building, and attack-destroy-and-move-on battle tactics.

  “Griff’s corps would be relocating to Fort Campbell”: The corps was then still called the Fourth Armored Corps.

  NOTES TO CHAPTER 12

  “Full of picture books, with pages of colored glass”: Philip Ball, Universe of Stone: A Biography of Chartres Cathedral (New York: Harper, 2008), 233–34.

  “A metaphor for the divine”: Transillumination, “Metaphor for the Divine: Brian Clarke on Stained Glass,” YouTube video, 3:52, November 13, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYaS0NfLODQ.

  “Stained-glass windows changed the light”: One observer—writing of the difference between literary fiction and genre fiction—points to stained glass as a metaphor, noting the way a stained-glass window “changes what’s on the other side, and the way you change perspective to see what’s out there . . . a huge part of the experience.” Katherine Locke, “Stained Glass Windows: Reflecting on a Writing Excuses Podcast Episode,” Katherine Locke (blog), January 31, 2017, https://www.katherinelockebooks.com/blog/2017/01/31/stained-glass-windows-reflecting-on-a-writing-excuses-podcast-episode.

  “‘Something improper’ about this untransformed light”: Ball, Universe of Stone, 234. In addition, back in August when Minister Zay visited the cathedral while the windows were being removed, he noticed the brightness of the light resulting from removal. He would write in his diary years later, “through the wide windows, a brutal light, no longer filtered by the stained-glass windows, entered the cathedral, blazed in the innermost corners of the apse, beamed down upon the defenseless altars. It seems that the sanctuary had been violated, left to the forces of nature.” Zay, Souvenirs et solitude, 307.

  “A grandiose building”: The new palace was intended as an official showcase for 1930s creativity. Forty sculptors, twenty painters, and an artisan metalworker collaborated on its inside and exterior. Four years later, Adolf Hitler would be photographed in front of the palace during his tour of Paris. It would also be the site at which the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and it served as the initial headquarters of NATO while its new headquarters was being built.

  The meeting was held at the palace for reasons not entirely clear—likely because of the large number of attendees and because of its celebratory nature—but the location did not work out well. The minutes indicate that the acoustics were poor and there was no projection equipment to display the many photographs taken during the removal of the windows from various sites, which instead were passed during the meeting by hand from attendee to attendee. Minutes of the meeting of the Historic Monuments Commission, February 23, 1940. Jean-Daniel Pariset, ed., “23 février 1940,” Procès-verbaux de la Commission des monuments historiques, de 1848 à 1950, conservés à la Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine (Charenton-le-Pont) (Paris: Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine, 2014), http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/monumentshistoriques/Annees/1940.html#93215. The minutes from 1848 to 1950 are preserved in the Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine (Charenton-le-Pont, Paris).

  “Pivotal impact on the discovery of looted works of art”: Robert M. Edsel, The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History (New York: Center Street Hachette Book Group, 2009), xviii. See also Lynn H. Nicholas, The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War (New York: Vintage, 1995). Valland was then forty-five.

  “Jaujard . . . would be appointed . . . director general”: Jacques Jaujard was then forty-five, and was later appointed to other significant positions. During the war he would also manage to successfully remove artworks from the Louvre and place them in Provence—against the orders of the Vichy government.

  “Führermuseum”: Edsel, Monuments Men, 24.

  “Stones are masterfully carved and fitted”: Ball, Universe of Stone, 197.

  “They would have known”: Those present at the meetings of the Historic Monuments Commission during both wars included the following, present at both the February 23 meeting and one or more of the meetings relating to Chartres during World War I: Louis Bonnier (1856–1946), architect of the city of Paris and director of architectural services and walks and plantations of the city of Paris; Pierre Pacquet (1875–1959), diocesan architect from Cambrai and Bordeaux from 1901 and from Blois from 1904, inspector general of historic monuments from 1920; and Gabriel E. M. Ruprich-Robert (1859–1953) (son of Victor Ruprich-Robert), chief architect for historic monuments in France’s departments of Puy-de-Dôme, Eure-et-Loir, and Eure.

  “Moulin was unique in his dedication”: Charles Pomaret, minister of the interior for a time, who in 1940 served for a short time in the first Pétain cabinet, wrote years later of being told by former minister of the interior Albert Sarraut “that Moulin was not only the youngest prefect in France but also one of the two best.” “He was distinguished ‘by his calm lucidity, and his shining humanity, which impressed all who came into contact with him.’” Alan Clinton, Jean Moulin, 1899–1943: The French Resistance and the Republic (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 79.

  “Hérault”: In 1917, Moulin’s father had found him a position in the office of the prefect there, where he worked off and on through law school and until early 1922, when he was appointed prefect of Savoie. Four years later, Jacquier would become secretary general to the prefect of Hérault, and even later, in 1937, he would become prefect of the Dordogne. This commonality of experience in Montpellier between prefectural officials Moulin and Jacquier—and the friendship between architects Jean Trouvelot and Froidevaux—probably played a role in Laurent’s team being able to target and qualify a haven for the Chartres windows, and then for Moulin to be able to quickly arrange for inspection and qualification of the site and to work out the legal and financial details with Jacquier to secure the site.

  “First air-raid sirens sou
nded on May 10”: Risser, France Under Fire, 86.

  “Parisian suburbanites reported hearing cannon fire”: Risser, France Under Fire, 86.

  “Belgian refugees swarmed into France”: It may just have been the growing pressure from these May events that forced the Fine Arts Administration to find a storage location. Amid countrywide panic and uncertainty as to what parts of France would be occupied, the administration likely concentrated its search for locations far to the southwest but away from the Atlantic coast.

  Frightened refugees, including French and even foreign men intent on joining the Resistance fighters outside the city, could even have taken refuge in the crypt, among the one thousand wooden crates that had been strapped and nailed in place—accompanied by smells of food scraps and cries of children crammed into the tight space—as written by novelist Johanna Skibsrud. Johanna Skibsrud, Quartet for the End of Time: A Novel (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014), 365–66. If word of refugees living among the crates had reached Jean Moulin in his office at the prefecture, pressures on Moulin and his staff to find a safe site for the windows would have ratcheted to a new peak.

  “Yves-Marie Froidevaux”: He would later go on to hold similar positions in three other departments and would become inspector general of historic monuments and would be a professor at the National School of Fine Arts and at the School of Chaillot (Center for Higher Studies in the History and Preservation of Ancient Monuments—CESHCMA—in Paris).

  “Town of La Tour-Blanche”: It is in the region of New Aquitaine in the department of the Dordogne, the borough of Perigueux, the canton of Ribérac. According to the General Inventory of Cultural Heritage (Inventaire général du patrimoine culturel), the castle is the historic former home of Achards and Dejean de Jovelle and later became the property of Joussain. “Inventaire général du patrimoine culturel,” Ministère de la Culture (website), archived on December 10, 1026, at http://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.culture.gouv.fr%2Fpublic%2Fmistral%2Fmerimee_fr%3FACTION%3DCHERCHER%26FIELD_1%3DREF%26VALUE_1%3DIA24000861. At the time, the mayor of Cerles was François Mazières, serving from May 1935 to May 1953.

  “Listed in the General Inventory of Cultural Heritage”: It is known as the Mérimée database. It contains information from the Historical Monuments Service and the General Inventory of Cultural Heritage and is named after the writer Prosper Mérimée, first chairman of the Historic Monuments Commission and also inspector general of historic monuments.

  “On June 3 . . . German bombers attacked the Chartres airfield”: Peter Scott Janes and Keith Janes, “Rudolf Ptacek,” Conscript Heroes, http://www.conscript-heroes.com/Art01-Rudolph-Ptacek-960.html, accessed June 2, 2018.

  NOTES TO CHAPTER 13

  “Operation Paula”: The German codename given for the World War II Luftwaffe offensive operation to destroy the remaining units of the French air force in 1940. Eleven hundred aircraft were part of the operation, which was launched June 3. Ron Mackay, Heinkel He 111, Crowood Aviation Series (Marlborough: Crowood Press, 2003), 10; Christopher Chant, The Encyclopedia of Codenames of World War II (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987), 10, 62.

  “Second bombing raid”: Janes and Janes, “Rudolf Ptacek.”

  “Journalists reported”: “German Bombers Hit Paris,” United Press International, June 3, 1940 (text available online at https://www.upi.com/Archives/1940/06/03/German-bombers-hit-Paris/4413583280132/).

  “Attacked twenty-eight railways”: Edward Hooton, Luftwaffe at War: Blitzkrieg in the West (London: Chervron/Ian Allan, 2007), 84.

  “Foreigners and displaced persons”: Presumably Jean Chadel would have offered some payment and food to the workers, as had been offered back in August and September.

  “Roger Grand”: Identity not confirmed. According to notes linked in the minutes of the Historic Monuments Commission of February 24, 1940, this refers possibly to Roger Grand (1874–1962), historian and French politician, a student of the National School of Chartres (archivist paleographer) who began his career as an archivist in the Department of Archives of Cantal, where he provided the impetus to create the society of Haute-Auvergne, and then became professor of history of law at the School of Chartres, while continuing to pursue farming. He presided over the National Union of Agricultural Unions and served as senator of Morbhian from 1927 to 1933. Pariset, “23 février 1940.”

  “Line up more volunteers”: He would also have made calls to Mastorakis to corral ropes and dollies and pushcarts and more men to be on hand when needed throughout the day at both the cathedral and the rail spur. In addition, he would have made calls and sent telegrams to Jacquier and Herpé to wrangle trucks to meet the two trains in the Dordogne and haul crates into the trucks, vans to be available at the road closest to Fongrenon to shuttle the crates off the trains onto trucks (to get them closer to the quarry), and smaller vans to shuttle the crates up the dirt road to Fongrenon. He also would have made calls to scrounge men to haul the crates onto handcarts and then up into the quarry and made still more calls to line up armed guards to watch over the crates around the clock in the quarry for the coming weeks and months, and maybe years, as long as the crates would have to remain sequestered.

  “Work for Air Minister Pierre Cot”: During the latter portion of that time, from mid-1937 to April 1939, Jean Moulin ran a program called Aviation Populaire, intended to democratize aeronautical skill and enthusiasm and popularize aviation.

  “Official residence”: Clinton, Jean Moulin, 70.

  “Looking for a way out of the war”: Risser, France Under Fire, 92–93.

  “115–140 men”: There would have been three dozen men in two shifts, totaling seventy-two men, plus another dozen men to handle the carts, plus three men in each truck (another twenty to forty-five). There would also have been men on each boxcar, a minimum of nine in all.

  “At dusk, the locomotive pulled out”: Baritaud, La depose, 5.

  “No way for a locomotive to get through”: Jean Trouvelot, Report to the Minister of National Education, March 11, 1946, Mediathèque Charenton (Paris), 81 28 16; Thierry Baritaud, “The Light of Chartres in the Périgordian Dark,” Nontronnaises Chronicles, Journal of the Historical and Archaeological Society of Périgord, no. 23 (2007): 48.

  “An explosion . . . destroyed all nearby railcars”: Sources conflict as to the time gap between the departure of the second train and the German attack that exploded the rail cars. According to a report from Jean Trouvelot to the minister of national education, dated March 11, 1946, “Some hours later, the carriages that had contained the cases exploded.” But according to Baritaud’s 2001 report, “As for Berchères-les-Pierres station, it was bombed four days after the departure of the two trains that carried the stained-glass windows.” Baritaud, “The Light of Chartres,” 48.

  NOTES TO CHAPTER 14

  “Crypt of Saint Lubin”: Saint Lubin—or Leobinus—had been a peasant child who, by studying, rose to become a sixth-century bishop of Chartres. He was considered by the winemakers to be their patron saint. They and the innkeepers donated the window called the Life of Leobinus (number 63), in the north aisle of the nave, in which the wine theme appears, illustrating various aspects of the cultivation of wine.

  “Emerged from the crypt holding the Camisa”: Ball, Universe of Stone, 8–9, 20–21.

  “Whereabouts of the windows must remain a secret”: Maurice Jusselin, “Eure-et-Loir Objets mobiliers: Etat des objets d art replies et des depots dans le department,” Report of Les Conservateurs des Antiquités et Objets d’Arts, Les Conservateur des Antiquités et Objets d’Arts, Chartres, May 23, 1943, Mediathèque Charenton (Paris), 80 3 63, pp. 2–4.

  “Pressure-tested veteran trainman”: Perhaps he was even a veteran of World War I who also had lived through the difficult years suffered by the French rail industry during the interwar period that had resulted in the 1938 nationalization of the French railroads. Such a veteran operator, likely hating the Boche, if he’d heard about this opportunity to pilot the train
containing the windows, would have felt compelled to volunteer to join the mission.

  “Who were the men recruited to unload”: Today we don’t know for sure, even though five months later a group of the night watchmen would inscribe their names for posterity on one of the interior walls of the quarry.

  “Avoid scrutiny of German warplanes”: In view of damage to the rail network around Paris, the locomotive would be needed back in Chartres. The engineer likely sought to make the run back to Chartres under cover of darkness.

  “Fongrenon . . . within . . . Cercles”: The castle was built in the seventeenth century. It had first been the home of a family by the name of Achards, an ancient Anglo-Saxon family name. The Dejean de Joelle family then acquired it, after which the Joussain family acquired it.

  “Finally rested at Fongrenon”: On the wall of Room 3, where the first hundred crates were stored, one of the men carved into the wall a horizontal line and an arrow pointing to it with the words 1st reduced, to mark the position of the first deposit.

  “Secrecy and security”: And the creation of the Vichy zone likely required a change of the guarding personnel. Only persons authorized could cross the demarcation line, and then only at official crossing points on presentation of an identity card and a pass delivered by German authorities responsible for the area’s civil and military administration, accompanied by a full set of documents including certificate of domestication, identity photograph, and reason for crossing, granted only in cases of urgent need (such as funerals, close relatives’ serious illness, or births, and only after complying with a series of procedures and bureaucratic delays). For persons living within ten miles of the line, exceptions were possible upon demonstration of need. But for those guarding the windows, surely the risk of breaching secrecy would have been substantial. So anyone living west of the line would have had to have been replaced with someone living east of the line. General Secretariat for the French Ministry of Defence, “The Demarcation Line,” Remembrance and Citizenship series, no. 7, accessed July 7, 2018, http://www.civs.gouv.fr/images/pdf/documents_utiles/documents_dhistoire/the_demarcation_line.pdf.