“The M5—about the size of . . . a minivan”: On the tank he was likely more exposed than back at the cathedral when he had circled its perimeter before inspecting the inside of the building. At the cathedral he’d had good reason to think there had been Germans looking down on him. But on the tank, although he didn’t suspect Germans would be lying in wait by the side of the road, he should have.
“The two-lane street narrowed”: The building was known to locals as the windmill of Sainte Josépha.
“Once the shooting erupted”: Letter from Dorothea Griffith to Tiny, Lawrence, and Philip Griffith, dated August 1961, quoting from Dorothea’s conversation with a Dr. Barre, who had been sergeant major of the G-1 Section of Twentieth Corps during the battle for Chartres and knew Griffith well and had great respect for him. Barre, in G-1 Section, handled the details of preparation of Griff’s body for burial.
“Griff’s left hand still held his carbine”: Foree, “They Nearly Stopped the War.”
“They brought chairs”: Citation, US Army Headquarters, Fort Jay, awarding Distinguished Service Cross, addressed to Mrs. Welborn B. Griffith Jr., Brooklyn, New York, November 1944, “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.”
“Lost to history”: Robert E. Cullen, memorandum to Adjutant General (Awards and Decorations Branch), Washington, D.C., on behalf of Commanding General, September 15, 1944.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 23
“Father Launay”: Santin, Derniers combats, 3–5.
“Father Douin”: Douin, Diary, 9.
“A handful of American news correspondents”: Currivan, “Troops Spare Chartres Cathedral”; Gene Currivan, “Chartres Tower Hit by Nazi Shell; But Cathedral as a Whole Is Virtually Intact—Statuary, Glass in Safekeeping,” New York Times, August 25, 1944 (wired August 17; delayed), 3, https://www.nytimes.com/1944/08/25/archives/chartres-tower-hit-by-nazi-shell-but-cathedral-as-a-whole-is.html.
The reporting events were jointly experienced by Currivan and fellow reporters Joseph Driscoll of the Herald Tribune and David McNicholl of the Australian Consolidated Press. See Joseph Driscoll’s account in Driscoll, “Chartres Cathedral.” Veteran war correspondent Gaskill, almost twenty years after the events of August 16, 1944, wrote a narrative describing his experience of that 1944 day in Chartres with companions and war correspondents Clark Lee and Bob Reuben, both deceased by the time of the publication. Gaskill, “The Day We Saved Chartres Cathedral.”
“No serious structural damage”: Currivan, “Troops Spare Chartres Cathedral.”
“Attractive to the German snipers”: Currivan, “Troops Spare Chartres Cathedral.”
“Father Guédou”: Jean Guédou (1914–1986).
“Mr. Tuvache managed to survive”: Ellipses in Father Douin’s original.
“Morning’s casualty list”: Casualty report, August 17, 1944, obtained from Alice Griffith Irving.
The corps also lost another senior officer, Major Alfred J. Scott, III, in Chartres. He was one of the original corps liaison officers. He was killed with his driver while delivering dispatches to other units. Eastman and the US Army, “The Campaigns of Normandy,” 79, 83.
“Half dozen snipers”: Driscoll, “Chartres Cathedral.”
“Climbing, crawling, and stooping”: Gene Currivan, “Chartres Tower Hit.”
“The Germans weren’t giving up”: The Thirty-Eighth Armored Infantry Battalion started with an attack on Chartres on August 18 but was held up by friendly artillery fire. The attack continued on the next day, and the battalion met the Twenty-Third Armored Infantry Battalion in the town. One platoon of C Company was captured by enemy forces but eventually—after the intervening German surrender—was called upon to guard the German prisoners. United States Army, After Action Report of the Thirty-Eighth Armored Infantry Division, Seventh Armored Division, August 1944, pp. 2–3 (text available for download at “7th Armored Division: 38th Armored Infantry Battalion: 38 AIB After Action Reports,” at https://www.7tharmddiv.org/docrep/#4408).
“Many FFI complained”: Roger Joly, La Libération de Chartres: Récits et témoignages rassemblés et commentés (Paris: Le Cherche Midi Ed, 1994), 131–32.
“Griffith gave everything he had”: Foree, “They Nearly Stopped the War.”
“Gaskill’s evoked a somewhat different scene”: Gaskill, “The Day We Saved Chartres Cathedral.”
“The magazine’s editors stood by their story”: In their letter back to Philip, the editors wrote, on October 18, 1965, Your letter didn’t come as a surprise to the Researcher who did the pre-publication check of “The Day We Saved Chartres Cathedral” while she was working in our Paris office. [She wrote:] “I heard at least half a dozen stories from American and Frenchmen alike about how they had saved Chartres Cathedral—and no doubt, that all may have. The important thing is of course, that they did.”
There were about six days, during the third week of August 1944 when the general confusion created by the advance of General Patton’s Third US Army (Twentieth Corps), and the retreat of the Germans, Chartres’ spires were doubtless suspected, by at least a dozen different groups of American soldiers and French maquis, of harboring German snipers. Each time some wanted to fire first and check later and no doubt some insisted on checking first, volunteering to climb the spires themselves, thus saving Chartres. In the chaos of war different people contribute to saving the same thing, but not all get heard about—though this in no way diminishes their valor.
We published Gordon Gaskill’s story—after checking it—because it was the one sent to us and we are glad to have had an opportunity to discuss it with you.
—The Editors
“Both . . . accounts . . . could have occurred”: Letter from Major General J. C. Lambert, adjutant general, to Count DeKay, April 7, 1966.
“Gaskill’s story seems . . . outweighed”: Gaskill’s story, which appeared in the general-interest publication Reader’s Digest, not in a historical or military journal, let alone a peer-reviewed one, was nonetheless defended by the editors of that publication when questioned by Griffith’s relatives after it appeared. Alice Griffith Irving noted in a March 2015 e-mail to me that she doubted that Gaskill had a personal relationship with Eisenhower that would have enabled him to pull rank on the trigger-happy lieutenant, and during her many visits to Chartres and Lèves since the war in which she met with relevant locals no one ever mentioned a crowd in the square protesting any firing or any ringing of the bell in the tower, and no druggist or hotel proprietor ever came forward. As of the time of those visits, she said, all the witnesses would not have died.
“Taper answered”: Edsel, Monuments Men, 105–108.
“His record was always superior”: Letter dated August 18, 1944, from General Walton H. Walker to Nell Griffith.
“In November 1944”: He was also awarded the American Silver Star and later the French Croix de Guerre, the Legion of Honor, the Legion of Merit, and the Purple Heart.
“The liberation of Chartres was . . . the work of the people”: Joly, La Libération, 137.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 24
“Ripped out iron window frameworks”: Jean Trouvelot, report to the Minister of National Education, March 11, 1946, Mediathèque Charenton (Paris), 81 28 16.
“Open to the elements”: Jean Trouvelot, report to the Minister of National Education, March 11, 1946, Mediathèque Charenton (Paris), 81 28 16.
“René Capitant”: A leftist professor, René Capitant had also participated in formation of the Resistance movement Combat in the Clermont-Ferrand area but early in the war had fled to Algeria, where he taught as a law professor at the University of Algiers.
“Jean Verrier”: Verrier had tangled with the Nazis and the Kunstschutz during the war, and in spring 1944 he had worked to safeguard the Bayeux Tapestry from Allied bombing by moving it to Paris and th
en to another safe location. Carola Hicks, The Bayeux Tapestry: The Life Story of a Masterpiece (New York: Random House, 2011), 215, 235, 262.
“Seventy were too dilapidated”: Froidevaux, chief architect of historic monuments from 1939 to 1983, did not yet know that he would be appointed project manager of Chartres Cathedral twenty-nine years later. In 1953, he was appointed assistant to the General Inspectorate of Historical Monuments and, in 1974, inspector general of historic monuments. In 1981, he prepared a major study on the conservation of the Chartres windows. Yves-Marie Froidevaux, “La cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres,” Monuments historiques de la France 23, no. 1 (1977): 65–72; Yves-Marie Froidevaux, Techniques de l’architecture ancienne: Construction et Restauration, 4th ed. (Liège: Pierre Mardaga, 2001); and Yves Marie Froidevaux, “La travaux de restauration de la crypte,” Notre-Dame de Chartres, no. 29, December, 1976, 4.
“Annunciation panel”: Panel 1, located as the bottom-corner panel on the south edge of the center lancet window. Malcolm Miller describes it as follows: “In this first panel, the angel Gabriel, with two fingers raised in salutation and carrying a herald’s scepter like Mercury, announces to Mary, ‘Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son and shalt call his name Jesus.’ Mary has risen from her seat, and her gesture expresses surprise.” Miller, Chartres Cathedral, 32.
“Incarnation Window”: Baritaud, “The Light of Chartres,” 48. The West Rose celebrates Christ’s Second Coming as judge and is placed above the three twelfth-century lancet windows that narrate Christ’s first coming. Malcolm Miller wrote that they face west “so that the sun sets upon the evening of time.” Miller, Chartres Cathedral, 88.
“The cathedral of light”: Baritaud, “The Light of Chartres,” 48.
“Something that would stand forever”: Footnote in original omitted from this quotation. Edsel, Monuments Men, xvii, quoting Captain Walker Hancock, US First Army, who was forty-three when he had the experience in Chartres Cathedral. Born in Saint Louis, Missouri, Hancock was a renowned sculptor who had won the prestigious Prix de Rome before the war and designed the Army Air Medal in 1942.
“Carlier published criticisms”: Carlier, “Study.”
“Le Monde”: Albert Mousset, “Les vitraux de Chartres: Ont-ils été replacés à l’envers?” Le Monde, August 2, 1950, https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1950/08/02/les-vitraux-de-chartres-ont-ils-ete-replaces-a-l-envers_2057258_1819218.html.
“Trouvelot . . . explanation”: Jean Trouvelot, report to the director of architecture, Office of Architecture, Minister of National Education, September 11, 1950.
“Maunoury . . . refuting”: Trouvelot wrote: The reinstallation of these 7,595 panels has given rise to criticism of seven of them.
There was, in effect, an error in the replacement of three panels:
High choir window, thuribuler angel, the panel of the hands of the angel placed upside down. This panel has just been put back in place.
Chapel of the Martyrs in the ambulatory (Saint-Chéron), two panels were inverted. These panels have just been put back in place.
By contrast in the north side aisle, the window of Saint-Eustache, two panels have changed position in the reinstallation in order to correspond with a more-logical presentation of the scenes (nothing proves that these panels, removed many times over the centuries, were, before 1939, in their original order).
In the north ambulatory, Saint-Julien l’Hospitalier, one has criticised the installation of two square panels of the corner border of the frame at the bottom of the bay. These panels, around 0.20 × 0.20, are in place.
Concerning the reinstallation of the panel depicting a dove in the rose of the northern transept cross, we draw attention to the four doves of that rose, positioned side-by-side in its foils. These windows were executed in the fourteenth century. The same cartoon was used to make the two doves in the center, which were then reversed for symmetry. Another cartoon was used to make the two doves in profile, and these two panels, made using the same cartoon, were not then reversed as they should have been. As a result, in order to obtain the symmetry, it was originally necessary to complete one of these panels with the painted side facing the exterior, a troublesome orientation for the conservator of stained glass—who must reposition the painting toward the interior of the building. In fact, the painting that creates the design is delicate; the firing process somewhat incorporates it into the glass, but in the long run the atmospheric conditions will eat away at the paint and ultimately erase it. We have judged it preferable to reinstall the panel in view of what is best from a conservation standpoint.
In the Middle Ages and especially in the fourteenth century, one often used the same cartoon for many different characters and was content to modify various attributes or colorations. We also come across errors or inversions that were more or less rectified at the time of placement. In general, it is the overall effect that counts, and one must analyse the monument very closely to identity all of the various anomalies dating from the time of construction.
Jean Trouvelot, report to the Director of Architecture, Office of Architecture, Minister of National Education, September 11, 1950, Mediathèque Charenton (Paris), 81 28 16, pp. 2–3.
“I thought it may be of some use”: Trouvelot, report to the Director of Architecture, 2–3.
NOTES TO EPILOGUE
“Other family members”: Among them, standing in the center of the line, was Griff’s first wife, Alice Torrey. Alice would marry a third husband a year later, also an Army colonel, in November 1945.
“DSC”: General Orders: Headquarters, Third US Army, General Orders No. 75 (October 21, 1944).
“Silver Star”: The citation, which had been issued prior to the DSC, bestowed this prior award (posthumously) “for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity against the enemy during World War II. Colonel Griffith’s gallant actions and dedicated devotion to duty, without regard for his own life, were in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.” General Orders: Headquarters, Twentieth Corps, General Orders No. 24 and later revoked by No. 41 (October 24, 1944), inasmuch as the DSC was awarded for the same action pursuant to General Orders No. 75.
“Some were incensed by any suggestion”: Sergeant Major Barre, for example, who had served in the G-1 Section (Personnel) of the corps at the time of Griff’s death, had known all about the efforts General Walker had expended to get Griffith reassigned from Leavenworth to the corps. Barre was incensed at the idea, intimated by Foree’s 1945 Dallas Morning News article, that Griffith’s actions at Lèves might have been foolhardy. Griffith “was . . . aggressive but cautious and . . . he would never have done anything foolish,” Barre said. Dr. Barre, quoted in a 1961 letter from Griffith’s sister Dorothea to her sister, Tiny, and her brothers, Philip and Lawrence.
Dugan, who had been with Griffith on the sixteenth, both at the cathedral and on the road to Lèves, wrote in a 1966 letter to Griff’s brother Philip that Dugan found Griffith “to be one of the gamest men I ever saw [sic] he had more guts then [sic] most men and was not afraid of anything, and he would not send his men where he would not go himself and treated me the finest [sic] . . . as far as the cathedral it happened the way the citation read [sic]. I was there when it happened.” Letter from Dugan to Philip Griffith, received by the latter in 1966.
Cullen, who had been with Griff on the sixteenth “from the moment we left Corps Hqrs until a few minutes before his death,” said he had “read the magazine article in which the writer [Gaskill] told of doing exactly what ‘Grif’ did. When I finished reading it I told my wife that the writer was [not being truthful] and explained to her what had actually happened on the August day in 1944 in Chartres. It does not seem to me even remotely possible that the reporter who wrote the article could have done what he claims.”
Mel Stark, who was also with Griff at the cathedral and at the Thirty-Eighth’s assembly area on the sixteenth, wrote
to Philip Griffith in 1970: I feel compelled to say . . . that here was a tremendous person. Had Griff lived I believe he could have worn many stars, rising to the tops of his profession in only a few more years, and in the zone where the competition was extremely tough. He was a great American, just naturally, and epitomized a breed which if not gone, is disappearing far too rapidly for the good of our nation. He is gone a long time, but I’m sure he is well remembered; I, and most of the people who were close to him, know how he encircled our lives, and frequently under the kind of conditions we prefer to forget.
Letter from Melville I. Stark to Philip Griffith, April 7, 1970.
“His main mission that fateful day”: Letter from Alice Griffith Irving to the author, dated December 2014, confirmed by interview with the author in Jacksonville, Florida, on January 12, 2015.
“Would not have been leading a column in such a vehicle”: Also, Kevin Coffey pointed out to me that there remains a discrepancy between Mr. Schulz’s account—“partly, he [Schulz] admitted, based not on his direct knowledge but from his later correspondence with my great uncle’s family—and the impression my uncle’s descendants also have, is that there was an actual formal order to destroy the cathedral and that Colonel Griffith’s actions led to the rescinding of that order. However the account on my side of the family . . . is less dramatic. In the account I grew up with, there was not a direct order . . . but rather the Colonel simply came across indiscriminate firing directed at the cathedral.” E-mail from Kevin Coffey, December 16, 2014.
Although others have either asserted or implied that the Germans had spotters in the towers to guide artillery and that an American order was issued to shell the cathedral based on unconfirmed suspicion that it was being occupied by the Germans and that Griffith gained permission to voluntarily cross enemy lines, no evidence has been found to support those assertions.
Saving the Light at Chartres Page 44
