Eleven Days in August
Page 23
*
With the cease-fire poorly respected, the situation in some parts of the city grew tenser as barricades began to be built. The traditional form of Paris street fighting was re-emerging. Overnight, a barricade went up on the quai des Grands-Augustins, just opposite the Préfecture, made up of two overturned lorries and several burnt-out cars, as well as sandbags, paving stones and the odd kitchen stove.15 All over the centre of the city, people were building barricades with anything they could get their hands on: food trolleys around the market at Les Halles, massive gold letters from a shop sign reading FASHION on the rue de Rivoli, and everywhere building materials, metal grills from around the bases of Parisian trees and paving stones ripped up from the roads. Everyone was joining in – men, women and children.16
One of the men defending a barricade across the boulevard Saint-Germain was Eugène Brahms, a balding cobbler who had lost his right leg in an accident before the war and got about with the aid of a crutch. Despite his handicap, Brahms enthusiastically joined in the fighting – he had been a champion marksman and had lost none of his lethal skill. Shortly after 10:00, a German motorcycle roared up, with two men on the bicycle and a female soldier in the sidecar. First Brahms killed both men, and the motorcycle crashed. Then, as the dazed woman groped for one of her comrade’s guns, he calmly shot her dead, too.17 Cease-fire? What cease-fire?
Brahms was just one of thousands of ordinary Parisians who, for the most part, had done little to oppose the Germans directly during the four years of occupation, but were now in the forefront of fighting to free their city. One of these ordinary fighters, Philippe Barat, described what it was like being involved in armed conflict for the first time: ‘During a battle you think of fighting, you think of causing the maximum amount of damage in the ranks of the enemy, you think of – let’s say it openly – killing without a worry, without a second thought: it wipes out everything else . . . During a battle you become bloodthirsty. Why deny it? The most gentle of individuals is transformed and becomes thirsty for the enemy’s blood.’18 In the pressure cooker of the insurrection, people were capable of the most extraordinary behaviour. Pastor Daniel Monod telephoned his colleague Marc Boegner and described how he saw the Germans bringing fifteen unarmed and shirt-sleeved résistants into their headquarters. Monod asked how on earth these unarmed young men could fight tanks and armoured cars that were bristling with weapons. Boegner replied laconically: ‘That’s how revolutions are made.’19
In the afternoon the FFI near the Préfecture netted a great catch. A German lorry tried to drive down the boulevard Saint-Michel, and was shot at by FFI fighters; its tyres punctured and its engine riddled with bullets, it ground to a halt. Over a dozen soldiers spilt out, their hands held high – Philippe Barat described the men scornfully as ‘old granddads who would be better off at home than at war’,20 while for FFI fighter Gilles de Boisgelin they were ‘pale, apparently scared by this band of wild civilians running towards them’.21 To the delight of the résistants, the lorry contained a fantastic treasure: a 75 mm anti-tank gun.22 The artillery piece was quickly manoeuvred into position behind the Saint-Germain barricade and three FFI fighters tried to work out how to fire it. While they were doing this, a Tiger tank, followed by a number of other armoured vehicles, came rumbling down the boulevard towards them. One of three men, FFI leader Jean Amidieu du Clos, wrote in his diary: ‘The gun remained infuriatingly silent; our position became untenable and we hid in nearby houses . . . The tanks came within 10 metres of us without seeing the gun, and then went back off up the boulevard Saint-Michel, the Tiger in front. So we ran back to the gun, and began firing on the last tank. We were firing too high and then the gun jammed. We put in a new shell and changed the aim. Suddenly the last tank came to a halt and was covered in smoke. It had taken a direct hit.’23 Despite this success, the police immediately requisitioned the gun for the defence of the Préfecture.24 This was perhaps just as well – a few minutes later, the tanks returned and peppered the barricade with shells, destroying surrounding trees and nearby kiosks.
During the fighting around the barricade, Gilles de Boisgelin was wounded in the leg; he was quickly taken to the Hôtel-Dieu hospital opposite the Préfecture, where he rapidly went through triage (‘Where are you wounded? What’s your name? Address? Undress him. Give him an injection. Now send him off to X-ray’) and within thirty minutes he was in a cramped hospital ward, surrounded by other patients – policemen, civilians and Germans.25 The Hôtel-Dieu had been transformed into a field hospital – each patient had their diagnosis and treatment written on a label attached to their wrist, while surgical teams worked six-hour shifts round the clock in four operating theatres. Altogether, about 2000 in the Hôtel-Dieu during the insurrection, many of them medical staff from hospitals on the outskirts of the city where there was less fighting.26 Film shot at the time shows how some Resistance first-aiders could combine their humanitarian duty with an unswervingly single-minded devotion to the cause of the insurrection. After a German soldier was shot outside the Préfecture, two résistants rushed out of the building to him; the first to arrive was a 21-year-old first-aider, Anne Marie Dalmaso. She grabbed the soldier’s rifle, grenades and revolver and immediately handed them to her comrade; only then did she help carry the injured German inside the Préfecture, where she tended his wounds.27
*
The rank-and-file German soldiers, few of whom were battle-hardened, were beginning to get jittery. A nervous Walter Dreizner was sent – on his own – to carry out some electrical work in the Hôtel Crillon on the place de la Concorde. Although it was only a short walk from his billet, he was still extremely apprehensive, and while he was in the building, the German sentries outside were attacked and fired back, killing a young woman résistante. Dreizner noticed how the Parisians had become used to gunfire, scattering when it rang out, but returning to their everyday business as soon as it ceased. This calmness unnerved him even further.28
The German troops told each other stories of bad treatment by the Resistance, ratcheting up the tension and the perceived threat represented by the increasingly insurgent city. Quartermaster Robert Wallraf heard a young lieutenant tell how he had been captured by the Resistance and made to stand with his comrades on the parapet of one of the bridges over the Seine. Two of the soldiers took their chance and jumped into the river, and were then shot at repeatedly by the Resistance fighters until they disappeared under the water. The lieutenant was taken away and given food and lots of cognac, on condition that he shouted ‘Vive de Gaulle’ at each swig. He was eventually freed in a prisoner exchange and told Wallraf: ‘I won’t let myself be taken prisoner by those people again! Not a chance. I’d rather they shot me!’ This fear of the irregular forces of the Resistance – the soldier’s traditional fear of a civilian population in arms – grew over the following days. Rank-and-file German soldiers decided that to avoid humiliation, mistreatment and worse, they would surrender only to regular troops; but this fear made it more likely that they would treat the population savagely, which in turn increased the fury of the Parisians.29
Not only was the morale of the German troops getting lower by the day, there were squabbles at the very top over where these troops should be deployed. General Kurt von der Chevallerie, commander of the 1st German Army that was holding the line to the south-west of Paris, asked von Choltitz to give him control of the remains of the 17th SS Division and of the Panzer Lehr Division.30 Von Choltitz turned him down – he had his own plans for the 17th SS Division, while the Panzer Lehr was already heading towards the east – and instead demanded that von der Chevallerie provide the Paris garrison with reinforcements.31 Predictably, none was forthcoming, and the two men parted on poor terms. A week later, von Choltitz said the 1st Army was ‘non-existent’, before scornfully describing von der Chevallerie’s situation: ‘He didn’t even have one complete Division. He hadn’t a Division staff even. All he had was what was left of a battalion from Le Mans, and then there was a lieutena
nt from Rennes, with one gun. That was the 1st Army!’32
There was some good news for von Choltitz: the newly refitted 2nd Paratroop Battalion, composed in part of men who had fled from Falaise, but with all-new weapons and vehicles, became available for the defence of the city, and they were duly deployed north of Versailles. To back them up, artillery was posted on the eastern bank of the Seine, able to fire over the paratroopers and to bombard the bridges at Saint-Germain-en-Laye if necessary.33 As part of that redeployment, in the early hours of the cold, dark and damp morning, Major Pulkowski led his anti-tank battle group out of the Bois de Boulogne. They were heading for the German headquarters at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where Pulkowski was to take control of the massive bunker. The Germans were assembling their forces in the region for a counter-attack against the Allied bridgehead at Mantes. The 17th SS Division was ordered to join in, and a column of a dozen armoured vehicles, including Sturmegschütz assault guns (essentially a tank without a mobile turret), was sent across Paris. They encountered small-arms fire from the Resistance at the place de la Concorde, but stayed there for most of the day in relative safety before moving out of the city and heading north-east, away from the front.34 The presence of the column undoubtedly intimidated sections of the Parisian population, but it had no effect on the growing insurrection. In fact, the movement of the 17th SS Division was an exception – most of the bedraggled and disorganised escapees from the Western Front either went around Paris, in particular to the north and west – or were used to reinforce the defence lines. Despite the alarming predictions of Colonel Ollivier and General Chaban, few of the tens of thousands of retreating German soldiers crossed through the capital, and those who did get through were not the disciplined forces that had been feared.
The movement of the German forces to the north-east of Paris affected Jedburgh Team AUBREY. After several days helping the Parisian Resistance, including giving lectures on sabotage, Guy Marchant and Adrien Chaigneau decided to return to their original mission to support the SPIRITUALIST circuit to the north-east of the capital. The flux of German troops around Paris was making it increasingly difficult for Marchant and Chaigneau to move about, and two of their liaison agents had disappeared.35 So they got on their bicycles and rode seventy-five kilometres back to base. While they had been away, their radio operator, Sergeant Hooker, had been recovering from mumps. Due to a combination of sickness and the intimidating presence of German radio detector vans in the neighbourhood, only seven routine messages had gone to and fro between AUBREY and London during the ten days that the group had been in the field.36 But the growing concentration of German troops to the north-east of the city meant that AUBREY and SPIRITUALIST would soon have their hands full.37
*
At the end of the morning, a meeting of the Comité Parisien de la Libération was held in a basement near the Bastille.38 No one knew that Lizé was calling on the FFI to cease fire; this was probably just as well since it would certainly have revived the tensions that had marked the previous day’s meeting. As it was, the atmosphere was surprisingly calm, and the genial and moustachioed communist Georges Maranne was able to pull off a remarkable diplomatic coup by proposing that the CPL issue a statement that did not even mention the cease-fire, far less criticise it: ‘The struggle continues. It must continue until the enemy has been driven from the Parisian region. More than ever, everyone must join the fight . . . Chop down trees, dig anti-tank traps, build barricades. The Allies must be welcomed by a victorious people.’39 Bizarrely, within only twenty-four hours the split in the Resistance had switched over – the military leadership was divided, with Lizé calling for a cease-fire and Rol opposing it, while the political leadership was united in calling for the insurrection to continue. Confusion on the ground – inherent in any insurrection – had now been compounded by confusion at the top.
Meanwhile, Rol met with COMAC and various Resistance military leaders, along with Chaban and his second-in-command Ely. The meeting took place in Rol’s new headquarters, an underground bunker twenty-six metres below place Denfert-Rochereau in the south of the capital. The bunker had been built before the war as a command centre that would function if the city were bombarded. Containing over twenty rooms, including dormitories and a telephone switchboard, with its own generators and air-conditioning, it was exactly what Rol required.40
The meeting was tense. None of the men present argued in favour of the cease-fire – not even Chaban – while the right-wing Resistance leaders denounced Parodi’s plan to allow the Germans free passage through the capital as ‘treason’. When Chaban spoke, he did not respond to any of the criticisms, but confused matters further by proposing that General Dassault, the Front National member who had supported the cease-fire the day before, should be made Military Governor of the capital. This suggestion was seen as irrelevant and was simply ignored. Instead, the three members of COMAC adopted a declaration underlining that, as Parodi had agreed two days before, Rol was in sole command of all armed forces in Paris, including the police and the gendarmes, and that this line of command had to be respected.41 Irrespective of Parodi’s minor victory with Lizé earlier on, the Free French Delegation was now on the defensive.42
It does not appear that the Free French leadership in London, Algiers or Normandy was aware of the exact situation in the capital, although some messages were eventually getting through. That did not stop de Gaulle, who was in newly liberated Rennes, from writing to General Eisenhower, repeating the case he had made the day before for the Allies to turn to Paris. The Free French leader began his letter with concerns about the state of the food supply to the city, but it was clear that his real fear was political. Although he wrote about the threat of an unspecified ‘disorder’, he really meant the possibility that the Parisian population, and more specifically the communists, might take power:
Information that I have received today from Paris makes me think that, given the near-total disappearance of the police force and of the German Army from Paris, and given the extreme food shortages that exist there, serious trouble will occur in the capital in a very short space of time. I believe that it is truly necessary for the French and Allied forces to occupy Paris as soon as possible, even if this should result in fighting and some destruction to the city. If a situation of disorder were to develop in Paris, it would subsequently be difficult to gain control without serious incidents. This could even threaten subsequent military operations.43
Eisenhower was unmoved, and gave no response.
*
In the afternoon a series of incidents left dozens of Parisians dead, underlining that the Germans considered the cease-fire to be a fiction. On the rue des Morillons near the south-west edge of the city, policeman Philippe Chevrier and two students, Charles Descours and 16-year-old Vincent Finidori, were shot dead. On the rue de Beaune on the Left Bank, Peter Maroger, riding in an FFI-commandeered car, was killed during a firefight with German troops. In a building just behind the place Saint-Michel fountain, policeman Joseph Lahuec was collecting arms for the Préfecture when a German soldier shot him dead.44 At the Gare du Nord, two lads on a scooter, Vincent di Bella and Robert Cabirol, were arrested for giving out Resistance leaflets. They were freed, but were then shot dead as they fled down the rue Maubeuge at the side of the station, the latest victims in a series of over sixty murders by German troops stationed at the Gare du Nord.45 At around 13:00, a group of three FFI fighters was driving along the boulevard Magenta in a Citroën car. They were heading for Saint-Ouen, a northern suburb of Paris, where they thought they would be able to pick up some weapons. They never made it: as they passed a German checkpoint, the vehicle was machine-gunned and crashed into the shop front on the corner of the boulevard and the rue Saint-Vincent de Paul. Two of the men were killed outright; the third, Edmond Bouchetou, was severely wounded. Photographs of the incident show six bodies scattered on the pavement.46 Some of these men were FFI fighters from the area, although how they got involved in the firefight is not
clear. According to Bouchetou, who survived the incident, the Germans pumped bullets into men who were lying injured on the ground.47 The shattered car was soon covered with flowers as Parisians paid their respects to those who had been killed.48 In the bloodiest clash, an SS motorcyclist attacked a Resistance barricade by the square René Viviani, next to what is now the Shakespeare and Company bookshop. Minutes before, the FFI fighters on the barricade had posed for a photograph. After a brief gun battle, eight of the men in the photograph were dead – five policemen from the 5th arrondissement and three civilians.49
In the late morning, Micheline Bood went out with her friend Nicole, to take photographs of the fighting. As they wandered near the Gare Saint-Lazare they saw mobile anti-aircraft guns and lorries full of soldiers, weapons at the ready. Each time the Germans passed, the streets emptied in a flash. Micheline and Nicole soon felt ‘so excited we couldn’t be frightened any more’. At one point, Micheline was hiding barely ten metres from the fighting, readying her camera, when a young man crawled up to her and started giving her advice on photographic technique.50