Frustrated by the 2e DB’s apparently slow progress up the National 20, US V Corps commander Leonard Gerow considered ordering the US 4th Infantry Division to outflank the 2e DB’s axis and assume the liberation, but Bradley vetoed this idea. American criticisms, while possibly tinged with “frog-bashing”, discount the 2e DB’s two-day route march.142
CHABAN-DELMAS’ MESSENGER, Lieutenant Petit-Leroy, had reached the 2e DB’s positions and showed Billotte Chaban’s message. “It is important that you come quickly or very quickly, especially because we lack arms and ammunition and we can not be sure of being able to continue, without excessive losses, a resistance so under-armed. But also because we believe information that two German divisions are due to arrive from north of Paris to aid General von Choltitz. If these arrive before yourselves, you will not be able to liberate Paris without numerous victims and considerable destruction. As it is the Germans have all this time been able to prepare mines which are now in place. Chaban-Delmas wants you to know in any case that Choltitz does not appear to have decided to fight to the bitter end, since he appears to have been persuaded that such combat would be in vain, but he is being menaced by the SS. Hence it is equally necessary to come quickly in order to negotiate with him rather than a Hitlerian extremist who might replace him. His CP is at the Hôtel Meurice.” Billotte knew about Chaban-Delmas and that his missive should be given utmost priority.143
Witnessed by Alain de Boissieu, Petit-Leroy gave Leclerc a fulsome exposé of the latest situation in Paris, describing personalities like Rol-Tanguy and the traditional but equally uncompromising Colonel Lizé. When Leclerc asked about the police’s role, Petit-Leroy explained that the police had been on strike since 15 August and that General Hary now controlled all Parisian security organisations, including the fire brigade.144
Petit-Leroy continued, “Certain factions have their eyes on power. Vichy has collapsed. The GPRF is only present as ‘the Delegation’, whose leader Alexandre Parodi ranks as a government minister, but he has to deal with the most audacious and determined members of the CNR who would pass themselves off as the government while seeing the role of General de Gaulle as consultative.” Nor did Petit-Leroy hide his concern that communists among the Resistance wanted a new Paris Commune and to present de Gaulle with a fait accompli. That evening Boissieu entered all this in his squadron’s diary.145
At Rambouillet, de Gaulle had warned Leclerc of the dangers of a new Commune. Now, a second warning had come from Chaban. For immediate delivery by air to the Préfecture, Leclerc had his artillery chief, Jean Crépin, draft the unforgettable note, “Le general Leclerc me charge de vous dire: ‘Tenez bon. Nous arrivons.’—Lieutenant Colonel Crépin.”146 “Hold on. We’re coming.”
Divisional pilots Captain Callet and Lieutenant Mantoux listened in awed silence as Crépin explained their mission. Callet warned Crépin that the Piper Cub is a slow aircraft vulnerable to even small levels of hostile fire. But Crépin insisted their mission was vital. Flying over southern Paris they saw eerily empty streets as they steered towards Notre Dame. Looking down into the Préfecture’s courtyard, strewn with wrecked trucks and a crowd waving from the Quai du Marché-Neuf, they lobbed out the weighted canvas bag containing Leclerc’s message and pulled away, as bullets pierced the fuselage’s light fabric.147
After discussing the barricades and street fighting with Petit-Leroy, Leclerc decided to write personally to General von Choltitz, saying he would be held personally responsible for damage to Paris. This was translated into German by Captain Betz, who strengthened the text with references to war crimes. But how could this message be delivered? Boissieu suggested using a Kübelwagen captured at Arpajon, but Leclerc dismissed the idea of using captured vehicles in favour of a Jeep. Adjutant-chef Dericbourg from Boissieu’s squadron volunteered to drive Petit-Leroy back through the lines. It would be the last thing Dericbourg and Petit-Leroy did. Their Jeep was shot up by a Waffen SS patrol. But these SS were professional enough to search Petit-Leroy’s body, and Leclerc’s letter reached von Choltitz’s desk later that evening. Many years later von Choltitz told Alain de Boissieu that this was the first time he truly feared being treated as a war criminal.148
Through the afternoon von Choltitz kept Army Group B and OB West informed of the increasing pressures he faced. Eventually, around 6.45pm, he spoke to General Blumentritt. “The situation in Paris never ceases to deteriorate hourly,” said von Choltitz. “It is foreseeable that we will not be able to hold Paris in the face of violent attacks from both the west and south and actions by the Resistance.” But Model’s orders remained that Paris should be defended at all costs.149
THE FAILURE OF ESSENTIAL PETROL SUPPLIES to reach GTs Billotte and Dio forced Billotte’s decision at 7pm that his men had done all they could that day. Seeing Leclerc’s disappointment, Billotte suggested that he order Dronne—”the captain nearest to us at the time”—to enter Paris. “Otherwise,” wrote Billotte, “there was nothing else to be done than take positions for the night and get going as fast as possible in the early morning.”150
Walking along Antony’s main road, Leclerc recognised la Nueve’s Germán Arrúe, who had given him a haircut in Yorkshire but refused payment.
“Where’s Dronne?” Leclerc asked.
Arrúe pointed towards fellow Spaniards returning to the National 20.
“Where’s your chief?” Leclerc asked Lieutenant Amado Granell.
“El Capitan?—Just back there,” said Granell.
Dronne found Leclerc leaning on his cane.
“Dronne, what are you doing there?” asked Leclerc.
“Mon Général,” replied Dronne, “I am carrying out the orders I was given. I am returning to the main axis, at which point we now are.”
“One should never obey stupid orders,” said Leclerc.
Dronne explained events at Fresnes. Smiling at the unshaven captain in his battered képi and sweat-soaked uniform, Leclerc put a hand on his arm.
“Dronne, march on Paris,” said Leclerc pointing northwards with his cane. “Get into Paris.”
“Tout de suite, mon Général,” replied Dronne. “But I’ve only got two platoons of infantry left after Montoya was sent over to reinforce the 11th Company and I am going to need more than that.”
“Take what you can find and do it quickly,” said Leclerc.
La Horie and other divisional officers gathered around Leclerc. Dronne needed clarification.
“If I am to understand you correctly, mon Général, I am to avoid resistance and not concern myself with whatever may be happening in my rear?”
“That’s it exactly, right into Paris,” said Leclerc, now smiling generously. “Get in any way you like. We must get in. You tell them that the whole division will arrive in Paris in the morning.”151
So a Catholic aristocrat descended from crusaders gave a middle-class intellectual commanding a company of Spanish Republican atheists the most important mission of the whole Paris operation. Its motive was to bolster the Resistance and reassure Parisians that their anxieties would soon be over. “It was to show them, to prove to them, that the division was coming,” Dronne later wrote. He looked at his watch; it was 7.30pm.152
Needing support for la Nueve, Dronne noticed three Shermans commanded by Lieutenant Michard, a monk from the White Fathers.
“I’m going into Paris,” said Dronne. “You are coming with me; orders of General Leclerc.”
Michard’s troop was originally five tanks but two had succumbed to mechanical failure during the march. The remaining three were named after battles during Napoleon’s 1814 campaign; Montmirail, Champaubert and Romilly. Dronne described Michard as “one of the very best”.153
Once Dronne collared a section of engineers under Adjutant-Chef Gérard Cancel, they were ready to go. At that point an eighteen-year-old civilian called Georges Chevallier, who saw Dronne being briefed by Leclerc, offered himself as a guide.
“I know these banlieues like the back of my hand,” said
Chevallier in a freshly broken, deep voice.
“Very good, you can be our guide,” said Dronne.154
At 8pm, in fading light, ‘la Colonne Dronne’ set off. Dronne led the way in his Jeep, Mort aux Cons, followed by Michard’s Shermans and fifteen White half-tracks. Passing freshly liberated Fresnes they were cheered by other tank crews. From there Chevallier guided them past l’Hay-les-Roses, Cachan, Arcueil, and Kremlin-Bicêtre, using small, unobvious roads he knew were clear. Despite the gathering darkness, the crowd remained an enormous factor. Warned by Chevallier that Germans still held the Fort de Bicêtre; la Colonne Dronne headed for the Porte d’Italie.
At the Porte d’Italie a crowd assembled, expecting Allied troops to arrive along the National 6. Seeing Dronne’s column emerge from a secondary road, they worried that they were German, scattering amid cries of “Barrez-vous! Voila les Boches! ” But once they saw Michard’s olive-green Shermans the cries of “les Boches! Les Chleus! ” were quickly replaced by “Les Américains! Ce sont les Américains! ” The crowd filled the street. La Colonne Dronne could barely move.155
“Welcome! Long live America,” said an old man.
“I’m from the Rue de Tolbiac,” said one of Michard’s drivers. “Long live the 13th Arrondissement!”
Another elderly gentleman approached Montmirail carrying a brandy glass and a finely cut decanter. He explained how he had kept some Cognac d’un age très respectable, to offer the first Allied soldier he met.
“But I am French, Sir,” said Michard.
The old man appeared deeply moved. “French!” he mumbled, his voice beginning to crack. “They are French!”
“That’s not all,” said Dronne. “We’ve got to get on.”156
Dronne had little idea where he should be heading. Then it occurred to him that he should head for the Hôtel de Ville, focus of the rights and liberties of all Parisians. But he needed to bypass German strongpoints and barricades. Again a young civilian offered to guide them. Resembling an Albert Dubout cartoon character, Lorenian Dikran was an Armenian and rode a moped cycle for which he somehow acquired petrol.
“Do you know a route bypassing German resistance and without any barricades by which we can quickly reach the Hôtel de Ville?”
Dikran nodded affirmatively, but other youths called him a bluffer.
“Shut up,” said Dikran commandingly. “I know the way and I will show them.”
Meanwhile Jeanne Borchert, a curvaceous blond in Alsatian costume, had seated herself on the folded down windscreen of Dronne’s Jeep, cracking the glass. Her demeanour clearly indicated that she would remain there.157
Dronne’s cosmopolitan force followed Dikran along the Rue de Vistule, then the Rue Baudricourt, the Rue Esquirol, and the Boulevard de l’Hôpital. Where Parisians encountered Dronne’s column, they usually took cover until someone shouted, “They’re French!” Crossing the Seine at the Pont d’Austerlitz, they rumbled along the rive droite’s quays; the Quai de la Rapée, the Quai Henry IV, and Quai des Célestins—then the Quai de l’Hôtel de Ville. Finally La Place Hôtel de Ville.158
Arriving via a slightly different route, Amado Granell’s half-track Guadalajara arrived on La Place Hôtel de Ville a few moments earlier, parking on the north side outside those famous shops, Les Ciseaux d’Argent and Chaussures Mansfield. After ordering his Spaniards into all-round defence, Granell entered the Hôtel de Ville, becoming the first officer of the 2e DB to meet the Conseil Nationale de la Resistance, whose leaders greeted him generously, quickly calling for someone to photograph him with Georges Bidault. For pre-empting Dronne’s arrival, Granell was nominated “the man who liberated Paris” by la Nueve’s legend builders.159
The three Shermans took positions supporting the Spaniards and Michard joined Dronne. Dismounting from Dronne’s Jeep, Jeanne Borchert appointed herself la Nueve’s Marianne. Dronne looked up at the Hôtel de Ville’s great clock; it was 9.22pm.160
For Michard’s tankers, who were mostly Gaullistes de la première heure, for the Spaniards of la Nueve and the sprinkling of Armenians also among them, and for Dronne himself, their arrival outside the Hôtel de Ville “constituted the supreme recompense”, wrote Dronne, “the realisation of a beautiful dream that wiser heads might well have judged unreasonable”. Aspirant Bacave radioed to Leclerc that they had reached the Hôtel de Ville without loss.161
For the time being the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville remained empty. Little by little, as Parisians realised that Dronne’s column were not les Fridolins, joyful crowds overwhelmed them, everyone singing the Marseillaise.162 Ecstatic at discovering that la Colonne Dronne was Leclerc’s advance guard, Parisians were even more amazed to discover half-tracks “Conduit par les Espagnols! ”—news which soon reached the Spanish Republican refugee, Victoia Kent. In her shabby lodgings, knowing she no longer lived under Fascism, she wept.163
UNKNOWN TO DRONNE, his progress through southern Paris to the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville was telephoned to the Barrière d’Enfer. Resistance historian Henri Noguères later wrote, “On the one side was the Insurrection, without doubt a little brawling though spontaneous and generous; (almost) a revolution, the people, the nation. While on the other hand in strict format, or perhaps a grubby uniform, order was being restored, hierarchy, the return of calm, it is already the new power, and it is always the state.”164 One can only conclude that the Insurrection’s leaders recognised how things must be. Why else did Rol-Tanguy send two envoys to the Allies? Why else did his wife, Cécile, and the women running the Barrière d’Enfer command centre “dance the Java” and celebrate Dronne’s arrival with a pillow fight?165
Dronne could only savour the moment. Entering the Hôtel de Ville’s ornate entrance lobby with its Pierre Puvis de Chavannes paintings, Dronne caught Granell’s eye, smiled and told him to take charge of the men outside. Then, escorted by Pirlian Krikor and Michard, he ascended the marble staircase. Entering the brilliantly lit, gold-leaf-encrusted grand salon Dronne saw faces he would encounter again as a post-war politician. Looking pale and skinny, but very moved, was Georges Bidault who succeeded Jean Moulin as head of the CNR. Then there was Joseph Laniel, Daniel Mayer, Georges Marannes and several others, all shaking hands with Dronne and Michard, saying “Bien joué! ” Georges Bidault began a speech but was overcome with emotion. Dronne replied by “proclaiming the joy of résistants de l’exterieur at this junction with the élite of the résistance de l’interieur”, and prematurely called General de Gaulle “President de Gaulle!” No one contradicted him.166
Surveying these élite Frenchmen who, despite the Occupation’s privations, remained clean and presentable, Dronne became painfully aware that he was filthy and smelled.167
Seeing the lights glowing inside the Hôtel de Ville, some Germans decided to shoot out the chandeliers’ light bulbs. Next came a long, horizontal burst of machine-gun fire, luckily too high to hit anyone. No one knew where the light switches were. Worrying about a German counterattack, Dronne returned outside where the crowd had dispersed.168
The news of la Colonne Dronne’s arrival spread quickly via the city’s traditional messengers, the clergy. Churches began ringing their bells; the din becoming more vibrant as belfries were pulled into action, sloughing off four years’ of cobwebs, their strikers swinging free for a languid moment before smashing into ancient bell-metal with a resounding “dong!” Soon the greatest bells of all, high up in Notre Dame, added their voice to the cacophony.
Chastened by Leclerc’s threatening letter, von Choltitz was dining with his officers at the Meurice.
“Why are they ringing?” asked a young secretary.
“They are ringing for us, my little girl,” replied von Choltitz paternally. “They are ringing because the Allies are coming into Paris. Why else do you suppose they would be ringing?”169
Seeing his staff’s glum faces, von Choltitz said, “What else did you expect? You’ve been sitting here in your little dream world for years. You haven’t seen what’s happeni
ng to Germany in Russia and Normandy. Germany has lost this war, and we have lost it with her.”
Von Choltitz retired to his office, opened the balcony window and telephoned General Speidel.
“Listen,” said von Choltitz, holding the receiver up to the open window. “The bells of Paris ringing to tell the city the Allies are here.” Then von Choltitz asked Speidel to look after his family.170
THE NEWS REACHED COLONEL LIZÉ’S HQ on Rue Guénégard as they began dinner. The housekeeper’s simpleton lodger Henri was whistling annoyingly like a wound-up doll. Just as he was asked to leave the room, multi-coloured rockets shot into the sky above the Préfecture. “Was it possible?” wondered Raymond Massiet. When Notre Dame’s great bells began ringing, they knew it was true. “Les Français! Les Français! They’re at the Hôtel de Ville!” Every eye moistened. An exhausted-looking Colonel Lizé shook hands with everyone before donning his uniform to present himself at the Hôtel de Ville.171 Alone in his office, Massiet savoured these moments in virtual darkness while, outside, Parisians sang the Marseillaise heartily. “Was it really over?” he wondered. “Thank God!”172
Henri Rol-Tanguy ordered his driver to take him to the Hôtel de Ville via the Rue Saint-Jacques, avoiding the Boulevard Saint-Michel which was still endangered by the Palais Luxembourg strongpoint. As Rol-Tanguy arrived two uniformed Gardiens demanded to escort Dronne to the Préfecture. Escorted by Pirlian Krikor, Dronne crossed the Pont Notre Dame. In the Préfecture’s grand salon, albeit less ornate than the Hôtel de Ville’s, Dronne met Jacques Chaban-Delmas—”a very young general, svelte and elegant in a beautiful, brand new khaki uniform”—and Charles Luizet.173
Dronne told them the whole 2e DB would enter Paris at dawn, in a few hours. Luizet asked Dronne if he wanted anything.
“A bath,” replied Dronne.
Luizet nodded. Felix Gaillard led Dronne to the Prefect’s bathroom while Krikor returned to his Jeep to fetch a fresh shirt and clean socks from his pack. “Washed, refreshed, changed and made presentable, I felt a new man,” Dronne wrote.174
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