D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

opened up on them. The girl slipped back down to the ground, snagging on the tank’s tracks, her best summer dress peppered with bloody bullet holes.’
    By midday Putz’s column had reached Antony, just south of Paris. On his right, another column had a lively encounter near Orly airfield, but then came up against 88 mm anti-tank guns outside Fresnes prison. The guns were manned by German soldiers who had been serving a sentence there. They still wore their canvas prison uniforms. Desert veterans of the 2ème DB thought that it made them look like their old adversaries, the Afrika Korps. After losing two Shermans, the remaining French tanks managed to knock out the guns. One charged straight into the courtyard of the prison. Some vehicles were still burning outside. Capitaine Dupont walked past one which was nearly burnt-out, but grenades in it suddenly exploded and killed him. Only three days before, he had told Father Fouquer that he knew he was going to die.
     
    General Gerow, vainly hoping to keep the French division on a tight leash, had left his headquarters at Chartres that morning accompanied by his chief of staff, Brigadier General Charles Helmick. They could not find Leclerc anywhere. Gerow had to return to Chartres and told Helmick to seek him out ‘and remain with him as senior United States Army representative’.
    Irritated by the way Leclerc had pushed his advance round to the south without warning Corps headquarters, Gerow told his 4th Infantry Division to push on into Paris without waiting for the 2ème DB. Having no doubt seen the delays caused by welcoming crowds, he jumped to the conclusion that the 2ème DB was taking it easy. He is supposed to have claimed to Bradley that the French troops were doing little more than ‘dance their way into Paris’. But the 12th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Division was also held up by ‘over-enthusiastic French mademoiselles’ who insisted on kissing the drivers.
    Gerow was wrong. Nobody could have been more impatient that day than General Leclerc. To speed the advance he had already pushed his reserve, the groupement tactique Dio, into the battle for the industrial outer suburbs, but Antony was not taken until 16.00 hours. The line of advance via Arpajon had turned out to be more heavily defended than he had expected.
    Leclerc, fearing that German reinforcements might reach the capital from the north, was desperate to have troops in the centre of Paris by nightfall. To encourage the Resistance to hold out, he sent orders to the senior pilot of his spotter planes to deliver a message packed in a weighted musette bag. It said simply, ‘ Tenez bon, nous arrivons ’ - ‘Hold on, we’re coming.’
     
    Capitaine Dronne’s company had managed to bypass Fresnes and reached the Croix-de-Berny. They caught their first sight of the Eiffel Tower. The company then received orders to return to the Orléans road. They were intercepted by General Leclerc, his tank goggles round his kepi, tapping the ground impatiently with his malacca cane.
    ‘Dronne!’ Leclerc called to him. ‘What are you doing there?’
    ‘I’m returning to the axis [of advance] as ordered, mon général .’
    Leclerc told him that that was idiotic. He took him by the sleeve and pointed to the capital. ‘Slip straight into Paris, to the very heart of Paris.’
    The unshaven Dronne, standing to attention, with his battered kepi and sweat-stained American uniform stretched over his belly, saluted. Leclerc, who had been questioning civilians, told him to take what other forces he could muster and avoid the main routes. He was to get to the centre of Paris and tell them to hold on and not lose courage. The rest of the division would be in the city the next day.
    At 19.30 hours, Dronne’s ‘La Nueve’, mustering fifteen vehicles including half-tracks bearing the names of Spanish Civil War battles, such as ‘Madrid’, ‘Guadalajara’ and ‘Brunete’, set off. This company of Spanish Republicans was reinforced at the last moment with a platoon of engineers and three Shermans from the 501ème Chars de Combat, a regiment of Gaullist loyalists. Their tanks bore the names of Napoleonic battles from 1814, ‘Montmirail’, ‘Romilly’ and ‘Champaubert’. Their commander was Lieutenant Michard, a priest from the White Fathers. 81
    The half-track ‘Guadalajara’ led the way, guided by a local on an ancient motorcycle. He knew all the back streets and where the German roadblocks were,