Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

she did every evening.

5
    Liberated Paris
    Paris on the morning after the fighting had a strange air of calm. For those who went out early on a tour of inspection – mainly the older generation, since the young were sleeping off the excesses of the night before, as well as the accumulated fatigue of the last week – the traces of fighting amply testified to the reality of events.
    During the battle for the Hotel Meurice, some of the huge columns had been shot down from the great façade of the Ministry of Marine on the north side of the Place de la Concorde. In the expanse of the Concorde, even the burnt-out tanks looked small. Just beyond, in the Tuileries gardens, the carbonized hulk of a Tiger tank was still smoking.
    Across the river, outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, yet another scorched carcass of a tank – this time a Sherman of the 2e DB – had written on its side in chalk: ‘
Ici sont morts trois soldats français
.’ Flowers had already been laid on its blackened hulk. Other flowers soon appeared on street corners or outside
portes-cochères
where victims had failed to reach safety. Passers-by often paused, then stepped round them carefully as in a cemetery. They were reminded of all those who had not lived to see Paris free again. *
    Many other areas had also suffered in the fighting – the Palais duLuxembourg and its surroundings, the Champ de Mars, the Palais Bourbon, the Île de la Cité and the Place de la République. But, as General Koenig observed, they were incredibly lucky that the destruction of monuments had been so limited. The Grand Palais, that beached whale of the
belle époque,
was reduced to little more than a skeleton, but all the other major buildings could be repaired.
    In the cafés on the Boulevard Saint-Michel, glass with starred holes from bullets was left unreplaced for reasons of pride as well as economy. Shop windows broken in the fighting had been quickly boarded up, and yet people were already beginning to remove the latticework of sticky tape from their own windows in the belief that the threat of bomb-blast had disappeared, though the Germans were still within artillery range out at Le Bourget.
    Most people, certainly the liberators of the day before, were light-headed either from lovemaking or the drinking of relentless toasts. David Bruce recorded that it had been impossible to refuse the bottles thrust at them, which had been hoarded almost religiously for the moment of liberation. ‘The combination was enough to wreck one’s constitution,’ he wrote. ‘In the course of the afternoon, we had beer, cider, white and red Bordeaux, white and red Burgundy, champagne, rum, cognac, armagnac and calvados.’
    If the day of liberation had belonged to the FFI and Leclerc’s men, Saturday, 26 August, was to be de Gaulle’s triumph.
    A discordant note was struck by General Gerow, Leclerc’s American superior. Still furious at the way the French had ignored his orders over the last few days, Gerow sent an instruction forbidding the 2e DB to take part in any victory celebrations. But with the city not yet fully clear of the enemy, de Gaulle needed Leclerc’s men to provide security and preserve public order. Vichy
miliciens
were not covered by General von Choltiz’s ceasefire, and there was always the possibility that other German forces might counter-attack from the north.
    In the early afternoon, huge crowds converged on the centre of Paris. Many came on foot from the outer suburbs, having covered a dozen kilometres or more. Well over a million people gathered in the sunshine on both sides of the route from the Arc de Triomphe toNotre-Dame. * To obtain better views, people crowded at the windows of buildings overlooking the route, and the young climbed trees or lampposts. There were even people lining the rooftops. Paris had never seen such crowds. Many carried home-made tricolours.
    At three, de Gaulle arrived at the Arc de Triomphe, where all the principal figures awaited him: Parodi, Luizet, Chaban-Delmas, Bidault and the other members of the National Council of the Resistance, Admiral d’Argenlieu and, of course, Generals Juin, Koenig and Leclerc.
    The leader of the provisional government took the salute of the Régiment de Marche du Tchad, standing in their vehicles drawn up across the Place de l’Étoile. Under the Arc de Triomphe, he relit the flame over the tomb of the unknown soldier which had been extinguished in June 1940, when the Germans marched