Tuesday, December 9, 2014

"We weren't soldiers." The surrender of the Elster Column.

I found this photo on Pinterest captioned: "German POW in France, 1945", and it reminded me of the following passage from Code Name Pauline:

"On September 10, 1944, a column of 18,000 Germans who had been trying to return to Germany surrendered to one man, an American from the US Army, in the town of Issoudun. At the time the American press thrived on the story, but they didn't tell the full story. They forgot to mention the column had been harassed by all the Maquis in the sector. The 18,000 German soldiers didn't surrender as easily as that, for no reason, to one American! In addition, the Americans authorized the Germans to cross the region all the way to Orleans with their weapons. The resisters were furious. Always the same old story: armies prefer to deal with armies, and the Resistance wasn't an army...

"Major Clutton did everything he could to try and stop this business, but it was impossible. Moreover, when the Germans got to the other side of the Loire, the Americans welcomed them with oranges, chocolate, the whole works. But that's an old story, you know, soldiers welcoming other soldiers. We weren't soldiers.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

"Our bedroom was nicely decorated." Pearl Witherington and treasures from the Louvre



"When we arrived in Gatines, we first slept in a farm called Coloumbier that was in the forest...Later, in September, when we were sure there weren't too many Germans in the vicinity, we moved into the chateau in Valencay. We stayed there for a while.

"Some of the Louvre's treasures were stored away in the chateau, including the sculptures Victoire de Samothrace, the Venus de Milo, and engravings by Rembrandt and Durer. In once sense, our bedroom was nicely decorated. But it wasn't a bedroom; it seemed to us more of a ballroom...

"The works of art were locked away in cases. Employees from the national museums were there and opened one of them for us. Andre Leroi-Gourhan took that initiative. He said, 'I'll show you things the public never sees.' He showed us a very old tiara belonging to the pope and engravings by Rembrandt where you could see corrections to the drawing on the copper."


Excerpt from "Into the Forest" from Code Name Pauline: Memoirs of a World War II Special Agent.