The trip to Paris got off to a start that was something less than auspicious. Hardly had our convoy assembled with men and officers from all three regiments of the division when a heavy snow began to fall. Sharing a cab of one of the trucks with the driver and Captain Samuel Rabinowitz, of the Bronx, a battalion surgeon, I was comfortable enough, but the men in the rear, though bundled in sleeping bags, were miserably cold. They nevertheless kept up a constant joking chatter, with the thought of seeing Paris obviously providing some measure of warmth. The same prospects must have inspired our drivers too, for they successfully defeated every effort of the treacherous snow to hold us in Luxembourg and brought us out of the mountains onto a broad, flat stretch of road which eventually led to Rheims, France.
We stopped for the night in Rheims. After storing the trucks in an army motor pool and seeing that the men were billeted in a barracks provided for the purpose, I set out with four other officers to find a hotel. Besides Dr. Rabinowitz and myself, there were three lieutenants, one from each regiment of the division.
The lieutenant from the 28th Infantry, insisting that he spoke French fluently, appointed himself our interpreter. Since none of the rest of us claimed any linguistic ability, we accepted the offer without protest and made our way to a small hotel which someone at the motor pool had recommended. As we entered, the proprietress was cleaning the stairs. She came toward us with a rapid flow of French accompanied by easily understandable gestures which made it obvious we were most welcome. We thumbed her toward our interpreter.
“Ah, oui,” she said, obviously pleased, “parlez vous français?”
The lieutenant stared at her quizzically. She repeated the words slowly. At last he shook his head and turned to us with wrinkled brow.
“What the hell did she say?” he asked.
Our faith in our interpreter somewhat shattered, we made our own arrangements for rooms by means of a kind of universal sign language.
After washing up, we set out to find a place to eat and, for my companions, a place to drink. The lady at the hotel recommended a nearby bistro, but we obviously did not understand her instructions too well, for we soon had to stop to ask a passing Frenchman new directions. Our self-appointed interpreter took over. In slow, carefully chosen, labored phrases, he posed a lengthy question. Several times he had to stop and start over again, but through it all the Frenchman listened patiently. At last, making sure our interpreter had finished, the Frenchman pointed a thumb over his right shoulder and smiled broadly.
“One block down,” he said easily, “and two to the left.”
At this point, our interpreter had had it.
Arriving at the motor pool at the appointed hour the next morning, we found all the men present. No one was taking any chance on being left in Rheims when Paris was the next stop.
It was November 11th, Armistice Day, a fact which soon became apparent. We were travelling historic ground which had been fought over at great length in the previous war. Chemin des Dames, Soissons, Villers-Cotterets, names which we had known only from history books now became vivid and real. All along the road groups of people with flowers in their hands thronged toward the big military cemeteries where the dead of the 1914-18 war were buried. Some of the cemeteries were close enough to the road for us to see that ceremonies were underway at each of them. Everywhere flew the tri-color of France.
It was just before noon when we hit the outskirts of Paris. In each of us, excitement was mounting. In the rear of the trucks the men now showed no ill effects from the exposure. In fact, they hung over the sides whooping and whistling with delight at everything they saw. The French good-naturedly returned the greetings and waved a vigorous welcome.
Arriving at the Place de l’Opera, our convoy turned down a side street to the Red Cross headquarters in the American Express building. Here everything had been arranged in advance so that red tape was cut to a minimum. In a few minutes the men emerged, meal and hotel tickets in hand, eager looks on their faces.
“Well,” I told them, “Paris is yours. For two days anyway. I’m not going to tell you anything except to be careful and remember one thing—you’re due here at 11 A.M. Monday. It’s now Saturday afternoon, you have a full 48 hours. Have fun, stay out of trouble and out of jail and don’t do anything I’m going to do. So long!”
With a whoop they set out for their hotel to clean up and escape for two days.
Checking in with the Red Cross, we received our tickets and left for another hotel. As we were cleaning up, trying to make ourselves presentable for the street instead of the foxhole, I detected that most of my companions looked on a visit to Paris in large measure as a tour of the bars. Deciding quickly that I would do better if I set out by myself, I left the others the first time they turned into a bistro. I walked the streets alone, looking at people, at store windows, at buildings. People were everywhere. At last it came back to me that this was Armistice Day. This explained the jammed sidewalks, the impromptu parades forming in every street, the singing of the Marseillaise at every turn. Along the Champs Elysees the masses of people made it al-most impossible to walk. It had been so long since I had seen colorful crowds in civilian clothes that I found myself caught up with tremendous, intoxicating excitement.
At the Arc de Triomphe interminable lines of sober citizens stood for hours to pass by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the eternal flame that burns there to pay their humble respects. Under the Arc and over the tomb flew the flag of France that was said to be the largest flag in the world. Somehow the French had managed to hide it through the German occupation, and now it flew majestically in inspiring splendor.
I stood near the Arc de Triomphe for a long time, deeply impressed by the reverent solemnity of the people. It was only with effort that I pulled myself away to walk along the banks of the Seine toward the Eiffel Tower, reaching high and lace-like into the sky. It did not take long for me to come to understand something of the magic spell which this city casts over all men who approach it with open heart.
When we assembled at the hotel for our evening meal, I discovered that I was the only one of our five who had any idea of what Paris, other than the bistros, looked like. During dinner— which we were obliged to eat in the U.S. Army-operated hotel because of the food rationing program among civilians—we planned our attack on Paris by night. Before leaving the front, we had been urged by others who had made the trip before us to be sure to visit Le Lido, a swank night spot on the Champs Elysees, but when we inquired about reservations, we learned that a French army unit had taken over the place for the night. In the end we had to settle for the Paradise Club in Montmartre.
At the Paradise Club we were ushered to a good table right down front. The floor show began almost immediately, and before we realized what had happened, a bevy of girls, naked from slightly below the waist up, were shaking their bare bellies in front of our widened eyes. Our table was so close, they were so naked, and the ballroom was so cold that we could count the goose bumps that formed on the exposed parts of their anatomy. So little distance lay between us and the show that I felt like part of it.
Ambitious ladies of the evening later came by our table to ply their trade, but our group stuck together. The others stuck to their drinking and I stuck to my sightseeing, though at this point it was reduced primarily to analyzing one naked navel after another. But it was fun to relax and watch the uninhibited GI’s whoop and holler as they let loose with steam that had accumulated over weeks on end in the front lines. Almost all the men in the place were combat soldiers on short passes, making the most of their brief freedom, and it apparently made little difference to them that the entertainment was of obviously poor quality. I drank water—though I bought champagne—and over my glass watched the men as they made Paris a poor substitute for the place they really wanted—home.
Most American soldiers arrived in France stuffed with highly colored tales their fathers had told them of French women during the earlier war, so that they expected loose morals to be the rule. Since most of the men rarely had time to meet any girls except those in honky tonks, they obviously met the kind they had been led to anticipate, but instead of realizing that the same situation would have applied at home, they condemned all French women as loose. Yet even in the Paradise Club there was virtue if one chose to notice it. When one gaily-painted broad enticed her GI friend onto the dance floor, the rest of the girls in the place hissed her off the floor.
“Zey have no respect,” the other girls explained, “for Eleven Novembaire.”
“Just goes to show you,” philosophized Dr. Rabinowitz, “there’s honor even among whores.”
In a moment the doctor was busy defending his own honor. A girl approached him with a more than pointed suggestion, but he brushed her off.
“You are not sympathetic to me?” she asked coquettishly.
“Very sympathetic,” Doc laughed, “but please peddle your wares someplace else, won’t you?”
We left the Paradise Club late and walked darkened but well-peopled streets back to our hotel. Though a few of the boys needed help occasionally, Doc and I managed to herd them all to bed in the end and finally turned in ourselves.
Having made plans for a sightseeing tour of the city the next morning, Dr. Rabinowitz and I were both on time with clear heads while our comrades of lustier tastes still slept soundly. The sight-seeing bus was full of GI’s as it pulled away from the Red Cross center. A garrulous but entertaining guide tolled off the history of each spot as we rode by: the Eiffel Tower, the Hotel des Invalides with Napoleon’s Tomb, Arc de Triomphe, Place de la Concorde, Place Vendome, Notre Dame Cathedral, Church of the Madelaine, the Louvre, all the famous buildings and squares we had seen and read about so many times in pictures and stories that we felt we knew them even without the explanation.
In the afternoon I traded a couple of packages of cigarettes— which I had brought along as barter material—as rent for a “beeceekil” and went on my own tour. All through a pleasant, sunny afternoon I pedalled along both banks of the Seine, along the Grands Boulevards, and through winding back streets. Lingering for a long time in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, I reverently said a prayer for Eleonore. I rode under the Eiffel Tower and though I wanted to go to the peak, no one was being allowed on it because of a rumor that the Germans had weakened it. Though pedalling the old bicycle mixed hard labor with my pleasure, I enjoyed every minute.
I might have continued my sightseeing until dark had I not felt compelled to go shopping. Before leaving the company, I had been besieged by requests to bring back perfume or something to be sent home to wives, sweethearts, and mothers, and I was determined to follow through. Though it was Sunday, a number of shops were open, all jammed with GI’s buying everything in sight with little regard for price. Those who had preceded us already had created enough of a dent in the supply to give inflation a real start.
Blessed with neither any real knowledge of perfumes nor a selective sense of smell, I picked out brands whose bottles seemed sturdy enough to stand a rough trip home, pretty enough to be treasured as gifts, and labelled brazenly enough to fairly scream “Paris!” It gave me great satisfaction to fill my shopping list, despite the problems involved, for it meant making a lot of other men happy by sharing—in a small way, admittedly—my good fortune in getting the trip.
That night I again joined forces with the other four officers to see Paris after sundown, but this time we succeeded in making reservations at Le Lido. In distinct contrast to the Paradise, the Lido was an elegant place. The music was soft and pleasant. The drinks were correspondingly more expensive, of course, but we considered the surroundings worth the extra francs. The floor show began at 8:30 and continued well into the morning with breaks for customer dancing. Since Armistice Day was over, dancing again was in order. Gone were the painted ladies of the evening who had flaunted their price at the Paradise, though word had it that a lonesome soldier could do well enough out at the bar.
We stayed at our table.
Nakedness again was a major part of the floor show, perhaps even more than at the Paradise, but it was molded into the show with a smoothness and beauty that made it enjoyable rather than embarrassing. So genuinely lovely were the girls in the show that I found myself joining the others in whoops of appreciation. When we finally left the Lido well after midnight, we were convinced we had seen a real sample of first-class French night life and knew what people were talking about when they spoke of the gaiety of Paris.
Gaiety was considerably less in evidence the next morning when we assembled with the men in front of the Red Cross club. In addition to the normal weariness brought on by the high pace of the past 48 hours, we could not avoid the awful realization that the holiday was over and that we were headed back to the nerve-wracking outposts in Luxembourg, There were the usual jokes about how various men had achieved their idea of fun, the inevitable tale of the man who had paid far too much for his pleasure, and the equally inevitable account of the naive GI who had been “rolled” of every franc he possessed within an hour of the time he had left us. But all the men were there, and that’s what mattered. Nor were there any drunks or even any black eyes. We piled in our trucks, alert for any incident that might legitimately delay our departure. But none came.
As we rode down the broad boulevards, bordered by big, winter-bare trees, I could hear some of the conversation from the back of the truck.
“Just imagine those poor guys,” one man said with a gesture toward an MP we passed. “They got to stay in this town day in and day out with all this champagne and all these sexy women. They may never be privileged to see a dirty, stinking, German from a muddy, stupid foxhole.”
“Say la guerre, pal,” consoled one of his buddies. “Say la bloody goddamn guerre.”
Arriving back at the Company E CP, I could do nothing before I was plied with innumerable questions about the trip. With the experience of a born liar, I began to enthrall my questioners with bawdy tales of Paris and its dens of sin. They would have been disappointed had I let on that I hadn’t gotten drunk, hadn’t cavorted with the babes, and generally hadn’t made a damned fool of myself. So I didn’t let them know. Besides, who would have believed me?
The First Sergeant, Sergeant Foy, had handed me an accumulation of letters which had arrived during my absence and I was getting ready to depart for my platoon when a messenger arrived with the day’s official distribution of paper work from battalion headquarters. Sergeant Foy fingered through it idly, then stopped suddenly and chuckled with pleasure.
“Well, looka here!” he exclaimed. “The Lieutenant has gone and won himself the Silver Star!”
He turned toward me and shoved out his hand.
“Congratulations, Lieutenant Boesch,” Foy said. “They sure picked the right man to hang this medal on.”
My surprise was tempered somewhat by appreciation of Sergeant Foy’s obviously sincere congratulations. This kind of remark coming from him was almost as welcome to me as the Silver Star award itself.
“Pardon me, boys,” I said at last, “those Paris lies will have to wait. This is something to write home about.”
My heart was full as I sat down to write the longest letter I ever managed to compose in a long correspondence career. Through page after page I took Eleonore on the trip to Paris with me. Together we saw all the sights I had seen, strolled hand in hand along the Seine, rode the bicycle through the snake-like streets of Montmartre. Then I brought her back to Luxembourg, right into the command post where I tossed at her the pleasant bombshell of the Silver Star. As I wrote I imagined the excitement the letter would create and, I hoped, the pride.
“This,” I thought as I finally eased my cramped fingers and put the envelope in the mail, “will really be a piece of news.”
I was, as it turned out, wrong. Though I did not learn of it until much later, division headquarters had a policy of writing a letter home each time a man was awarded a decoration. This official notification reached Eleonore ahead of mine. It was nice of them to do this, but I still think it would have been better had they not spoiled my surprise. I worked too long and hard with the letter for that.
The next day the company held a simple ceremony in the yard of the old chateau where the regimental commander, Colonel Jeter, presented my award to me and other decorations to nine others of the company. As I watched Colonel Jeter walk along the line of men, I felt privileged to be in this exceptional company. When he stood in front of me, my chest swelled so with pride that I thought it might burst.
Inevitably my thoughts flashed back to the last night I had spent in New York with Eleonore before embarking for Europe. As the Colonel carefully inserted the pin of my medal in my field jacket, I thought of Eleonore’s warm arms about my neck and her face upturned in the half light of early morning.
“Remember, darling,” she had whispered, “no medals. Just do your job and come home to me.”
For a split moment I wondered what Eleonore would think of my disobedience, though in my heart I knew she would be every bit as proud as I was.
The voice of the Colonel snapped me from my reverie.
“Well, Boesch,” he said, “it looks like you won another bout.”
“Yes, sir,” I responded, “but I had an excellent manager for this one.”
With a twinkle in his eye that told me he was susceptible to knob polish, the Colonel passed on to the next man in line.
Hardly had I returned to my platoon and recovered from the excitement of the award ceremony when word spread that men wearing the bright red shoulder patch of the 28th Infantry Division had been seen in our division sector. Rumor soon had it that we were to change positions with the 28th, to move from our hilltop defenses in Luxembourg to a place inside Germany called the Huertgen Forest.
Huertgen Forest—where had I heard that name? Somehow it sounded menacing, foreboding, almost evil.
I shrugged.
Imagination, Boesch, imagination.