Women of Valor (16 page)

Arlette Hautefeuille in her wedding dress, on the Labourdette’s rooftop terrace.
Photo courtesy of Madame Arlette Hautefeuille Ratard.

When Arlette and Georges arrived at the mayor’s office of the 4th arrondissement on August 28, they found American flags decorating the hall. Because the officials had dealt with Conrad, and the accompanying officers wore American uniforms, they had assumed it was an American wedding. The FFI sent an enormous bouquet of red-white-and-blue flowers. The mayor had been appointed to his post the evening before by the Resistance, and had never performed a wedding. He interrupted the ceremony repeatedly to ask the assistant mayor how to proceed. They went to Notre Dame des Victoires church for the religious part of the ceremony (in France, couples must be married first by the state, then may be married by the church as well), and then to the Labourdettes’ for a reception, a feast with food not seen in Paris in years. For their honeymoon, the Labourdettes loaned the couple a studio apartment they had on the Quai des Orfèvres. Arlette had a week’s leave from the Rochambeau Group, and Georges took a day or two. Arlette remembers the sheets were crepe de chine and so slippery that the pillows kept falling on the floor.

There is a black-and-white photograph of Arlette in her wedding dress, standing on the Labourdettes’ rooftop terrace. A breeze has just lifted a corner of the veil, Paris stretches out in the background, and Arlette’s face is radiant. It was a miracle of a wedding, set in a celestial moment in history, pulled together by the goodwill and energy of friends and strangers, all in a mood for celebration. Arlette would later say that theirs was the first wedding in free Paris.

Zizon had dreamed of the glory of liberating Paris, but now that they were there she just felt exhausted. Also she was still in her dirty fatigues. Then Toto loaned her an extra dress uniform, and Captain Ceccaldi offered to take her and Denise to Montmartre to dinner in his Jeep. “Paris is somber. Paris is calm. Paris is sinister, but, at last, it’s Paris!” she wrote.
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By this time, the other women were snickering and calling Zizon “la Pompadour,” because Ceccaldi had developed a crush on her (the Marquise de Pompadour was the powerful mistress of Louis XV). Ceccaldi tried at one point to have her transferred to a less dangerous duty, but incurred such wrath on her part that he gave up.

Dinner with Ceccaldi didn’t turn out so well either. His Corsican driver knew a restaurant of “compatriots” that he swore would be stocked with black-market bounty, a tempting thought after nearly a month of K-rations. They arrived, knocked on a locked door and heard a rude and violent response. The driver shouted his name and banged on the door, which then opened to “an army of cousins” full of tears and embraces. They promised a delicious dinner of cabbage and chicken stew. A pastis cocktail was served. But first, the cousins needed to go settle a score with a neighbor. The Corsicans slid on their FFI armbands and departed. Shots were fired, shouts were heard, and the group returned, pleased, to ask what Ceccaldi thought of that? The captain said he didn’t think before eating. Sure, they said, but first there’s another little score to settle, this one requiring the Jeep and driver. Off they went before Ceccaldi could stop them. They promised to be quick. They returned at 4:00 A.M., surrendered the Jeep and driver, and the very hungry Ceccaldi, Zizon and Denise went back to the encampment to hunt up some rations.
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When they first arrived in Paris, the Rochambelles were bivouacked at the Jardin des Plantes, where the Paris zoo was then located. On the second night, the Germans flew over and bombed the quays of the Seine, presumably aiming for the bridges, but instead hit the Halle aux Vins (wine market) next door to the Jardin des Plantes, which sent up a great flambée of alcohol. “Our greatest fear was that the lions would escape,” Rosette said. Bombs they were getting used to. Hungry lions were another matter. The next day the group moved to the Jardin de Bagatelle, in the Bois de Boulogne, on the western edge of Paris.

Edith and Lucie were not pleased with the new location, so far from the action of the city. After enjoying a swim in the lake, washing out some clothes, and scrubbing down their ambulances, they felt they’d done their bit. But a heavy iron gate locked them in at night, ostensibly for their own security. They had parked their ambulance against the back wall, and climbing up to have a look, found a tree branch hanging close enough to shinny down the other side. They took the first ambulance in line on the street and they were off, around the Arc de Triomphe, down the Champs-Elysées, drinking in the vision of Paris waking from its nightmare of occupation. The men wore bits and pieces of uniforms; the women seemed to have found only tulle and voile, and to have concocted floaty, fluffy little dresses out of them. Lucie, born and raised in Paris, and equipped with the street smarts and cheek that made her the
“titi Parisienne”
of the group, knew exactly where to go. Edith had lived in the capital only briefly, once in boarding school and then later in nursing school. Down to the Concorde, the Tuileries, around Place de la Madeleine, up the boulevard des Italiens, everywhere the shop windows were decorated with little
bleu-blanc-rouge
flags. Around Palais-Royal and over the Pont Neuf, they pulled up in front of Notre Dame and jumped out of the car to marvel at its majesty.
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Rochambelles bivouacked at the Bagatelle Gardens, August 1944. First row, standing, l-r: Lucie Deplancke, Arlette Hautefeuille, Toto. Seated, back row, l-r: Michette de Steinheil, Edith Schaller, Antoinette Berger, Marie-Thérèse Pezet, Christiane Petit, Nicole Mangini.

Lucie dropped Edith at her cousin’s apartment and arranged to return at 5:00 A.M. to pick her up. Edith and her cousin visited through the night, caught a couple of hours’ sleep, and then Lucie was back. They sneaked back into Bagatelle through a small door in the gate, already opened at dawn, and slept until someone came to see if they were ill. They pretended to participate in the day’s exercises, dreaming of the night. They did it over and over again, partying with Lucie’s friends at the Paris Opera, visiting old acquaintances, and enjoying the release from both military discipline and enemy occupation. Edith doesn’t remember how many times they sneaked out at night and caught up their sleep with naps during the day, until one day Toto called them out: they had been caught. They were dressed down verbally and put on telephone duty. The telephone was in a restaurant at the entrance of the Bois de Boulogne, and the restaurant was perfectly empty and dreary. Lucie picked up the telephone and called her friends, and Edith called her cousins, and they invited them all to bring lunch to the Bagatelle. The friends and cousins arrived with arms full of roast chickens, ham, cakes, and wine and everyone sat down at a terrace table to feast. Midway through a joyous meal, Edith looked up and froze: Toto was standing there, glaring with disapproval, and the table fell silent. Someone invited her to join them, she hesitated briefly, and then turned and left without a word.
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The party picked up again gradually. Paris was free and life was so sweet after the occupation that it seemed pointless to be glum. Edith and Lucie made an effort to be very, very good for the next few days, and Toto didn’t say anything to them. Orders were loosened up to allow the Rochambelles leave in Paris when they weren’t on ambulance duty.

Rosette went shopping. Prices were high for food and drink, but other luxuries were no more expensive than in Morocco or England. On the Rue du Rivoli, she spent several months’ pay on some handkerchiefs, stationery, a scarf and an enamel insignia pin. Paris was starting to feel crowded. “The Americans have arrived now and people keep confusing us with them, which is annoying the first time it happens and exasperating on the tenth ‘Bravo little Americans,’” she wrote.

Jacotte and Crapette, meanwhile, had been selected by the First Medical Company Doctor Alexandre Krementchousky to work for him directly. He moved them from the Bagatelle campground and put them in a house with a piano, which Crapette used to entertain them splendidly. Krementchousky and Crapette had known each other before the war, as both were from Russian Orthodox families from Limoges. Jacotte developed a tremendous respect for Krem, as they called him. He spent most of his time in the front lines, so as to give medical aid more quickly. He had been with Leclerc since the battle of El Alamein in 1942. “He had a complete disregard for danger and a natural serenity that gave courage to everyone,” Jacotte said. “He was an extraordinary man.”

A distant cousin spotted Jacotte at the wheel coming into Paris and asked if her family knew she was there. The cousin undertook spreading the news, calling her father, who called Jacotte’s younger sister, Suzanne. Suzanne went out and ran across another Rochambelle, Rosette, and gave her her address to give to Jacotte, which Rosette did. Then Toto got permission from Captain Ceccaldi for the Parisians of the group to go see their families, and took Jacotte to Suzanne’s address, on Rue Royale. Suzanne was there, along with a number of other people who had taken refuge in the building. Suzanne told her that their parents and other sister Yvonne were in the countryside at Herblay. Suzanne insisted on riding her bicycle to their family apartment on the Avenue Wagram to get the bottle of champagne they had put away years before in anticipation of an eventual reunion. It was a long and dangerous ride, and she nearly was shot by a machine gunner at Saint Augustin.

To be back in Paris, reunited with her sister, after five years away, was an overwhelming moment of happiness. “It was indescribable,” Jacotte said. “So much emotion! It was more emotion than joy.” She and Suzanne embraced warmly, but they were with a group of people, and couldn’t really express their feelings. Later, after the others left, and Suzanne was making up a bed for Jacotte, they started to try to cover the distance. “We didn’t know where to start or where to finish, after five years,” Jacotte said. Suzanne had gotten very thin. Her family had no garden or connections to send them fresh food, and rations were down to almost nothing. Herblay was still under German occupation, and then the U.S. Army took over the Fournier estate. It wasn’t until September 7 that an officer offered to give Jacotte’s mother and father and Yvonne a ride to Paris. They were flabbergasted to find Jacotte there, and more amazed to learn she was in the army. “They were astounded,” she said. “Even more astounded because I was someone who could not look at a scratch or cut, I had to turn my head. They thought I was in New York, they believed I was safe in the United States.”

She hadn’t sent word ahead because she didn’t want them to worry. The family had one night together, and then the division left Paris. Jacotte wrote them from the eastern campaign, reassuring notes that included little of what she was actually doing. “We would be coming out of hell, but I didn’t talk about hell.”

One of the highlights of the Rochambelles’ Paris stay was Leclerc’s visit to their Bagatelle camp. The women stood at attention, and Leclerc inspected their ranks and reminded them that he had agreed to take them on as part of the division up to Paris. The women held their collective breath. “But … I’ll keep you,” Leclerc said, remarking on their efficiency, competence, and value to the division. Toto hissed “Attention!” at the women, afraid they were going to be extremely unmilitary and jump for joy. She thanked Leclerc, he left, and then they all whooped and jumped for joy. “When he turned his back, there was a great ‘Hurrah!’” Jacotte recalled.

Leclerc especially thanked Florence Conrad, calling her “the Providence of our wounded.”
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When the division moved on, Conrad stayed in Paris to help with division patients at Val de Grace hospital. Even from the rear she got out front, obtaining penicillin from the Americans for her patients before the rest of France had even heard of it. Conrad’s favoritism of Second Division soldiers caused some resentment among other wounded in the hospital, and some of the nurses distributed Conrad’s largesse beyond the division to smooth things out.

Janine Bocquentin was one of those nurses. She applied to join the Rochambelles and was told there was no room for the moment. She was a registered nurse, and was asked to work at Val de Grace until a place opened up among the ambulance drivers. Janine enjoyed her work at the hospital, much of which was providing moral support to men who were far from home. “Our role was to replace the family. All those people from North Africa had no family nearby,” she said. “We were like their sisters.”

Leonora Lindsley rejoined the Rochambelles there as well, and was sent to Val de Grace. She had been working with the American Red Cross since being eliminated from the Rochambeau Group in New York, arriving in France in July 1944. Once the city was liberated, Leonora moved to an apartment her mother had kept there since before the war, and lived there while working at the hospital. She had been there for a month, and she and Janine Bocquentin became friends. They were sympathetic young women caught in a complex moment of judgment and reprisal.