Paris - La Dernière Fois (The Last Time)

With only two weeks left in France, what does one do?  One goes to Paris, of course.

I caught the 11:00 am train Friday, and rolled into Paris about 1:15 in the afternoon.  My efforts at locating a hotel fell woefully short, but that wasn't realized at the time.  It took afternoon temperatures in the 80s (F) to cause me to question my sanity about returning to Houston.  Am I out of my friggin' mind? (I think yes, but, I'm an American boy and should be there.)  

This is all to report that the hotel didn't have air conditioning, something I should have known to look for when searching on Booking.com.  How the hell can you charge over $200/night and not provide either air conditioning or women?  It's astounding.

It was 3:00pm by the time I got checked in and my stuff stored away, so I decided to meander around the Latin Quarter, one of my favorite areas.  In case you don't know, or haven't read previous posts on the subject, it is called that because that's where the major schools are (i.e., the Sorbonne).  Latin was the dominant language of education for a thousand years or more...hence, the Latin Quarter.

One of the beauties of just roaming around Paris is the treats you find.   Looking for a brief rest I find this delightful little park and walk in for a short rest.

Sitting down, I watch groups of men playing boche ball (or  its close cousin Patenque) and the young ones playing soccer.  Then I note that the place has a vaguely familiar shape to it.

A little research yields that it is the Arènes de Lutèce, site of a 1st Century Roman coliseum.  In its time it was capable of holding 10,000 people.


So, where old men play boche ball and children practice their football moves, gladiators used to fight to the death.  I still can't get over all the history of this place.

 After relaxing a little in the park I'm up and roaming again.  Another treat.  I pass a restaurant called, 'Breakfast In America.'  Most of you know my problems finding good ol' U.S. breakfasts here in Europe and, there, right on the street is an answer.  Filed away for future review.

Saturday I'm up bright and early wending my way via the Metro back to the Latin Quarter.  Yeah, I know, in a couple of weeks I can have all of this I want, but it's been a while and I want eggs...eggs...fried...avec...bacon...and toast...and French cafe...(what was that latter?).  Some things are just too good to give up.   (Note: there are two of these restaurants in Paris and I have now eaten at both.  It's close...but not 100% "American."  In France they can not resist fancying' up anything with garlic and poivre.  But it's good.  Most know my thoughts on green peppers.)

After a leisurely breakfast I catch the RER to Versailes-Chantiers.  It's then only a 2K walk to the Chateau Versailles.

One of many old government buildings near the Court

 The main entrance area.  Are you starting to see a lot of something here?

Louis XIV - The Sun King












I should have known better.  For crying out loud, I've been to two rodeos and a world's fair...and I'm an ex-GI, I know what lines mean.  All those people standing around the entrance area should have been a clue.  But no, I'm determined to see Louis XIV's extravagance and I will myself to ignore the line to buy a ticket. Besides, it was only about 200 feet long winding into one of the magnificent buildings.  It wouldn't get worse than that, right? Wrong again trench-foot breath.

Twenty-five Euros ($37.50) later I have my ticket and walk out among the hordes.  And I mean hordes.  Put 'em on horses and Genghis Khan springs to mind.  But, on the whole, much more polite. It is France, after all.

I walk out toward the entrance I had noted on my way into the ticket building and see gendarmes pushing a bunch of people away from the line there.  At first I didn't understand what they were doing, then I realize they are preventing the unknowing (like me) from cutting in line in front of those who have patiently served their time in line (and hell) and that now it's my (our) turn.




Looking to the right I see a line wending its way through the mass of parked cars back down the large courtyard to the main palace gates, at least 300 feet.









Then, guess what?  The line turns around a line of cars, and wends its way back up to the line where I thought I was going to enter the Chateau.  All ex-GIs know what I'm going through at this point.  I, like them, have a doctorate in queues...a virtual lifetime degree in waiting for something.  And I don't do it well.  None of us do.

But, you gotta admit, the entrance is pretty.

I finally entered the palace.

Check out that ceiling.

Another ceiling.

Walls aren't bad either.

The entrance to the Hall of Mirrors.

This guy was looking at himself in the mirror across the hall. (I certainly do not know why.)

She was checking him out though.

Anyone seen my clothes?  I was at the party and...well, you know...

Louis XIV

I've pointed out before that none of these folks are very good looking.  This ol' boy would make a freight train take a dirt road.

Napoleon's Throne

He wasn't born to extravagance...but he managed to get there.  Sort of like our modern-day elites...the investment bankers.






Back outside I head out toward the gardens.

My intention was to see Marie Antoinette's chateau but I just flat ran out of patience with so many people.  You couldn't swing a dead cat and not hit someone in the head.  In addition to lines, ex-GIs don't care much for crowds.  So, I picked up my marbles and headed out, returning to Paris looking forward to a nap and some great lamb later.

One of the metro stations.

This little park was just up the street from my hotel.  I just love the way they are everywhere in Paris.



After a nice nap, I headed for the Edgar Quinet metro stop.  This is just east of the Montparnasse railway station and another favorite area of mine.  It's very neat, with great little shops, and some good restaurants.  And one of my favorites is surprising.  It's a "Kebob" place.  You see these small restaurants everywhere in France with their tall standing meat roast from which they cut slices upon request.   I haven't tried many of them, and those I have I haven't liked very much.  Except for La Paix at 14, Rue d'Odessa in Paris.  On my first trip to Paris I found myself worn out early one evening and not wanting anything but something quick so I could go back and get to bed, I saw this Kurdish/Turkish "Kebob" place and went in.  In the always present meal pictures I saw Grilled Lamb Shish Kabob, and, loving lamb, I said, "What the heck," and ordered it.  Was it good?  I'll let you be the judge.  I have come back to this little restaurant every time I've come to Paris since that evening.  And I have never been disappointed. It is the best, tenderest, juiciest lamb I've ever eaten ANYWHERE!  It is served with a small salad, white rice, a yellow, spicy rice, and the ubiquitous frites, all on one large plate.  Price: 13€.  Touch that anywhere else in town.  And I think I can guarantee you, you will not find better.

Out Sunday morning on my way to the second 'Breakfast In America' restaurant I saw this banner near the Pont Marie metro stop on the Seine.  Had to take the picture for my collector friend Roger R.  (Eat your heart out son!)

Later, on my way back from breakfast I stop at the Edgar Quinet metro again.  There's always something going on here and today it's a sidewalk art sale.  Neat stuff.  Even purchased a few items.

Got back to Nantes about 3:00PM.

Nantes Train Station

Oradour-Sur-Glane

June 10, 1944

On the afternoon of June 10, 1944 approximately 180 soldiers of the 2nd SS Panzer Division 'Das Reich' entered the small French village of Oradour-Sur-Glane, twenty miles north-west of Limoges, France.  They were led by Sturmbannführer Adolf Otto Diekmann.

The previous day Diekmann's best friend, Helmut Kämpfe, had commanded a detachment sent to the village of Guéret to drive off resistance fighters who had the village under attack.  Finding no fighting upon arriving, Kämpfe turned his forces around and headed back to Limoges.  Recklessly advancing ahead of his troops, Kämpfe was captured by the resistance, and believed to have been executed that evening, or the next day in Breuilaufa, north of Oradour-Sur-Glane.  Diekmann was ordered to go to Oradour-Sur-Glane and select thirty (30) hostages against the release of Kämpf.

We, of course, will never know the truths of the causes and effects of that day. The stories run the gamut from quiet village with no resistance ties to a store house for resistance weapons.  It is worth noting that in no after-action report did the German units mention finding any weapons.  Of what is known, only a few facts really matter:  642 men, women, and children were executed that day.

The numbers of children differ.  Even the SS troopers had some difficulty segregating the men and boys, in the end seeming to settle on the age of fifteen (15).  One mother succeeded in getting her 16-year-old handicapped son declared a child and sent to the church with her and the other women and children; a distinction only serving to determine with which parent he died.

So there is disagreement in the number of children massacred that day.  Let's settle on the smaller number.

One hundred-ninety-three.

193

193

193

193

193

It is a horrendous number in any size or font

CHILDREN
It would be huge if only one

We have an amazing ability to deflect the undecipherable; to evade the unbelievable.   Since the majority of movies and photos of this period are preserved in the mostly black and white images shown on the Discovery or History channels, we can subliminally think, "Hey, it wasn't really real...the world doesn't look like that."  But that is not the way it happened.  The events of this date were in pure, clear summer colors.  Just as they are for us today.

As you enter the village you see this small courtyard to one of the first homes.  The doorway you see leads to a small well.  Five to seven
bodies were discovered there.

After the mass killings, the troops searched the village, checking each house for any hiding within, killing any found, and destroying the buildings.

But it was in color that day.

Near the church.  Did any run down this alleyway, seeking to escape out the back?  Perhaps a couple.





Most didn't conceive the possibility for the events which came after the town crier called them to meet in the village center for a documents check. 








I suspect the trees and grass were equally green that day.

A right on Rue Emile Desourteaux, one of the main streets of the village.  The building shown was the workshop of Messr. Beaulieu. 

Gray and green today with bright blue in the sky.

A courtyard near the Beaulieu Forge.  In this street, near this spot, a group of cyclists on an outing from Limoges were stopped shortly after the citizens were dispersed to the church and the various barns.  Once the killing started the cyclists were executed in the street.

Vibrant in color today.

The mayor, Jean Desourteaux, a retired doctor, was the grandson of the namesake of the main street.  His son, Jacques, the current doctor, returned from a patient visit as the roundup was being made. He died with his father and the other men of the village, his car remaining where he parked it on that day.

Red rust has replaced the shiny black paint on the car.





The citizens were called to the fairgrounds (down the street to the left)  by the town crier on the instructions of the Mayor.  Once gathered, about 2:30pm, a German officer, believed to be Diekman, told the Mayor to select thirty citizens to be held as hostages.  The mayor refused, saying the Germans would have to do that themselves.  He and the officer then went to the town hall where it is believed the officer wanted to make a phone call.  It is doubtful any call went through since the town operator was among those sitting on the fairground, and witnesses reported the amount of time taken was barely more than it would take to walk there and back.  Upon their return, the mayor offered himself and his family as hostages, but he was refused.  The citizens were then relocated within the town; the women and children to the church, and the men spread among six barns.

Some more vehicles that perished with their owners.

They, too, now closer to the color of blood than the common paint job they had on that day.

The church.  It was here that the women and children were herded together.

Austere today...even in color.







About 4:00pm some young soldiers brought a large black box with strings hanging from the sides.  When lit it exploded and gave off a thick black smoke.  This appears to be the signal to the other detachments who began firing on the collected men, at their legs first to bring them down to stop them from running, then walking among them routinely executing them.

 Madam Marguerite Rouffanche with another woman and her crying child escaped through the center window, the women standing on a small stool used to light candles during services.  Cries of the baby, however, drew attention of soldiers who shot all three. Madam Rouffache, wounded, managed, after some time elapsed, to crawl off into a garden patch and hide; the other two were killed.  At trial in Bordeaux after the war, several Alsatian soldiers reported a 12-year-old girl also managed to exit through this window, only to be shot on the other side.

With the explosion and the suffocating smoke the women and children moved to areas where there was more air, the altar one of them.  Soldiers entered the church and started shooting and spreading straw, firewood, and chairs to stoke the fire.  It is significant that those coming after the Germans left, upon entering the church, found the bodies of children behind the alter near the source of fresh air, pushed there by mothers unwilling to spare themselves over their children.

The light at the end of the sacristy would have been even more appealing through the smoke and flame of that day.

(Charring is still visible after sixty-seven years)

The back of the church close to the place where Madam Rouffanche hid among the peas of the garden

Are the black patterns the result of the fires started to exterminate the women and children?  Or, perhaps, the trails of ash-laden tears?

The tram station just down from the church at the south end of town.  It's amazing how the tram wires have held up after so many years.

Nice colors today (and then), with large trees and green grass.

The girls school adjacent to the Desourteaux garage on Rue de Desourteaux.

The doctors' home.  I wonder why it was left standing.

But it's not about buildings.  It's about people.
 They lived.  In color.

Six men escaped in this garage

Father 65, Mother 67, Daughter 30, Granddaughter 5, Grandson 8 1/2
Martyred

Sign at the Church

The Memorial at the Fairground facing the cemetery

But these are most effective for me.

 

Oradour-Sur-Glane school picture the year before

The  'Argument From Evil' is the argument that an all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good God would not allow any—or certain kinds of—evil or suffering to occur.  There is then the Evidential Argument which posits that God could have a morally sufficient reason for allowing certain evils to occur—e.g., to ensure that some greater good is achieved as a consequence of an evil. The fundamental problem with this latter argument is, obviously, why so much?  And then, children?  How can such things happen to children?

Where were you?