Andrée's War (28 page)

It was feared that the German military governor of Paris, General von Choltitz, was planning, on Hitler's instruction, to lay waste to Paris before his final surrender. ‘Paris is not to fall into the hands of the enemy except in a heap of rubble,' the Führer's order of 23 August instructed. There has been much debate as to the part played by the Swedish Consul, Raoul Nordling, in persuading von Choltitz not to follow Hitler's orders, but certainly Nordling's attempt to arrange a peaceful surrender was unsuccessful. As the American and French forces entered the city centre, there was heavy gunfire and shooting around central landmarks including the Invalides, the École Militaire, the Arc de Triomphe, the Jardin du Luxembourg, the rue de Rivoli, the Hôtel de Ville, and the Naval Ministry.

By this point Andrée was no longer writing her journal; instead she kept a simple diary, which noted simply meeting times, places and the odd word to represent what she was doing.

On the afternoon of 25 August 1944, General Billotte of the Deuxieme Division Blindée (the Free French 2nd Armoured Division) took over the Hôtel Meurice, headquarters of General von Choltitz. His troops arrested von Choltitz and took him to Police Headquarters, where he signed the act of surrender. The document described General Leclerc as the Commander of the French forces in Paris and Leclerc signed it in the name of de Gaulle's
French provisional government. As Cobb put it, ‘This was a Free French triumph'. There was no mention of the role of Resistance fighters in the document, nor would de Gaulle acknowledge their existence in the historic speech he gave later that day. De Gaulle had been fighting with the Allies (and the Americans in particular) over who governed France, and he was determined to resume what he saw as his rightful position, regardless of national politics or the Allies' views.

The Free French were worried that Roosevelt wanted to install an army of occupation in France until an election had been called, but de Gaulle had other plans. He wanted the world to recognise him as the only leader of the French Republic, and to acknowledge that the Republic had continued to exist in London under his leadership in the name of the Free French. Legally, therefore, Vichy had never represented the French government. It was an argument that resonated with many French citizens, not least the Griotterays, who refused throughout the war to acknowledge Pétain as head of state.

Despite the Germans' formal surrender, the fighting continued. Andrée described the Wehrmacht's departure as more frightening and dangerous than its arrival.
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Yet the end was in sight.

The streets of Paris throbbed with excitement on 26 August 1944, as hundreds of thousands of people made their way into the city, lining the streets of the capital to celebrate its liberation after four years of Nazi occupation. On that day, General de Gaulle was the first among the Allied
generals to march down the Champs-Élysées, with General Leclerc, General Koenig and Georges Bidault (President of the Comité National de la Resistance) at his side. This was a pivotal moment, as both Churchill and de Gaulle were well aware; by walking down that iconic street before the US Army, de Gaulle was sending a clear signal to the world: ‘to demonstrate and cement his importance and to show that French unity and power had been restored.'
²⁰

The crowds clapped, laughed, shouted and cried as they watched the parade at street level, from their balconies, windows and from rooftops. At the Place de la Concorde, de Gaulle stopped and got into a waiting car; people climbed up the statues and the lampposts to get a better view of their leader. Andrée and her friends had made their way into the square: they watched in amazement as snipers fired at the vehicle from the rooftops of the Hôtel de Crillon, yet de Gaulle showed no fear.

It was a heady time – watching the Wehrmacht leave the city was exciting. As Andrée later said, ‘It was just so wonderful to see them leave with their musical instruments, with their bikes and on horseback'. But as her diary of the time recorded, it was also an extremely dangerous period. Paris was still effectively a warzone in the days during and after the liberation. After acknowledging the crowds at the Hôtel de Ville, de Gaulle went to Notre Dame for a thanksgiving service; halfway through, gunmen fired within the cathedral, bringing the service to an abrupt end.

There was much anger and resentment aimed not only at the Germans, who were still in Paris, but towards those who collaborated with them. Parisians wanted to settle their grievances. Biaggi later told me: ‘It was those people who during the four years of occupation never did anything to help the Resistance who were the most vindictive.' Many were anxious to retrospectively join the winning side. As Andrée put it, ‘There were so many people after the war who claimed to have been part of the Resistance, but most of them only joined up after the landings and they therefore ran far fewer risks than those of us who joined up in 1940.'

On 28 August, the US Army marched victoriously down the Champs-Élysées to the applause and cheers of the crowds. That day Yvette, Andrée's eighteen-year-old sister, met a US army officer whose name was
Wally Petterson. She brought him home to meet her parents, and they went on to form a close relationship. Indeed they nearly married but, after a trip to New York, Yvette decided the American way of life was not what she wanted and she returned to Paris.
*

Shortly after the liberation, Alain managed to get yet another press card and became part of a group of youngsters who took over the offices of the newspaper
Paris Soir
, which had been under German control. One day he and François de Rochefort were out driving when they hit an obstacle. Crowds of Parisians surrounded two trucks in which forty German soldiers were holding several Frenchwomen hostage at gunpoint. Alain and François pushed their way to the front, accosting the soldiers and insisting that they release the women immediately. The soldiers refused, saying they were about to be killed by the crowds and the hostages represented their only hope of freedom. Alain found himself negotiating a deal with members of a defeated army in order to save the hostages, and had to agree to give the Germans a safe passage to the north of the capital. The hostages were released safely, but Alain wrestled with the moral dilemma of allowing forty soldiers to go free in order to save several civilians.

On 29 August, Andrée celebrated her twenty-fourth birthday at the Hôtel Scribe. Two days later, on 31 August, disaster struck. Margit Ehrart, one of her closest friends and trusted couriers, was arrested by the French police. Andrée referred briefly to the arrest in her diary but gave no details. That day she went to the Commissariat de Police on the rue Cambaures to see Margit, after which she went to do some shopping on her behalf. The following day she returned to the Commissariat. Her diaries say nothing more about her friend for two weeks, then, on 16 September, she records Margit's release from Drancy, one of Paris's largest holding prisons.

Margit's arrest is difficult to understand, and there are no official records to clarify it. Under what is presumably her married name of Hutton, she
is registered in the Ministry of Defence files at Vincennes as having been a P2 agent, which means she was regarded as a full-time agent for Orion from 1941.

Her ‘proper' job, meanwhile, was at the German administrative headquarters in Paris (the ‘Kommandantur'). As such she may well have had good access to information of use to Orion. She was half-Austrian and spoke perfect German, and – according to Andrée – she dated German soldiers more often than she should have done.

After the liberation of Paris, the backlash against women who had (or were perceived to have had) relationships with Germans was vicious and cruel. It is possible that she could have been wrongly informed upon as a German collaborator or sympathiser, and thus arrested. Sadly she and Andrée lost touch some years after the war.

 

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When I visited the archives of the Préfecture de Police, I was shown documents testifying that some policemen were part of the Resistance, but they were few and far between.

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As did a friend of mine who lived on the rue Royale at the time, Jeanine Nouveau. Jeanine was about four years younger than Andrée and lived only five minutes away from the Griotterays' flat, though they never knew each other. Like Andrée, she watched cautiously as the events leading up to Paris's official liberation unfolded. She saw members of the FFI out on the streets carrying white flags while German soldiers took shots at them, and her family feared that Paris was about to be bombed. She said of de Gaulle's arrival in Paris: ‘I watched General de Gaulle drive along the rue de Rivoli from the balcony of our flat. He was driving past a group of German prisoners when suddenly snipers started shooting at him. He did not budge an inch.'

*
In 1952, Wally rekindled his friendship with Andrée and her husband Frank when he returned to London as a leading cast member in the musical
Oklahoma!

‘
I
simply cannot take it any more,' Andrée exclaimed as she walked into the family flat one day in summer 1945, slamming the door behind her. Her parents were in the drawing room discussing France's recently formed provisional government under Charles de Gaulle. Edmond, not surprised by his elder daughter's outburst, stood up and gave her a hug, asking whether she had just been out with Karl.

‘Yes, and he has been crying on my shoulder for the last three hours. It is the same every time we meet. It is horrendous for him, and now he has been told he has to return next week as part of a US military team questioning those inhuman Nazis about what happened at Buchenwald. He tells me every tiny, horrific detail and I know it is very selfish of me but all I can think is that I could have been deported there and I can't bear it.'

Karl Weyner was Andrée's boyfriend at the time, and one of the first American GIs to enter Buchenwald. Her parents tried to calm her. ‘Darling, we all need to do our part to support the Allies now. These men have fought so hard on our behalf and the Americans are so far from home.'

‘I cannot sleep, I am having nightmares. I know it must be terribly hard for Karl, and his being Jewish must make it even worse. I want to help him but I don't know if I can cope much longer.'
*

‘There is a letter addressed to you in the hall,' Yvonne told her daughter, trying to diffuse the conversation.

Andrée picked up the engraved envelope, wondering why they would write to her. It was an invitation to a ball at the British Officers' Club. She showed her mother, smiling; her troubles temporarily eased. ‘What a lovely invitation and such a perfect opportunity to meet some of the British officers now here in Paris.'

Life was slowly beginning to return to normal for the Griotteray family. Andrée had resigned from Police Headquarters in late 1944; the relief at no longer having to work for an organisation which had effectively collaborated for four long years with the Wehrmacht had been tremendous.
*
Instead she was now working for the Ford Motor Company, which, following the end of the war, had re-established its presence in France. The energetic, resourceful François Clerc had been appointed head of its operation.

In the days after Liberation, the streets of Paris had been full of Allied soldiers intent on enjoying themselves after their long, arduous journey over the Channel and the intense fighting on the Normandy beaches and through northern France. For Parisians, long-awaited celebrations had been enhanced by the availability of some good food – the Americans brought with them provisions which most of Paris had been denied for a long time. The Griotterays had welcomed Americans into their home warmly and sincerely as their liberators, but like anyone else they were not immune to the lure of the Americans' supplies.

Returning home early one evening, Andrée found another letter awaiting her, this time bearing the emblem of the French Republic. Edmond was waiting patiently in his study for his daughter to return home so that they could find out what was inside.

Andrée opened the letter slowly; her eyes immediately jumped to the end, where appeared the name General Charles de Gaulle. On the personal
instruction of the leader of the provisional French government, she was to be awarded the Croix de guerre, a medal traditionally awarded for a single extraordinary act of bravery by the French government while the nation was at war.

She began to cry softly as the letter's contents sank in. Secretly she had dreamt of being given the Médaille de la Résistance, but this was an even more prestigious award, and one she never even considered. Ecstatic at the honour being bestowed on her, she called out to her parents to tell them the good news.

Giddy with excitement, Andrée hurried along the boulevard des Capucines to the British Officers' Club. It was a night that would eventually change her life. She was introduced to a tall, slim and smiling Englishman whose well-trimmed auburn moustache caught her eye. She and Flight Lieutenant White hit it off immediately. As their friendship developed, Andrée introduced Frank to all the fun Paris had to offer: French food, the nightlife and long walks around Europe's most stunning city.

One month after they met, Alain told his sister that she was to be awarded the Médaille de la Résistance for services rendered to France during the war. The official announcement was made on Saturday, 20 October 1945 in
Le Journal officiel de la République française
. Frank was intrigued by his new beau's war record and to help him understand more about what she had done, Andrée asked Madame Labbé to invite him to stay at Château d'Orion.

The following year, Frank was demobbed from the RAF and returned to London in June 1946. In December, Andrée was invited to spend Christmas at the Chantry, near Slapton Sands in Devon, to meet Frank's family.