Occasionally, I publish some of Mr. Montgomery’s musings edited only for grammatical errors. Here is another of his reflection of earlier times. Mr. Montgomery wrote about much of his time enlisted in the U.S. Army, and this is ACT FIVE of SIX.
ROBERT MONTGOMERY – Wartime ACT FIVE – Life in Paris
How to get involved in a WAR and stay SANE (or thereabouts)
I stayed with SHAEF in England from June until November 1944, when we moved to Versailles. It was another adventure for our group crossing from Bushy Park, across the English Channel, and on to Versailles, and encampment in a building built for Louis XIV over 300 years ago. It was inside out of the rain, even if we were in double tier bunks in what was once the stables to the great Palace of Versailles. This wasn’t an ordinary stable, either. One entire section still had the stall area intact as it had been when King Louis reigned. The horse stalls had fancy murals on the ceilings, the stalls were marble or ceramic tiles. It was a real horse heaven. This was the stables for an artillery regiment in the 1600 to 1700’s, and their parade area was a huge courtyard in front of the building, just across the street from the Palace. The building itself covered about 3 city blocks, and was paired with another stable building across the street. We were in Le Petit Ecurie, the one across the street was Le Grand Ecurie. The building had been altered over the years, and was probably used by the French military for many years, and evidence that the Germans had recently moved out. Around the stable area in the middle, was a mostly 3 story building, that went on and on. It had been remodeled over the many years since the 1700’s, and was a warren of offices that actually required a map to find specific offices.
One time I had to find an office, I had a building map, the address was something like #302B, which would have meant that it was somewhere on the third floor. I could even find it on the map, but I couldn’t find out how to get there. Finally, I stopped into an office and told an officer my predicament. Oh, he said: “You just go into the office next door, then go on through the first office on the left, and out the back door of that office, you will find a stairway back there that leads upstairs (we were on the 2nd floor), then take the door on the right and you will be in 302B”. (I wonder if that was Napoleon Bonaparte’s hideaway?)
One of the offices where I had to make frequent typewriter repair calls, was an office with no number on the door, no sign or any identification of any kind. All I remember was that I was instructed by telephone where to find the place, and told to knock on the door and wait. I waited, the door would open a crack and an eyeball would look out to me and ask: “Whaddayawant?” “I came to fix the typewriter” – “Just a minute”, and the door would close, and I could hear things being moved around, when the door would open, and out would come a typewriter on a wheeled stand. “There you are”, and then the soldier would go back in and close the door. I finally found that this was the codes & cyphers office, and nobody got in there, not even Eisenhower.
One of my regular trips to repair office machines (typewriters, mimeographs, adding machines, etc) was to the actual department heads, and central headquarters where Gen Eisenhower and his immediate staff were quartered. It was known as the Trianon Hotel. I think it had once been a tourist trap next to one of the entrances to the Versailles Palace. The easy way to get there from the Petit Ecurie was to cross the street to the center of the big palace, find a gate that led through the lowest level of the palace out into the garden behind the palace, then across this garden to the exit gate that led to the Trianon hotel next to the palace. There were guards checking passes at each gate. It was an interesting trip.
My trip log shows that I regularly fixed typewriters for a Sgt Snyder, and a young lady that years later (1980’s) the tabloid papers alleged was some sort of girlfriend to the General. (I have my doubts of that).
There was also a very ancient theatre just down that street a little distance. Our office arranged the purchasing for an army office that handled entertainment (like USO) for headquarters personnel. So, there was a new stage show every week free to us soldiers. I remember seeing things like, a performance of “The Barrett’s of Wimpole Street”, with Katherine Cornell and Brian Ahearn in the cast. Following week was a musical show from the Follies Bergère, and one show I missed starred Maurice Chevalier. Life at this headquarters was very strenuous.
What was interesting was security regulations. I and all of us working in these offices had a special pass that allowed us entry into what I thought was the most secret of places in the whole invasion operation. Every building entrance and many private passageways had armed guards that actually read our passes when we entered. Yet I can remember answering a service call in an office that turned out was the chief of staff for G-3 (military operations). I fixed the typewriter, then leaned back and realized that the maps on the walls were the position maps of the entire army facing the German front. If you want to be a spy, become a typewriter repairman.
Bunking-up in King Louis stables. When we moved this typewriter shop into the Petit Ecurie, there were 4 of us, we decided that we didn’t need to bunk with the members of this headquarters company in their big mass of barracks, because there was a nice vacant room adjoining what we commandeered for a typewriter shop. The Captain said OK, so we had our own private quarters, with a gate that led outside to one of the Versailles streets. The only regret was that we ate at the nearby Service Co. mess hall presided over by Sgt Rosenberg. We got to referring to it as Rosenberg’s slop house. It was probably as good as any army mess hall in the US Army, but our own HQ company somehow had a kitchen crew many of whom had been professional chefs and cooks, but they were about a mile away from us. I remember one time, when Rosenberg’s crew were serving sliced ham – big big slices of American ham. It was almost raw, but we went back a couple of times for seconds and brought the whole thing back to the typewriter repair shop. We fired up the pot-bellied stove, and for 2 days we had fried/baked/roasted ham when we wanted it.
One time we were in this mess hall, sitting eating across from another group of American soldiers. This big mess hall seated 300 or 500 at one time. We started to notice that these fellows across from us weren’t speaking English, but they were wearing regular US army uniforms and insignia. One of them must have become aware that we were sort of staring at them, because he suddenly stopped talking to his friends, and turned to us with “You probably think we’re kinda strange, but we’re part of the military government unit that just moved in here.” It turned that they were part of a group of American soldiers who had been culled out of the army ranks that spoke foreign languages. These fellows had come from US families who had spoken the language at home, and as a result the American army had people in their ranks who spoke street wise German, French, Italian, Polish, etc. A number of these guys spoke more than one of these “foreign” languages, besides. It was crazy to listen to them. One man would say something in French, then the conversation would veer off into German, then something, else then back to French or Italian and maybe even English.
One of my job s was to make occasional trips into Paris to get parts and supplies for the typewriter shop. I became very much acquainted with one of our suppliers for typewriter parts in Paris. We bought parts and replaced rubber rollers, etc from a company under the name of J.P. Hoeltgen & Co. The head of the company didn’t have a good French accent, and it was especially noticeable when he introduced his partner in business, a genuine Frenchman who spoke English with a decided British accent. J.P. Hoeltgen, himself was a native of Luxembourg, but had spent 16 years in business in Minneapolis. When he lived in Minneapolis, he said he went on a trip with his wife, an American lady, to visit Paris back in the 1920’s. She was so taken by the City of Paris that she convinced him to stay longer. He said they finally decided to stay in France, where he started his business manufacturing typewriter parts.. He also claimed to be the official diplomatic representative of the Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg. His partner was a Frenchman who had spent a lot of his school time in England. The result was that Hoeltgen spoke English with this sort of French/German accent from Luxembourg, while his partner spoke English with a distinctly British accent. I got a chance to visit a part of his factory operation in Paris where he had machines making replacement parts for Underwood, Remington, LC Smith typewriters and well as French and German makes. Apparently Paris had a sizeable small machine manufacturing business in and around the city.
I started photographing street scenes in Paris, partly on the theme of Wartime transportation when the Americans arrived in Paris. The Germans, when they departed, made off with anything they could lay hands on that had wheels, or could pass as art, or looked like it could be sold. The Germans confiscated practically every bus and automobile, railroad cars and engines, and raided every museum they could. A cab driver I talked to claimed he saved his cab (with an American made automobile) by remodeling his house in the suburbs so that he could hide his car in a garage that didn’t look like a garage. It didn’t look like a garage, but a regular part of the house. He said he knew the Germans would steal it from him the first chance they got when they had to leave. Apparently this Frenchman believed that the Germans would not win the war. When the Americans arrived, he proudly opened his garage, and started back in his taxi business. The Germans also would have run off with the rolling stock for the Paris Metro, except that their cars wouldn’t fit the main line railroad tracks. So the subways were able to continued running normally.
I went to performances of the Opera and Opera Comique, where it became apparent that the cold winter was one of their problems. The French government never allotted fuel even for the government operated French Opera. I saw a performance of the Opera Carmen, when the outside temperature was several degrees below freezing. I noticed the orchestra pit had only about 30 musicians in it. Carmen usually uses about a 65 piece orchestra. In addition most of the players were wearing arctic style clothing and ear muffs. Carmen arrived swathed in Spanish/Indian style blankets, puffing great jets of steam as she sang her part. The final scene has a parade of Toreadors (the bull fighters) in which Escamillo and Carmen arrive in a carriage pulled by two live horses with steam coming off the bodies like a percolator. The participants had my sympathy.
Later, I attended a performance of “Rigoletto” at Garnier’s Opera House, where the temperature was a little warmer than the Carmen performance. When the curtain went up on the last act, it is a storm scene, and the Paris Opera gave the scenery their best; projected swirling clouds, plus a smoke effect for the clouds. When the curtain went up, the cloud effect immediately rolled out into the upper part of the auditorium. Apparently the stage had a little heat (the lights alone would have provided some), and the heated air caused quite a draft blowing the clouds into the auditorium. One of the items our supply office issued was binoculars. I managed to borrow a set when attending the opera. Watching Paris opera productions from the “balcony” with a set of artillery observers 10x field glasses is very interesting. They were powerful enough to see every nail & screw in the scenery, and most of the marks of make-up on the faces of the performers, too.
To be continued in ACT SIX