19 Aug The Americans in Paris

Adolf Hitler at the Eiffel Tower, Paris on 23 June 1940

(Attribution: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H28708 / CC-BY-SA)

Today I was listening to an account of the fall of Paris on June 14, 1940. The next day American newspapers headlined “Germans Fly Swastika High Above Paris’ Eiffel Tower.” 1940 news footage shows the smiling soldier hoisting the Reichskriegsflagge. The German national anthem was blaring. Loudspeakers declared that hostile acts against the German troops would result in death. Newspapers were suspended. The banks were closed. Nine days later, Hitler arrived at six in the morning and made his photographic tour of the city. It was his first visit to Paris, and now he owned it.

The person I immediately thought of was Virginia Hahn. I “met” Virginia on the Office of Strategic Service (OSS) message board, an online discussion group of former OSSers (few and far between now), family members, and historians. Just like my mother, Virginia worked for the OSS in the X-2 Counterespionage division in London. They both worked in the same building on Ryder Street, although not at the same time. She was so generous with her memories and comments. I treasure every sentence she wrote to me.

“Never underestimate the contribution of those young women. They typed in their gloves in cold, bombed-out buildings; they drank steaming hot tea, not as a social accomplishment, but as one of them put it, “Tea is a very important part of the British heating system now.” They were the American girls and women who, though sometimes maligned and ridiculed, would always be ready to do it again.” 

American soldiers watch as the Tricolor flies from the Eiffel tower again

Get Robin Wink’s book, Cloak and Gown, Virginia suggested. It has a picture in it, she explained, of the building where she and my mother worked. Of course, I bought the book. I scanned the photograph and brought it to London. When I walked into that same office building on Ryder Street, I carried it in my hands.

Virginia was in Paris in April of 1945. It is where she and the other OSS personnel in the city celebrated VE Day. Can you think of anywhere more fabulous to celebrate? She was staying in a beautiful hotel right on the Champs Elysees and wrote that “the sheets on our beds were still warm from the hasty departure of the Wehrmacht officers not long before our arrival.”

She and her friends went up on the roof to enjoy a sweeping view of the city. “It seemed as though every automobile in Paris was driving up and down the Champs, lights on full and horns blowing. Planes buzzed all around. Thousands of people — French, American, and other Europeans — were shouting and singing everything from the Marseillaise to Tipperary.”

The next morning, while she was in the midst of the milling throngs on the streets, “suddenly the sirens began to scream out, the people shouting, ‘Les sirens, la dernière fois.’ ”

I sent Virginia’s wonderful description of Paris on VE Day to my niece Meagen who taught French at Amherst. She shared it with her class. “The sirens, for the last time.”

Virginia Cary Hahn passed away in April last year. She wrote the rich descriptions of her experiences in World War II when she was 91 years old. In 2011, I wrote her and asked if she would be attending the OSS Dinner in Washington, D.C.  She replied, “How very good to hear from you and what fun it would have been to meet and talk about your Mother. But I’m sorry to say that as I rapidly approach my 90th birthday I really will not be physically able to get to the October meeting which does sound great.”

Yes, Virginia, it would have been so very great.

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