Chapter 16. Paris!

Hey!  Where are we?  Big station!  Paris?  It’s Paris!  So we uploaded all our gear and gleefully got out of the smelly railroad car.  Standing around what probably was a northeast railroad station we awaited orders.  Then the Sergeant brought us the word.  No connections were running yet from the station into the center or the city, so we would have to walk.  Off we strode.

Not for long as I recall.  A farmer with a team of horses pulling a hay wagon caught up with us women walking at the back of the lines.  With relief we piled our baggage into the empty middle of the wagon bed and over the edges we dangled our legs.  Triumphantly we rode into town. 

As our horse-drawn limousine drew closer to the more populous areas, Parisians started running into the streets to greet us.  Soon there were welcomes with great emotion—hugs and kisses as we would jump off the wagon bed.  It’s my understanding that we were the first American military women they had seen. 

In the orchard our sophisticated social worker had explained to us that one of the “musts” in Paris was to sit in the square in front of the Paris Opera House.  Always you could expect a friend to show up.  So we were hoping for that destination in the city center.

And believe it or not, we did arrive at Opera Square.  I’m sure it wasn’t at that time, but a few days later I did sit to people-watch at Café de la Pais in the Square.  And who should wander in but the Pennsylvania Dutch fighter pilot I had met in England?  (A year or so later I learned from a patient from the same fighter outfit that my friend had been shot down.)

While we were in Paris, we 5 Red Cross workers were separated from the rest of the 95^th, I presume by arrangement with the French Croix Rouge.  I don’t remember anything about our first night there except taking a bath—and a unique one it was.  We were in a big old building which must have been modernized by placing an old footed porcelain bathtub high up in an unfinished attic, which otherwise appeared empty.  Unfinished boards with a light tint of red made a spacious, unfinished ceilinged, rectangular bathroom in the emptiness of the attic.

Ah, my turn to bathe.  I walked up several flights of stairs to find, like the rest of the building (I’d forgotten) no heat, of course.  Oh well, a hot bath!  But oh no!  Frigid ice-cold water only!  I don’t remember whether or not we had soap at that time; nevertheless it was so divine to wash off those last three days and four nights!

We were free to roam as we wished for 2 or 3 days.  I remember particularly spending time among the stands and shops on the Left Bank of the Seine.  I bought a number of old etchings and lithographs.  At a big department store I bought a beautiful handmade white batiste baby dress that I planned some day to use at my daughter’s christening (and then never had a daughter).  And I fell in love with and bought a lovely pale blue georgette nightgown with satiny floral appliqué.  (Never ever wore it because I was too shy.)

For myself I also bought a supply of tiny tortoise-shell eyebrow combs (never knew they existed).  Those I did use for many years after the War until I lost them all.  They solved the problem of my bushy dark eyebrows.