Paris, end of August 1944

The following notes were published in the Bulletin SAS of March 1984, 40 years later, Noël Créau :

Saint-Marcel, Duault, Morbihan, Côtes du Nord, Finistère, Ille-et-Vilaine, Loire-Atlantique ; all Bretagne then, Briare, Nevers, Sennecey, Vosges, France, all France and even Paris. SAS took part in all the battles, were present at the Liberation of the capital. Créau, Antébi, Bétbèze, Brulon didn’t pretend that they had liberated Paris - the FFI of Rol Tanguy and the DB of Leclerc did it, but SAS soldiers and officers were there.

On the 17 of August, Antébi and Henri de Mauduit met Colonel Rémy in Rennes. They decided that a small group of SAS would escort the British and American secret service officers to Paris.[…] Friday 2nd of August, SAS entered Paris, at 6 p.m., at the Porte d’Orleans.

Passing through the jubilant crowd in Paris, we arrived at the Petit Palais, the meeting place chosen by the Americans, after some shots from the last German snipers in the direction of Tuileries.

And Saturday 6th of August, morning :

Henri de Mauduit and Gaston Antébi who, with the rest of the group, had exchanged bullets with the snipers, went to pick up Colonel Rémy. G. Antébi was successful enough in finding flowers at the last minute, so that Rémy, de Mauduit, Antébi, Dranber, St Arnaud could lay a wreath beside the Eternal Flame. They were the first to do so.

During the afternoon, at 4 p.m., General de Gaulle and Bidault came down the Champs Elysées, at the head of a long procession.

Concerning the story of the flowers, Colonel Rémy gives in his book, La ligne de demarcation, the following details :

H. de Mauduit turned towards me :

- Do you remember the day we arrived, at the evening of the 25th of August 1944 ?

- Very well, I said.

- And the morning of the 26th, when we went to the Arc de Triomphe ?

- I can’t say I do.

- How can you forget it ? That morning, I came to see you at your office in the Majestic Hotel, to tell you that our comrade Antébi had asked if you could come with us to lay a wreath.

- Extraordinary! I don’t remember at all !.

- Do you know, Antébi paid for that wreath with his own money – one thousand five hundreds francs!

- That was a lot for the time !

- It was magnificent. There were five of us, and you carried the flowers. I think that, therefore, you must have been the first officer of La France Libre to lay flowers there, after the Liberation of Paris.

Saint-Marcel

The role of the French SAS battalions was to support, in fact to precede, the Normandy landings : they had to delay as long as possible the 150 000 German soldiers converging in Normandy.

My father was dropped in on the night of the 5th to 6th of June 1944 on Bretagne. He had to get to one of the two meeting points, at « Dingson » (the other known under the code name of « Samwest »).

« Dingson » was set up near St-Marcel, on the farm of the Nouette, by officers Déplante and Marienne at daybreak on the 5th of June, with fifteen other men. Fights began against the Ukrainian troops of General Vlassov. Bourgoin and Puech-Samson arrived on the 16th, when almost 2000 FFI soldiers and officers were at Dingson. On the 18th of June, Germans attacked, and Deplante had to move a little further North, to « Grog ».

On the 25th of August, Colonel Bourgoin was asked to give an escort to Intelligence Service officers, wanting to go to Paris, to liberate the capital, to open the Gestapo prisons and to arrest collaborators and spies. My father was one of the twenty men chosen, along with Noël Créau and Henry de Mauduit.