Connections to World War II

The 8 o’clock dinner gathering was held in the Hôtellerie Saint-Yves, just a few meters ` walk southeast of the Cathedral and near the River Eure. This seventeenth century building was consecrated in 1697 after it was reconstructed from the remains of an ancient monastery founded there 1,000 years ago. This old hotel had a certain charm in its architecture which we felt as we walked through wide hallways that led into a large room with stone floors that looked like a checkerboard. The walls had niches shaped like arches which had designs painted in different shades of colors. Windows faced the outside and were tall and narrow containing small panes. Heavy curtains in a maroon color hung on each side of the windows. The ambience of this room gave me a feeling of being at a dinner back in the old French Republic of Napoleon centuries ago. The list of attendees was impressive. Dominique Lallement led the delegation of officers of American Friends of Chartres. This included Craig Kuehl and his wife Jane, both from New York and both retired from illustrious careers at UNESCO. Craig has a passion for Notre Dame de Chartres and has spent much of his career to have this cathedral designated as one of the great icons of World Heritage Sites. Madame Servane de Layre Mathéus, the president of Sanctuaire de Monde in Chartres was in attendance. This elegant lady had an illustrious career in various departments of government including the Ministry of Social Affairs and Ministry of Labor. Her passion was with the stained glass windows and medieval art at Notre Dame de Chartres, so she worked with the French Department of Culture and initiated the gigantic project to clean all of the stained glass windows in the Cathedral. This program was launched in 1992 and became a momentous 25-year project. Servane was a municipal counselor at a town where her husband’s family owned a castle. Servane was also decorated as a Knight in the Order of the Legion of Honor. Sadly, Servane died on January 27, 2020, just four months after the ceremony which she attended in Chartres. She was eighty-one years old. The Mayor of Lèves was represented at the dinner by Marie-Noël Targa-Julienne, who was the coordinator of the entire celebration. I exchanged many emails of planning with her for many months. She planned all the smallest of details for the three-day event, an enormous undertaking. It was an honor to have present the lady who is the foremost authority on stained glass in all of Europe. She is Claire Babet, who operates a glass studio in Lèves, where each piece of the 176 stained glass windows in the cathedral were cleaned. She also supervised the re-installation of the rejuvenated windows which had restored the colors to their original brilliance. Claire maintains a gallery in Lèves. (Eleanore and I had the great honor of welcoming Claire and Dominique to our apartment in Wauwatosa in October 2019 during Claire’s visit to America.) A long table stretched across the center of this old room, and it was laden with many dishes of elegantly displayed food. There were meat dishes and smoked salmon, salads, casseroles, bread, tiny radishes and onions, grapes, and baguettes to eat with a variety of French cheeses. There were silver trays holding luscious French pastries of eclairs and macarons and chocolates, and candy topped with fruit. Champagne was the drink of the evening. After the meal, there were numerous speeches and toasts to various people and events. Participants included friends of AFC and Sanctuaire du Monde, Dominique , and the Mayor’s spokesperson Marie-Noël Targa. M J McGregor and Steve Dahl presented me with a charcoal sketch replica of a picture in my book, The Ghost in General Patton’s Third Army. This was the photo I took of the Cathedral on August 22, 1944, three days after our troops had liberated the city. Out Corps Headquarters staff drove through Chartres on our way to our next command post, and I rode on a half-track while taking the picture. It shows damaged houses in the city. The artist did an outstanding job of reproducing my photo into this elegant artwork which I will treasure. This fantastic evening became late after a sumptuous dimmer and conversations with very important people. New friends were made between the Schulz and Griffith families and the wonderful French hosts and dignitaries. Anne Marie drove Eleanore and me to our hotel while the rest of our family walked back. Before going to bed, I tenderly removed my treasured medal of the Legion of Honor from my jacket and placed it into its red display box which had the gold letters R. F. stamped on its cover. These are the initials of the Républic Franҫaise. As I lay in bed, exhausted physically and mentally, I was ready for instant sleep, but it didn’t happen. There was no doubt that I had existed all day solely on adrenalin which had super-stimulated all my emotions. My brain began spinning like in a whirlwind. I reviewed, remembered, and recounted every minute of this day of the thirteenth of September, 2019. Countless thoughts of this momentous day and my entire life flashed through my head. Sleep had to wait for a bit. How could this momentous event in my life happen to me, a farm boy born and raised in the small rural town of Clintonville, in northeastern Wisconsin? I grew up during the Great Depression, our family was poor and we learned how to be frugal. The United States became involved in the war the year I graduated from high school, and at age 19, I became a soldier. Then seventy-five years ago, when I was twenty-one, I was right here in this city of Chartres, which our soldiers had liberated from Nazi occupation. After the war was won I returned home to resume a normal civilian life. I graduated from college, the first person of all my relatives to accomplish this. I met Eleanore at the university, got married, and raised five sons while I enjoyed a great career in business. After thirty-one years of enjoyable retirement, and nine years since my Honor Flight of veterans to Washington, D.C., my life during these latter years took a dramatic turn and my horizon broadened widely. Today, at age ninety-six I am back in the city of Chartres where I was seventy-five years ago as a young man. How could this happen to me, coming from humble beginnings to becoming a hero in the country of France? This honor of being decorated as Knight in the Legion of Honor was way too much for my brain to fathom. It is so humbling and yet so honorable! W0W, WOW, and WOW! Eventually sleep overtook me.