CITIZENS' COUP

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 25022, 12 October 1944, Page 3

CITIZENS' COUP

LIBERATION OP PARIS HOW PATRIOTS PLANNED A fuller and more coherent account can now be given of the events that let 1 to the liberation of Paris by its citizens, states a special correspondent of the Times. The story begins two years ago, when three Paris policemen decided that the time would come when a resistance police force would be able to play a vital role in the reconquest of the capital. They chose comrades and a leader, a man who uses the name of Edouard, and went to work so effectively that when, on August 15 last, Edouard decided that the time had come for the police to go on striko, obedience to his orders was 100 per cent. German Exodus Begins The strike began on August 16, and next day the Germans began to evacuate their administrative staffs from Paris. Streams of lower-grade officials and typists made for the Gare de l'Est, onlv to find railway traffic at a standstill because the railway workers were on strike and had thoughtfully removed all the engines from the stations to out-of-the-way places. The evacuation of the Germans was continued on August 18 and the following morning. Then the lull was broken; Edouard, at the head of 3000 policemen, in plain clothes, but armed, went back to the Prefecture of Police, and announced to the then Prefect that he had come to take it over. The Republican Guard apparently made a hall'-hfiarted attempt to intervene, but the policemen seized their own headquarters. General Choltitz, the German com-mander-in-chief in Paris, endeavoured to repress the insurrection with tanks, armoured cars, heavy machine-guns and mortars. Against these the French policemen had only tommy-guns, rifles and revolvers. The fighting went on all day around the Prefecture. Toward six o'clock in the evening the Frenchmen, who were running out of ammunition, sent out an S.O.S. to all local police stations (which in the meantime had been occupied by their own staffs), and police from all over Paris converged on the Prefecture. Fighting increased in intensity, and after a night's truce spread rapidly all over Paris. Bells and the Marseillaise Barricades made their appearance everywhere; so, incidentally, did resistance newspapers, for the collaborationists who had been in charge of the Paris newspaper offices for four years had fled, and the patriots took them over so expeditiously that within four hours the first papers were produced and stuck uo on the walls for all to see. There followed four days of sporadic street fighting. Gradually the Germans' attacks slackened, and here and there the French passed to the counterattack. Then, on the night of August 24-25, the church bells all over Paris began to ring. People who had listened in secret for four years to the radio turned it on full blast, and the "Marseillaise" played from London mingled with the "Marseillaise" sung by thousands in the streets of Paris. A single soldier of the French forces reached the Prefecture, and after days of waiting the Parisians knew that their army had come to their rescue. Behind the soldier came tlio rest of his patrol, and then on foot, walking stick in hand, at the head of a company of infantry, came General Leclerc. WAR MEMORIALS FEELING IN BRITAIN MANY PROPOSALS MADE Britain has already found out that few people think alike on the subject of war memorials. Tests of a crosssection of opinion carried out during the past few months indicate a vast divergence of ideas. Behind them, however, is one wish. That is that this war's dead will be commemorated by memorials which will be things of beauty and places of pilgrimage for all time. There is an indication of this feeling in one of the first memorials to be dedicated—a cedar tree surrounded by a garden seat, where passers-by may rest. It was dedicated four years ago in Surrey to the memory of a pilot whose plane crashed close by. Admiral of the Fleet Lord Cliatfield has suggested that the great national memorial should also be a place where people can rest and reflect. He instanced the Lincoln Memorial at Washington, the Taj Mahal at Agra, and the magnificent Scottish memorial at Castle Hill, Edinburgh. Books ol Remembrance "A memorial like the one on Castle Hill," he said, "would be a fitting national war memorial, but London should have her own memorial —a shrine that will include in itself memorials to the dead of the fighting services, the civil defence services and all those who have taken part in this war and deserve to be remembered." It is generally agreed that memorials of this war should reach a higher standard of artistic merit and social value than those of the last war. This was set out in a report prepared by a committee of the Royal Society of Arts, just published by the War Memorials Advisory Council, which is mainly directed to the committees which will be acting for towns and villages, schools and service units. Its primary recommendation is for a worthy record of the names of all the fallen, which should be kept by each community in a place accessible to all. The committee suggests a Book of Remembrance, in which names should he written hv craftsmen on vellum. The hook should.be part of whatever other memorial the community chooses, and this memorial, it is added, should be the creation of an artist whose work is guided by the feelings of the community and the setting his memorial will have. A Bomb-Damaged Church Sir Kenneth Clark, Director of the National Gallery, and Professor Julian Huxley are among many who believe that Britain's bomb-damaged churches would best remind future generations of the reality of sacrifice uprtn which their security lias been built. One church in the City of London at least, the.v said, should he set aside as a memorial to the thousands of Londoners who have died in raids, "to whom walls of calcined stone were once not monuments but tombs." The people of Grantham, in Lincolnshire. have proposed a £25,000 extension to their hospital as a "peace memorial." Others have suggested that a vast area of the Lake district should be set aside as an expression of the nation's gratitude to the men who fought for freedom "to walk on the hills of their own land." St. Andrews University has already announced the form the university's memorial will take by recasting two ancient bells named Katharine and Elizabeth, One will commemorate the gallantry of students in the present war, tin other will bo rung "at the conclusion of a just peace." EL ALAMEIN CEMETERY Plans have been completed for the construction of a memorial cemetery at El Alamein, 00 miles from Alexandria, where 8000 troops from Great. Britain and the Empire who fell in the desert campaigns will be buried: The War Graves Commission has already concentrated the bodies in this area, and a sum of £IOO,OOO has been earmarked for the laying out of gardens and the provision of permanent headstones. The cemetery, which is on the west side of El Alamein station, slopes down to the sea. It will have an obelisk of stone to commemorate the unknown dead and triumphal arches at each approach. A rest house and car park will be provided for the convenience of relatives who visit this historic battlefield after the war.