Ernest Hemingway: The Road to Paris – August, 1944

When General de Gaulle and Leclerc met in the Chateau de Rambouillet on the evening of Wednesday August 23rd 1944 they knew time was not on their side, and that if they failed to move swiftly enough the growing insurrection between the different resistance groups in Paris, fuelled by the communists, could lead to all out civil war and give de Gaulle less of a chance to cleanly take power. Leclerc declared to de Gaulle he would move on Paris in the morning without hesitation, and with complete success.

On the morning of the 24th August the drive to liberate Paris began. It was a wet day and the initial progress was slow. Hemingway was still angry with Leclerc’s attitude toward him on the previous day, and thereafter always referred to the French general as that “jerk Leclerc.”

In fact, Hemingway, to get one over on Leclerc, decided to try and get to Paris ahead of the French general. Consequently Hemingway, Pelkey, and his band of merry men set out to beat the French general by taking back roads, but it didn’t work out when the Hemingway group came across heavy German resistance and found it necessary to turn back and re-join Leclerc’s 2nd French Armoured.

It beggars belief that Hemingway actually thought he could fight his way through an elite corps of the German army. The man had bravery yes, but was totally out of his depth and putting the lives of the men who were mad enough to stick with him in jeopardy.

Lerclerc’s division pushed on but came under heavy concentrated fire from well dug in German positions, which does suggest that Hemingway’s, and Bruce’s, intelligence (if that is what it can be called) was pretty bad. Kenneth Crawford of Newsweek (who had been assured personally by Hemingway that the Versailles road was clear) was some way ahead of Leclerc’s forces when he came under heavy fire and had to crawl along a wet ditch on his belly in fear of his life with German machine gun fire ripping into the earth above and around him. This was not what he’d expected at all. When he got back to the French lines he let rip into a smiling Hemingway.

” Christ, Ernie. I nearly got my head and arse ripped to pieces out there.”

” Sorry, Ken, but I had to find someone to be my guinea pig.”