FRANCE: Showers and the passing of time made yesterday's celebrations unreal, writes Lara Marlowe
It's a risky business, trying to relive history. France's attempt to recreate the liberation of Paris yesterday was sabotaged by unpatriotic weather. At most a few thousand Parisians came out to see the military columns representing Gen Leclerc's Second Armoured Division and the US 4th Infantry Division.
The Pont Neuf was the only site that resembled the images of euphoric crowds on August 25th, 1944. But just as the vintage Dodges, GMCs, Peugeots and Citroens reached the quay, the downpour resumed and everyone scattered.
Plastic raincoats were distributed at the official ceremony at the Hôtel de Ville, where Mayor Bertrand Delanoë sheltered an ageing member of the Resistance with an umbrella.
President Jacques Chirac's speech was barely audible because the loudspeakers also magnified the sound of the rain. Mr Chirac mentioned Charles de Gaulle - "he who truly embodied hope" at least seven times. The Liberation of Paris was "at last the victory of the French armed forces . . . the victory of an entire people," he said.
Like his illustrious predecessor, Mr Chirac gave the impression that the Resistance and Gen Leclerc's troops liberated Paris alone; Mayor Delanoë, at least, alluded to "our American friends, of course, without whom nothing could have been possible." Mr Chirac's message was an ode to de Gaulle's shrewd manipulation of symbols of power. "Leclerc and Rol-Tanguy (the communist head of the Resistance) together received the surrender of the occupation authorities, signifying that France had reassumed her place in the world," Mr Chirac said. "It meant that nine months later, de Lattre would, alongside the Allied leaders, receive the surrender of the Reich in Berlin.
It meant that Leclerc would sign for France, on the Battleship Missouri, the act of capitulation of Japan. Paris liberating herself meant France was at the victors' table." Sixty years later, France still postures on the world stage - and still irritates the Americans. This week of commemoration is filled with the laying of wreathes, unveiling of plaques and military marches like the one that Mr Chirac reviewed on the Place de la Concorde yesterday morning.
Why is France the only Western democracy that still parades guns and armour this way? Lucienne Boisramé, 84, watched a jazz band and couples in 1940s costume dancing in front of the town hall of the 14th arrondissement . "It serves no purpose whatsoever, because young people couldn't care less," she sighed.
Her neighbour, Vincent Lecouple, aged nine, knew that France and Germany had fought each other, and told me France won.
Sixty years ago Tuesday evening, when the church bells peeled to mark the entry of the first troops, Boisramé ventured out. "But the FFI had taken the garage across from my building, and there was too much shooting. We went back inside and piled up mattresses and furniture against the windows."
Boisramé admits she performed no heroics during the occupation. "I was not in the Resistance; I was too frightened," she said.
Her husband Lucien, a soldier, had been taken prisoner at the beginning of the war and escaped. "We were afraid of the neighbours then; they informed on people," she recalled. On August 25th, 1944, Lucien Boisramé left the garret where he'd lived in hiding and told his wife, "We'll never be separated again".
At the Pont d'Austerlitz, where the column representing the US 4th Infantry Division stopped, there was not a single American to be found. Nor was there anyone in the crowd old enough to have fought for the city. "This celebration has come a little late," said Jean-Claude Le Quennec, 45, an accountant wearing a 1940s US army uniform. "We should have done it before."
"I thought there would be Americans here," said Martial Hascoët, 69, a retired mechanic. "That's why I came here, but they're all French," he added, nodding at the military vehicles and men and women in costume. Of childhood, Hascoet remembers air raid sirens and going to the shelter. The shaving of the heads of women accused of collaboration - "les tondues" - left the deepest impression. "They sat them down in cafe chairs in a row on the boulevard Mortier, the same boulevard where the Germans used to march every day, singing," he recalled.
The Americans gave Hascoët chocolate and chewing gum. "You have to admit, they did a lot of good things - you can't take that away from them - even if they're having a bad spell at the moment."
Franco-American friendship would come back, he predicted. "It always comes back."
Another white-haired man said nostalgia brought him out in the rain to watch the re-enactment. There was a great deal of nostalgia about the way Paris celebrated the 60th anniversary of its liberation: nostalgia for a time when politicians behaved like real leaders; when you knew who the enemy was. It cost a terrible price in blood and lives, but you could beat him.