American Airpower Comes of Age

PARIS AND GERMANY
Marshall’s plane came in. We lost from our passenger list
Marshall, Hull and Shepley; we gained Cabell, Stone and
Woodward. 8 Dinner at 7:00 and took off for Paris at 8:20 P.M.,
EWT [Eastern War Time], distance 2,500 miles. Cold, almost
like winter, to bed 9:20.
Thursday, July 12, 1945 [En route to Paris, France]
Took off 8:20 EWT, 12:20 PWT [Paris War Time]; cold and
fairly calm, good night for sleeping. Up at 10:20 PWT; reached
Brest peninsula at 12:00 PWT.
Very few evidences of war except destruction at Brest and
St. Malo. 9 An occasional bridge out and bomb craters where
there were important road junctions, railroad crossings, supply
points in woods, airports. Rest of France between Brest
and Paris looks as it always did: fields cultivated, cattle grazing,
churches and cathedrals, small towns, boats in harbors.
Landed 2:35 P.M., PWT, should be 4:35, there seems to be difference
of 6 hours. Landed at Orly; Cannon, Bevans, Hoag
present at field. Drove to Hotel Raphael. 10
Not much change in France since my last visit; the French
are still floundering and need leaders. They are suffering from
an inferiority complex; want to be a big nation but have few if
any of the attributes of a big nation. De Gaulle hasn’t shown
much so far. French women and men, slave labor and POWs
coming back with Polish, German, Russian children; Paris will
certainly get some new blood; taken with the American, it can’t
help but improve the French race.
A snack lunch and then a drive to Les Invalides; 11 it was
closed. We got in and then couldn’t get out. Finally appealed
to the keeper to open up gate and let us out. Then Tom
[Sheffield] got the idea to have them open up Napoleon’s tomb
and give us a private tour. The French dame, upon hearing
who we were, Sheffield, Dean, 12 Norstad and me, told of having
harbored, sheltered 22 of our airmen who had parachuted
down, was caught by the Germans and with her husband put
in concentration camp. Then took her key and opened up the
Invalides. We had a private tour, all through the building and
thru the holy of holies of the tomb. She showed us where the
Germans had broken off pieces of bronze figures, marred and
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