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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | February 2007 
The Last Time I Saw Paris
 MexicoCityCollege.com
Part IV of The Last Time I Saw Paris, as transcribed by MCC historian Joseph M. Quinn from two 1947 issues of Mexico City College's "El Conquistador."
The night of June 17, the eve of the Armistice, we slept in an abandoned village. We slept in stables on piles of hay. Being the only one who spoke German, 1 was placed in charge of 27 women.
We had reached Sully-sur-Loire, about 150 kilometers south of Paris, and unoccupied France was just across the river. But being so close did us no good, since the bridge had been blown up. So with unoccupied France within our own vision, we had to turn around and return to Paris.
While we were in the stable, a German officer summoned me out to speak to him. We had a strange conversation. First of all he ordered champagne. (The Germans seemingly went crazy over champagne during their stay in France.) I had to toast with him, although my heart was bleeding and full of hate. I had to tell him all about my beloved Paris... where he could buy the best clothes and perfume for his sweetheart in Berlin.
Next, I sought out Therese and Odile and we made plans for our return to Paris. It was going to be tremendously difficult, because there was no regular transportation. We had some blankets and luckily we found a wheel barrow, and we put all our possessions in it.
But we were most lucky in Therese, the servant girl. Odile and I were so frail and tired we could hardly carry our own things, but big, good natured Therese was a godsend. Without the slightest complaint, she pushed the wheelbarrow all the way back to Paris - 150 kilometers.
Wandering through the woods, we found treasure upon treasure. Scattered through the woods were furs, silver, elegant clothes - left there by people who had to flee their cars during the strafing raids. They had become public property, so we helped ourselves.
Like a fable with a moral, our treasure became a real burden to us. People with cars refused to give us rides, since we had so much impedimenta with us. We came upon a truckload of the most beautiful electric irons we had ever seen, but we couldn't do a thing about it. Gradually, like an airplane pilot being forced to jettison his cargo piece by piece, we discarded all our treasures. The only thing we kept was a hat. Therese had never had one in her life.
At one time we came upon a car in which we found an old lady and her dog. "Have you anything to eat?" the hungry old lady asked. We gave her some sugar, but her dog snatched it out of our hand and devoured it in one gulp.
We spent the next night in another abandoned village of women, which was full of women trying to get back to Paris. One professional clairvoyant was quoting Nostradamus to the effect that the Germans would go away, but she didn't say when.
We were so tired that we were about to give up the idea of pushing a wheelbarrow back to Paris. There were two men in the village and they had found a big truck full of merchandise. There was no gasoline to be found and the men were trying to find horses to pull the truck back to Paris where they could sell their booty. They promised us a ride.
We stayed there three days and all the women did the men's work. We began to suspect that these two men, one of them a White Russian, were merely exploiting our labor, and we decided to resume our wheelbarrow trip to Paris.
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