Free The Bitter Road to Freedom: The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe by William I. Hitchcock Page A
Authors: William I. Hitchcock
adulterous women in this man- ner was an ancient tradition, though kept alive more in folklore than in practice. The Resistance members had whispered such threats to the French girlfriends of German soldiers during the war and now they made good on the threat. These women had, according to their persecutors, smiled gaily as they paraded down the streets arm in arm with their foreign masters; now their world was to be turned upside down. Their treachery had been public; their humiliation too would be put on display. Such was the power of the ceremony that it was repeated across liberated France in August
and September: as historian Fabrice Virgili has shown, in the summer of ‘44, some twenty thousand French women felt the cold steel of the shears slice across their scalps, and watched as their tangled locks fell at their feet. 56
As grinning men and boys of Cherbourg look on, a Frenchman clips the hair of a woman alleged to have consorted with German soldiers during the occupation.
July 14, 1944. U.S. National Archives
In a public square renamed for the conservative Cath- olic nationalist General Charles de Gaulle, American and French officials asserted their claim to shape the political order. In the back of a truck, amidst tears and curls, Cherbourg’s men and boys asserted their claim to shape the social order. French women who had once used access to Germans as a form of social power were made once again subservient to French men. The new order was marked out in public, on the bodies of these unfortunate women. Both ceremonies occurred on the first postliberation Bastille Day in the first liberated city in the country.
Heads newly shorn, these women of Cherbourg are pa- raded through the streets in the bed of a truck, beneath a sign that reads “The Collaborators’ Wagon.” July 14, 1944. U.S. National Archives
The new order in liberated Normandy also reflected racial prejudices both of the local French people and of the liberating American army. After the bulk of the Allied combat units left Normandy, on their way to Bel- gium and Germany, the Americans established large supply operations in Cherbourg, on the Normandy beachheads, and in Le Havre, and linked these supply bases via road to the front lines. This was an enormous operation that grew steadily during the fall of 1944 right until the end of the war. Most of the materiel shipped to Normandy from Britain and the United States was loaded onto trucks and transported across northern France to Paris, Brussels, Liège, and on to the front. This logistical supply effort fell onto the shoulders of support troops, many of whom were African-American soldiers who were generally barred from combat duty. In the famous Red Ball Express, the trucking route that ran from Saint-Lô to the front lines, many of the driv- ers—as many as 70 percent in some trucking units— were African-American, and were in frequent contact with local French civilians. 57
Calvados was, politically and socially, a conservative region of France; it was also rural, distant from any major city, and had little contact with people of Afri- can descent. The evidence from the Calvados archives suggests that French civilians, and certainly the French
police, found the presence of African-American sol- diers in their community unsettling. Indeed, the Calva- dos police reports reveal anxiety not only about black soldiers of the U.S. Army, but about North African sol- diers in the French army, who were also being used as support troops in Normandy. French people of rural Calvados would have perceived black and North Afri- can men as exotic and foreign, normally visible only as colonial subjects. But French preconceptions of these men of color as exotic strangers were surely reinforced by the way the U.S. Army treated its own black soldiers. French officials observed American racial prejudice on display in liberated Normandy in the division of labor that relegated black servicemen to subordinate
and September: as historian Fabrice Virgili has shown, in the summer of ‘44, some twenty thousand French women felt the cold steel of the shears slice across their scalps, and watched as their tangled locks fell at their feet. 56
As grinning men and boys of Cherbourg look on, a Frenchman clips the hair of a woman alleged to have consorted with German soldiers during the occupation.
July 14, 1944. U.S. National Archives
In a public square renamed for the conservative Cath- olic nationalist General Charles de Gaulle, American and French officials asserted their claim to shape the political order. In the back of a truck, amidst tears and curls, Cherbourg’s men and boys asserted their claim to shape the social order. French women who had once used access to Germans as a form of social power were made once again subservient to French men. The new order was marked out in public, on the bodies of these unfortunate women. Both ceremonies occurred on the first postliberation Bastille Day in the first liberated city in the country.
Heads newly shorn, these women of Cherbourg are pa- raded through the streets in the bed of a truck, beneath a sign that reads “The Collaborators’ Wagon.” July 14, 1944. U.S. National Archives
The new order in liberated Normandy also reflected racial prejudices both of the local French people and of the liberating American army. After the bulk of the Allied combat units left Normandy, on their way to Bel- gium and Germany, the Americans established large supply operations in Cherbourg, on the Normandy beachheads, and in Le Havre, and linked these supply bases via road to the front lines. This was an enormous operation that grew steadily during the fall of 1944 right until the end of the war. Most of the materiel shipped to Normandy from Britain and the United States was loaded onto trucks and transported across northern France to Paris, Brussels, Liège, and on to the front. This logistical supply effort fell onto the shoulders of support troops, many of whom were African-American soldiers who were generally barred from combat duty. In the famous Red Ball Express, the trucking route that ran from Saint-Lô to the front lines, many of the driv- ers—as many as 70 percent in some trucking units— were African-American, and were in frequent contact with local French civilians. 57
Calvados was, politically and socially, a conservative region of France; it was also rural, distant from any major city, and had little contact with people of Afri- can descent. The evidence from the Calvados archives suggests that French civilians, and certainly the French
police, found the presence of African-American sol- diers in their community unsettling. Indeed, the Calva- dos police reports reveal anxiety not only about black soldiers of the U.S. Army, but about North African sol- diers in the French army, who were also being used as support troops in Normandy. French people of rural Calvados would have perceived black and North Afri- can men as exotic and foreign, normally visible only as colonial subjects. But French preconceptions of these men of color as exotic strangers were surely reinforced by the way the U.S. Army treated its own black soldiers. French officials observed American racial prejudice on display in liberated Normandy in the division of labor that relegated black servicemen to subordinate
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