The Facts from Clute, Texas • Page 47

14O THE BRAZOSPORT FACTS Sunday, August 21,1994 World THE DAY OF GLORY 50 years ago this week, Allied troops liberated Paris, ending 1,524 humiliating days of German occupation and touching off a tumultuous celebration that went on for days. People danced, drank and made love and some also died, as battles raged between Allied and Nazi forces on city streets. By HUGH A. MULLIGAN AP Special Correspondent PARIS The first Sherman tanks stenciled with the Cross of Lorraine rumbled over the bridges on the southern rim of Paris just as the early morning fog began to lift. "Paris Libere!" Paris is liberated.

The cry sped through the city faster than the sound of the clanking treads of the victorious tanks. Fireman Raymond Sarniguet raced up the 1,750 steps of the Eiffel Tower and replaced the Nazi swastika with the tricolor of France. At dusk the street lights came on in the City of Light for the first time in four years. It was Friday, Aug. 25, 1944, and madness and gladness enveloped Paris.

Old women and coquettish jeune filles danced in the streets and on top of tanks, threw flowers and fruit at the passing Allied armored columns and kissed every soldier in sight. Old men wearing tattered medals from previous wars wept unashamed, waving faded flags dug out of attics and cellars, and kissed every soldier in sight. And bistro patrons and shopkeepers rushed out with bottles of champagne and cognac, warm bread and huge wheels of cheese and kissed every soldier in sight. "Twice, after the French custom, on each cheek but often smack on the lips," Harold Stuart of Tulsa, recalled 50 years later over an Armagnac in Harry's New York Bar. "I've never been kissed so often in my life." On liberation day, Stuart got to Paris aboard the second plane to land at Buc, a small airfield on the eastern outskirts of the city.

The first had hit a mine. He remembers "jubilant crowds in every square shouting la France' and 'Vive singing the Marseillaise over and over." Associated Press correspondent Don Whitehead, who filed the first eyewitness account of "a mass madness that stretched for miles," wrote that when "voices grown hoarse singing their national anthem reached the words 'le jour de gloire est arrive' a huge sob seemed to echo down those broad boulevards, and eyes brimmed with tears." The day of glory indeed had arrived. The 1,524 shameful, humiliating days of the German occupation at last were over. Church bells, heard for the first time since June 15, 1940, tumbled out a tumult of joy over the mansard roofs. Most of Paris stayed groggily awake for days to keep the party going.

"All the emotions suppressed by four years of Nazi domination surged up," Whitehead reported. "The streets were like a combined Mardi Gras, Fourth of July Celebration, American Legion convention and New Year's Eve in Times Square." The chestnut trees had lost their candle blossoms, but 1'amour, toujours, was in bloom. A hard-nosed West Pointer who had his 4th Division infantrymen line up their pup tents in a regimental row in the Bois de Vincennes was astounded to see two heads appear from almost every sleeping bag when the bugler sounded reveille. Correspondent Ernie Pyle, the same morning after, "saw a girl climbing sleepily from the turret of a French tank." Five days later, French Gen. Jacques Leclerc "was still trying to get the women out of his tanks," wrote S.L.A.

Marshall, the Army's chief historian in Europe who was among the first Americans to enter the city. "The division bivouac in the fields along the Soissons road looked like a transplanted Pigalle under arms." People danced and drank and made love, and also-died. No more volleys echoed from the Mont Valerian prison where Gestapo firing squads had executed 4,000 Frenchmen, but there was still fighting inside the city. Pockets of German defenders held out in the Ecole Militaire, the Quai d'Orsay, the Champs du Mars at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. Bazookas whooshed from the Luxembourg gardens.

In the Place de la Concorde, Sherman and Panzer tanks engaged at close quarters like fire-breathing dragons and even played bumper car. A shell took a bite out of the Arc de Triomphe. Smoke curled from the Majestic hotel. It was a miracle that Paris survived at all. Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D.

Eisenhower had ordered the U.S. 1st and 3rd armies to head straight for the Rhine, bypassing Paris to avoid "prolonged and heavy street fighting that would result in the destruction of the French capital" and to delay clogging his supply lines with food and fuel for a wartime population of 3.5 million. But convinced that powerful communist factions in the Resistance were armed and plotting to take control of the city, de Gaulle in Algiers forced a change when an uprising began against the German Kommandanture, and the historic cry went up: "aux barricades." Leclerc's 2nd Armored Division, the only French unit in the Normandy campaign, was It may be 98P all day Jong, but Football is The Facts Annual Football Preview will be published Thursday, September 1st. Deadline for advertising is Monday, August 22, 1994 Call today to be a part of this edition and show your team spirit! am The Facts 265-7411 849-7554 1 -800-864-8340 Three days of the campaign Aug. the French Forces of £2.

American 4th Div. Barricades Heaviest lighting Koenig anci free the" Since Aug, 19, when Koenlg announced general -updsfrib Against the Germans Paris; there had been bitter fighting in the city. The French 2nd Armored -Division (American Corps) begins to move towards Paris along two center lines in support of the PR's Una! assault on the city. The 4th Division captures Arpajon, south of Paris. Aug, 24: The Germans desperately return to the attack.

The French Armored Division under General Jacques Leclerc approaches the southwestern suburbs and runs into heavy opposition. General Bradley, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. 12th Army Group, orders the U.S. 4th Division to prepare an attack on Paris from the south. Aug.

25: At 7 a.m. the French 2nd Armored Division enters Paris from the southwest, and half an hour later the U.S. 4th Division moves toward the center of the city from the south. The fortress commander, General Deitrich von Choltitz, defies Hitler's orders and refuses to mine the public buildings, museums and bridges of Paris. Avoiding a useless resistance, Gen.

von Choltitz surrenders to Gen. Leclerc at 3:15 p.m. The day of triumph Capt. Raymond Samiguet of the Paris Fire Brigade climbs the 1,750 steps of the Eiffel Tower to fly the same French flag that he had taken down in 1940. IJi General Charles DeGaulle defies snipers to march down the Champs-Elysees and into Notre Dame.

II A German, fleeing from the Hotel Ritz with armloads of perfume and soap, is stomped to death by a crowd. mJt Ernest Hemingway bought drinks for the 73 freedom fighters and himself in the Hotel Scribe. At the request of the French, Major Gen. Norman Cota, one of the heros of the D-Day invasion, paraded his 28th Division Infantry through the streets of Paris, out of the city and back to battle. Source: War in Europe, 2194 Daysol War diverted to Paris with two battalions of the U.S.

4th Infantry Division right behind. De Gaulle flew in and proclaimed the liberation before a tumultuous crowd at the Prefecture of Police across from Notre Dame. Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz, German kommandant of Paris, tried to delay as long as possible orders from Adoph Hitler to burn Paris to the ground. Von Choltitz surrendered to Leclerc at Gate 33 in Gare Montparnasse on Aug.

25 without ever giving the order for the devastation. The next night, 150 Luftwaffe bombers came in low down the Marne and, in the war's heaviest raid on Paris, set fire to the wine market and lev- J. Castello eied 600 buildings around Gare de Lyon, killing 2)3 and wounding nearly 1,000. But the glory that is still Paris, her splashing fountains and tree- lined boulevards, her monuments, churches, palaces and museums, the Eiffel Tower and those lovely bridges arching the Seine, survived intact. Haitians share the misery Military resolve unshaken as sanctions grip country By DAVID BEARD Associated Press Writer PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti Snapshots from a nation in crisis: Streets empty of cars, moneychangers desperate to unload local currency for dollars, vendors sitting in the hot Caribbean sun all day without a single customer.

After months in which American officials insisted that world economic sanctions on Haiti's military leaders were starting to take hold, they finally are. But here's the twist: The sanctions took so long to work that the military leaders had time to militarize Haitian society, making it even more difficult to unseat the ruling soldiers. "This is a 'no way out' situation," said a businessmen deeply involved in money speculation minutes after the Haitian currency fell to a record low 20-to-i rate Thursday against the dollar. "I can count the number of people making money in Haiti on my two hands." Sanctions were first imposed nearly three years ago to try to reverse the 1991 military overthrow of elected President Jean- Bertrand Aristide. Washington is threatening a U.N.-sanctioned invasion to restore Aristide to power.

From the sweltering offices to the even hotter streets, Haitians gave sad testimony on their strug- gle to survive. At 5 p.m., the normally crowded Iron Market downtown was nearly empty, and only five vehicles were stopped along Kuwait City, a milelong stretch of the city's main black-market fuel center. Who, vendors ask, can buy gas if it costs twice the price of a bottle of fine French wine? After 12 hours of work, a streetside soap vendor, Francoise Elsine, reported no sales. "I didn't even have enough money to buy water to drink," she said, "or enough money for bus fare home." Home is a two-hour walk. Under the stall next to Elsine's, Irland Gerard was trying to shade herself from the sun.

She said she sold less than a dollar's worth of oranges Thursday. She blamed the extremely slow sales on the just- doubled price of Haitians don't drink their orange juice without it. Any profit she makes she has to spend on food; she said she'll have no money left to buy more oranges to keep her small business alive. "Everyone around here shares the same misery," said Gerard, 29, who leaves her 8- and 9-year- old boys at home. "It gets worse not even day by day, but hour by hour I'm going to have to (quit working) and stay at my house soon.

That way I'll starve to death with my kids." Around the corner, 38-year-old Pierre Jean-Marc worked the music stand he started at 22. His last sale came Monday; normally he sells 10 radio-cassette decks a week. "Haitians love good times," he said, his sad face a contrast to the upbeat Haitian dance music blaring from one of his portable stereos. "If they're not buying they must not have any money." Even U.S. officials are alarmed at the sanctions' effects.

One official said it would take more than a generation for Haiti to recover, even with hundreds of millions of dollars in aid after the military quits power. "We (the U.S. government) have had the money to run this economy into the ground the past couple of years," the American official said, wondering if foreign nations will contribute to help get Haiti back on its feet. Foreign nations are meeting Aug. 26 in Paris to commit to aid for a Haiti without military leadership, but there are few indications the soldiers will return to the barracks without a fight.

And the Clinton administration, after a series of threats, appears reluctant to invade. Francine Elsine, the soap vendor, just shook her head when asked how much suffering Haiti can take. "Only God knows," she replied. British doctor proposes parenting license By JUDY JONES London Observer Service LONDON A leading British doctor believes that people in Western nations should have to pass a parenting test and gain a "reproduction license" before being allowed to have children. In a book to be published this week, Sir Roy Calne argues that couples should have to satisfy a licensing authority that they would make suitable parents.

Each couple that received approval would be allowed no more than two children. People who opt for larger families should face higher taxes or other financial penalties. Overpopulation and the apparent inability of most industrialized countries to support full, useful employment justifies the placing of limits on births, according to Calne, who proposes a minimum age for child-rearing of 25, together with "proof that the parents are of sufficient maturity and financial resource to take proper care of the child." Calne, professor of surgery at the University of Cambridge, sets out his radical blueprint for curbing world population in his book, Too Many People. Its publication in Britain on Thursday is certain to provoke controversy in the runup to an international conference on popu- lation and development in Cairo in September, organized by the United Nations. The International Planned Parenthood Federation, which promotes family planning services around the world, strongly rejects the notion of "licensed reproduction" advocated by Caine.

But Calne stands by his book. People in developing countries are unlikely to cooperate with Western attempts to reduce the size of their families unless the West demonstrates that it is also ready to make sacrifices to help in conserving the world's diminishing resources, he says. (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service) 'i:.