The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1944-09-04


left Paris after a few days and
went again with the armies in the
field. In Paris we had slept in beds
and walked on carpetea floors
for the first time in three months.
It was beautiful experience,
and yet for some perverse reason
great inner feeling Of calm and
relief came over us when we once
again set up our cots in a tent,
with apple trees for our draperies
and only the green grass for a
rug.
Hank Gorrell of the United Press
was with me, and he said:
This is ironic, that we should
have to go back with the armies
to get some peace.
The gaiety and charm and big
cityness of Paris somehow had got
little on our nerves after so
much Of the opposite. I guess it
indicate that all of us will have
to make our return to normal life
gradually and in small doses.
| Paris unquestionably is a love-
ly city. 1t seems to me to have
been but little hurt by the war.
You can still buy almost anything
imaginable if you have money. Ev-
erybody is swell-dressed. But prices
are terrific, and already they have
started looming higher.
Those of us who expect to be
coming home before long have
made shopping tours and stocked
up with gifts. And with the excep-
ton of perfume, which is dirt
! cheap, we pay about three times
what we would at home for the
same thing.
I'm sorry the restaurants could
not open before we left. For al.
though I'm not much of a gourmet
do value the sense of taste, and
we've eaten enough meals in pri-
| vate homes and small-town restaur-
ants over here to realize that it's
all true about the French culinary
genius.
They simply have a knack for
making any old thing taste wonder
full, jusst as the British have a
knack for making everything taste
horrible.
The other night we were talking
about the beautiful women of Pa
ris-as who doesn't?
One fellow said the women here
were the most beautiful in the
world.
But I said no, that wasn't true.
You see women in America and
England who are just as beautiful
as any in Paris. But it seems that
here the percentage of cookbook
ing women is higher than in other
countries.
And another fellow said no, that
wasn't it either. He thought the
ratio was approximately the same
in America and England and
France. But in Paris bigger per-
centage have the gift of getting
themselves UP to look devastating.
And I guess that's it..
We thought there were a lot of
people on the streets those first
two days. But you should have
seen Paris a few days later, when
the whole populace began to come
out. By midafternoon it is almost
impossible to drive in the streets
because of the bicycles. They take
UP the entire street, as far as
you can see. The sidewalks are
packed. It's like Christmas shop
ping time at home.
Within three days Paris was
transformed from a city cracking
and roaring with brief Warfare
into city entirely at peace. With
in three days Paris was open for
business as usual, and its attitude
toward the war reminded me of
Cairo after it threat of danger had
gone.
AS usual, those Americans most
deserving of seeing Paris will be
the last ones to see it. if they ever
DO. By that I mean the fighting
soldiers.
Only one infantry regiment and
one reconnaissance outfit Of Ameri-
cans actually came into Paris
and they passed on through the CITY