Wine And War: The French, The Nazis And The Battle For France's Greatest Treasure Part 10

Their ardent discussion soon drew the attention of several other prisoners from Barracks IV, among them the Marquis Bertrand de Lur-Saluces, owner of the famed Chteau d'Yquem. All were fascinated with what Ribaud was writing.

As snow continued to fall and the wind of those cold winter days whistled through the cracks of their barracks wall, the men gathered more and more frequently around the rough wooden table where Ribaud was writing. With no books or any other reference material, the discussions sometimes became heated.

"I want this book to be for everyone," Ribaud told the others, "not just for rich people. I want to be able to show that with all the wonderful things our France produces, everyone can live well and have a decent wine cellar. This is the responsibility of the matre de maison."

What began to take shape, as Ribaud continued writing, was a kind of gastronomic guidebook in which Ribaud, a lawyer by training, noted the food he had eaten with various wines and whether he thought the combinations worked.

In the same breath, however, he worried about what the Germans were doing, and feared that many of the greatest wines would be seized and "prematurely sacrificed"-that is, consumed before they were ready to be drunk. He could easily imagine a group of young soldiers was.h.i.+ng down a plate of sauerkraut and sausage with a rich velvety Margaux. The thought made him shudder.

I hope, dear reader, for your own satisfaction and that of your friends and family, that when this war finally ends, you will still find that the most venerable bottles you have hidden from the Germans are still safe, that they will have escaped the torment of these years and be ready to fte their resurrection.

Now, more than ever, Ribaud was convinced that the book he was writing was important.

He called it Le Matre de Maison de Sa Cave Sa Table (The Head of the Household from His Cellar to His Table). "This is a memoir of great food and wine and how they can be brought into perfect harmony," he wrote in the introduction.

Suddenly, the long cold lonely days seemed shorter. Ribaud saved every sc.r.a.p of paper he could find, including the wrapping paper on packages from home, so that he would have something to write on. And every spare minute, that is what he did, work on his book. He asked other POWs about their favorite wine-and-food combinations, what grapes grew best in their region and how they prepared certain foods.

Over time, he compiled a huge core of information and knowledge, not only about the more famous wines but about small country ones that were barely known outside their villages. There was Crepy, a white semi-sparkling wine from the Haute-Savoie on the French side of Lake Geneva, Vic-sur-Seille, a vin gris from the Lorraine, and Irouleguy, a wine that can be either red, white or rose and comes from the slopes of the Pyrenees. The Crepy, Ribaud said, is wonderful with cooked sh.e.l.lfish and very spicy dishes. The light, pleasant fruitiness of the Vic-sur-Seille, he said, makes it a wonderful match for a tourte-chaude, a crusty, creamy potpie filled with ham and cheese. Irouleguy, on the other hand, is more suited to anchovies and sardines, oily salty foods of the Basque country.

Ribaud stressed that one did not have to be an expert to know these things, that most of this could be learned by reading, tasting and talking to others. Nor was it necessary to have a wine cellar that was stocked with every wine in the world. Better, he said, to have a cave with wines you like and which fit your budget. To help in this process, Ribaud drew up a chart for matching wine and food.

"The choice of wine is specific to what you want it to do," he explained. "It can bring out the characteristics of each dish, or it can establish the importance you want to give each dish."

For an hors d'oeuvre such as aspics de foie gras, Ribaud suggested a Brut champagne, a white Hermitage or a white wine from Corsica or Provence. Oysters, on the other hand, called for a white Graves from Bordeaux. However, if that was not in your cave, try a Vouvray, a Pouilly-Fuisse or a Cerons.

Ribaud cautioned that regional characteristics should be carefully considered. A foie gras from Perigord should be accompanied by a sweet white Sauternes because the goose, fed primarily on cornmeal noodles and mush, is larger and fattier. The smaller Strasbourg goose, fed on wheat noodles, produces a foie gras with less fat and therefore should be accompanied by a hearty red Pommard.

Ribaud realized that because of the food shortage in France, nothing was going to be wasted, and he had ideas for wines to go with every conceivable dish. For the hungry Bordelais who had been trapping pigeons in the city square, he recommended a Moulis, a Margaux or a wine from Chteau Beychevelle.

For those who bartered wine for something to eat, pork chops from a freshly slaughtered pig, for instance, Ribaud suggested a Santenay or some other light red from Burgundy.

For breaded pigs' ears, he proposed a woody, straw-flavored Arbois or an inky black wine from Cahors. For pigs' tails, it was a Joigny, a minor red wine from northern Burgundy, or Bouzy, a still red wine from Champagne. Pigs' feet, or pigs' trotters, required an unfinished champagne or a robust white from Algeria.

Brains, Ribaud said, require serious thought. Much depends on how they are prepared. Served in a browned b.u.t.ter sauce, he suggested a glorious Montrachet or white Mercurey, wines that would enhance but not overpower the delicate, if unusual, flavor of the cervelle. But if the brains were deep-fried, a more rustic wine such as a Vire or a white Mcon would be more appropriate.

Ribaud's book covered everything from the first course to dessert. He described what to drink with grapefruit (a Condrieu), stuffed cabbage (Cha.s.sagne-Montrachet) and stuffed carp (Chablis or Ca.s.sis).

For frogs, Ribaud would have served a Saumur from the Loire Valley or a Sylvaner from Alsace. Snails would go well with a cold Chablis or a white Hermitage, even a white from Algeria.

What was essential to remember, he said, was that wine can bring a special quality to any meal, whether it is highlighted by a great rack of lamb (a Pauillac or Saint-Estephe) or a croque-monsieur, a grilled ham and cheese sandwich (a Chinon or Auxey-Duresses).

"It is an art to choose the best moment to savor the great wines and select the dishes that will artistically blend the aromas and flavors of the wine and food," he wrote.

The wines Ribaud chose during his prison days could only be savored in his imagination, but they nevertheless provided comfort. "They were like a tree we could hang on to," he said. "A tree whose roots were deeply anch.o.r.ed in the soil of our country and whose branches spread throughout the world."

After the war, his book was published to great acclaim and hailed as one of the first books that paid serious attention to regional wines and food.

Roger Ribaud sent a copy to each of his fellow prisoners of war. "I hope this will help erase the pain of our imprisonment and yet be a souvenir of friends.h.i.+p and the years that we shared together."

EIGHT.

Saving the Treasure CHAMPAGNE CACHE IN FOXHOLE.

With the American Third Army, West of Bastogne, Belgium, Jan. 8 (AP) - Lieut. William T. McClelland of 318 Forest Avenue, Ben Avon, Pa., may dig plenty of foxholes in this combat area, but it is doubtful whether he will maintain the standard set by his first. While excavating for his first combat-zone home, he uncovered a cache of 400 bottle [sic] of champagne and other wines.

-The New York Times, Jan. 9, 1945 The treasure was everywhere: in wine cellars, warehouses, ports, as well as on trains and airplanes. Some of it was even buried in the ground.

But when Allied leaders, in 1943, began laying plans for Operation Overlord, the code name for the Allied invasion of northwestern Europe, treasure was the last thing on their minds. Their goal was to defeat Hitler and bring the Third Reich to its knees.

Nevertheless, saving the treasure, "France's most precious jewel" as one French leader described it, became a prime objective.

It had rained heavily most of the night. Although fields were muddy and skies still threatened, Jean-Michel Chevreau was eager to start work. His vines had just begun to flower and he wanted to see how they had withstood the storm.

Pulling on a sweater, the Loire Valley winemaker glanced out the window and suddenly stopped. To his amazement, not a single German soldier was in sight. Troops who had been there the day before and had occupied his village for four years had completely vanished, almost as if they had never been there.

The reason quickly became clear. It was D-Day, June 6, 1944. The long-awaited invasion of Europe was underway. Hitler and his generals were desperately pulling troops from the Loire Valley and other parts of France and rus.h.i.+ng them to Normandy.

For Georges Hugel, the landings did not come as a total surprise. On that late spring day, he was at home in Alsace recuperating from wounds received on the Russian front. He had set up three radios within arm's reach of his bed, one of them tuned to Radio Berlin, another to Radio Vichy and one to the BBC in London. Georges kept switching among them; he sensed something was going on.

For several days, Radio London had been increasing the number of cryptic messages it broadcast, such as "The apple trees are blooming," "Jean, put on your hat," and "The speckled cat has meowed three times." On June 5, 1944, there were eight hours of these "action messages."

The next day, the pain in Georges's feet woke him very early. He automatically reached across and turned on the radios, one after another, rotating the dials for the best reception. Something about the urgency in the BBC broadcast caught his ear, and Georges turned it up.

"This morning at six-thirty, the combined forces . . ."

Georges fell back in his bed. "It's about time," he thought.

It was the largest sea and air offensive ever mounted. Five Allied divisions, 7,000 s.h.i.+ps and landing craft along with 24,000 American and British paratroopers were involved. The paratroopers arrived first, just after midnight, and took up positions on the flanks of the invasion beaches. Six hours later, the main a.s.sault force landed on beaches code-named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. As s.h.i.+ps and landing craft bombarded German positions, thousands of troops swept ash.o.r.e.

All day long, Georges was glued to his radios, checking one and then another for the latest news. He listened as Charles de Gaulle addressed the people of France: "The supreme battle has begun! After so many battles, so much fury, so much sorrow, the time is here for the decisive confrontation that has been awaited for so long."

No one followed the drama more closely than France's one and a half million prisoners of war who had been languis.h.i.+ng in POW camps for more than four years. One of them, Gaston Huet, heard about D-Day over a radio he and other prisoners had made and managed to conceal from their guards. "It was a moment of great joy for us," Huet said. "We thought we would soon be going home, maybe even in time for the harvest."

Their exhilaration was shared by winegrowers throughout France. News of the landings sent many straight to their vineyards to a.s.sess the conditions and speculate: "If it doesn't rain too much, if there's no mildew, if we get fertilizer, if, if, if . . ." And the biggest "if" of all, if we win and the war is over by fall, maybe we can make some good wine.

Their hopes were premature, for the Germans did not go quietly. Instead, they dug in their heels and retaliated more ferociously than ever against all who opposed them.

That is what happened in Comblanchien, a tiny village of winegrowers and quarry workers in the heart of Burgundy's Cte d'Or. For a long time, the Germans had been convinced it was a Resistance stronghold. One train after another was blown up in the region, and there was so much sabotage that German units became skittish, refusing to allow trains to pa.s.s until the water tank of each station had been filled. The Maquis had often hidden in them to stage ambushes. Although many Maquisards drowned when the n.a.z.is suddenly filled the tanks, the attacks and sabotage continued.

On August 21, about 9:30 P.M., eleven-year-old Jacky Cortot was finis.h.i.+ng dinner when gunfire suddenly erupted. The electricity went out, then came back on. Jacky rushed to the window of the kitchen and, with his mother, peeked out through the closed shutters. Flames were shooting up from a house and barn just down the street. A minute later, they heard the sound of wine bottles being broken and cries of "Help, help!"

"The Germans are burning people alive in their homes," Jacky's mother screamed. She ran to another window. Several other houses were in flames too. "Run, hide in the vineyard," she told Jacky. Pressing some money and important papers into his hand, she warned, "Stay there and don't move until I come for you."

Jacky slipped out of the house and into the nearby vines. He was not alone. A dozen other children, some with their mothers, were already there.

Crouching in the vines, the little group watched as one house after another was set on fire. Throughout the night, they heard the clock on the mairie sound the hour, "each hour increasing our fear and anxiety," Jacky wrote in a memoir. "Would we still be alive at dawn?"

About five o'clock in the morning, Jacky saw his own house burned. Two hours after that, smoke began pouring out of the church. "The steeple itself burned away, leaving only the four beams supporting the bell," Jacky recalled. "The bell was so hot, it turned red, until finally the whole structure fell. All that was left standing was the confessional."

When it was finally over, eight people had been killed, fifty-two houses had been burned to the ground along with the church, and at least 175 villagers were left homeless. Among them was Comblanchien's deputy mayor, Ernest Chopin, and his family, who had hidden in their wine cellar when their house above was set on fire.

Chopin emerged the next morning and learned that twenty-three of his neighbors had been arrested and taken to Dijon. Fearing they would be executed, he rushed there and arrived just as the Germans were lining them up against a wall. Chopin begged the Germans to spare them. Eleven were eventually freed, the young and the elderly. The rest were deported to work camps in Germany.

Pierre Taittinger knew what the Germans were capable of. He remembered how frightened he was when his son Franois was thrown into jail for sending weinfhrer Otto Klaebisch adulterated champagne. He also recalled how worried he and other champagne producers had been when they were threatened with imprisonment for protesting the arrest of Robert-Jean de Voge.

But now, Pierre Taittinger was truly terrified. He was afraid his beloved city of Paris was about to be destroyed, and no one seemed more certain to do it than General Dietrich von Cholt.i.tz.

Von Cholt.i.tz was an old-school Prussian officer who had supervised the destruction of Rotterdam in 1940 and Sebastopol in 1942. He arrived in Paris in August 1944 with Hitler's orders ringing in his ears: "Turn Paris into a front-line city; destroy it rather than surrender it to the enemy!"

Taittinger, the Vichy-appointed mayor of Paris, knew he had to do something-anything-to save it. Police, postal, telephone and railway workers had gone on strike. Barricades appeared in the streets as the Resistance intensified calls for insurrection. Realizing that they could be facing a full-scale uprising, the Germans decided to leave the city to combat troops and began pulling out all other personnel.

It was a surreal sight as Parisians sitting at sidewalk cafes watched what one resident, Jean Galtier-Boissiere, called la grande fuite des Fritz, or the big flight of the Fritz. As he wrote in his journal on August 18, "I saw dozens, hundreds of trucks, overcrowded cars and vehicles pulling cannons; there were ambulances full of wounded; they followed each other, crossed in front of each other and tried to pa.s.s each other. Monocled generals with blond elegantly dressed women on their arms poured out of sumptuous hotels near the etoile and got into their sparkling open touring cars, looking for all the world as if they were off to a fas.h.i.+onable beach."

But the most startling sight was the stream of loot flowing out with the departing occupiers. According to Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre in Is Paris Burning?, "Paris was being emptied by the truckload. Bathtubs, bidets, rugs, furniture, radios, cases and cases of wine-all rode past the angry eyes of Paris that morning."

A day later, sporadic street fighting broke out, orchestrated primarily by communists in the Resistance, whose slogan Chacun Son Boche ("To Each His Boche") soon became a battle cry.

Heeding the cry was Frederic Joliot-Curie. In 1939, he had headed a team of physicists who were partially successful in producing the first atomic chain reaction. Now, however, Joliot-Curie was concerned with a different kind of reaction, one produced by mixing sulfuric acid and pota.s.sium in bottles. He was making Molotov c.o.c.ktails for the Resistance. There was only one problem: not enough bottles. Joliot-Curie had found a few in the laboratory where his mother-in-law, Marie Curie, had discovered radium, but he needed more. With the help of friends, he found them in the cellar of the Prefecture de Police: dozens of cases of champagne, all of the bottles full and all bearing the label of Pierre Taittinger's champagne house.

With only momentary hesitation and slight regret, Joliot-Curie and his colleagues began uncorking the bottles and pouring their precious contents down the drain.

Taittinger, meanwhile, had finally gotten the appointment he had requested with von Cholt.i.tz. The Paris mayor walked into the Htel Meurice, down its marble-floored corridor and up the stairs to the sumptuous room that was the headquarters of the commander of Paris. The ivory-colored paint on the boiserie was nicked and the gilded trim had tarnished and flaked off in places, but with its ma.s.sive crystal chandelier, it was still imposing. Von Cholt.i.tz, in his neatly pressed uniform, his medals gleaming, fit in perfectly.

The general got right to the point. Paris, he warned, would suffer the fate of Warsaw if there was an uprising by the Resistance. If any Germans were fired at, he would "burn all the houses in that particular block and execute every inhabitant."

Taittinger pleaded with von Cholt.i.tz to reconsider. "Paris," he said, "is one of the few great cities of Europe that remain intact; you must help me to save it!"

Von Cholt.i.tz replied that he had his orders. In the same breath, however, he admitted that he had no wish to destroy Paris. Leading his guest to the balcony, he confessed that one of his great pleasures was looking outside at the city and watching people move about.

The reflective, almost philosophic comments surprised Taittinger, who tried to take advantage of what he sensed was a change in the general's mood. Turning to von Cholt.i.tz, he said, "Generals rarely have the power to build, they more often have the power to destroy." He urged von Cholt.i.tz to imagine what it would be like to return to Paris one day and stand on the same balcony. "You look to the left, at the Perrault colonnade, with the great Palais du Louvre on the right, then the Palais de Gabriel and the Place de la Concorde," Taittinger said. "And among these splendid buildings, each one charged with history, you are able to say, 'It was I, Dietrich von Cholt.i.tz, who, on a certain day, had the power to destroy this but I saved it for humanity.' Is that not worth all a conqueror's glory?"

Taittinger's eloquence had a telling effect. "You are a good advocate for Paris. You have done your job well," von Cholt.i.tz said, but he did not tell the politician what he would do.

Taittinger returned to his office to wait. He knew that explosives had been planted throughout the city. In addition, 22,000 troops, mostly SS, 100 tiger tanks and 90 bombers were standing by, waiting for the signal to level the city. That signal, however, was never given.

For the first time in his life, von Cholt.i.tz disobeyed an order. On August 25, when General Leclerc's French 2nd Armored Division rolled into Paris, the German general surrendered the city intact.

The following day, Charles de Gaulle made a triumphal entry into Paris with a parade down the Champs-Elysees. Excited French soldiers, a bottle in one hand and a rifle in the other, scampered across the city's rooftops looking for German snipers. One of them, Yves Fernique, was checking out the roof of the Htel Continental when the matre d' appeared with a silver tray, a crystal gla.s.s and a cold bottle of Sancerre.

But the Germans were not quite through with Paris. While they did not try to destroy the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe or any of the city's other great landmarks, they did go after a different kind of monument: Paris's Halle aux Vins, the city's wholesale wine center.

Earlier, before von Cholt.i.tz surrendered, the Germans had tried unsuccessfully to commandeer the stocks which leading wine merchants stored there. Now, as celebrations were taking place in other parts of the city, German planes suddenly descended on the wine center and dropped several bombs. Champagne corks popped and thousands of valuable bottles of cognac and other spirits burst like bombs from the heat of the fire. As firemen poured streams of water on the wreckage, bottles continued to explode, sending showers of gla.s.s into the air. Soon, only the walls of the Halle aux Vins were left. Inside were piles of melted gla.s.s that had been stores of outstanding wine.

One wholesaler tried to make the best of it. Retrieving two large casks of Bordeaux from the inferno, he hooked up a rubber hose, and, as one witness recalled, "began serving the wine in quaint, shallow silver cups to firemen and anyone else who seemed thirsty. It was being poured like water, and more was. .h.i.tting the ground than the cups."

About the only one who did not lift a gla.s.s that day was Charles de Gaulle. At the Htel de Ville, Paris's city hall, a Vichy-appointed official offered the general a flute of champagne; de Gaulle refused it, saying he did not drink with collaborators or those soft on n.a.z.is.

The bombing of the Halle aux Vins sent s.h.i.+vers down the spines of wine merchants in Bordeaux. They could easily see their precious stocks suffering a similar fate.

Bordeaux was still occupied by 30,000 German troops, but everyone, including the Germans, knew that it was just a matter of time before they had to pull out. As in Paris, the question was whether there would be anything left after they did so. Much of the city, especially its port, had been planted with 1,700-pound bombs, which were to be set off when troops abandoned the city.

With millions of bottles of wine stored in warehouses around the port and millions of others hidden away, destruction of the port would spell disaster for Bordeaux's wine trade. The worst seemed inevitable with the Allies on the march and activity by the Resistance increasing.

Last night, oil reservoirs were bombed. Machine-gun fire is constant [wrote May-Eliane Miailhe de Lencquesaing in her diary]. But I am repairing the flag! The Anglo-Americans are coming toward Bordeaux and we are waiting for them!

Louis Eschenauer was waiting too-apprehensively. The "king of Bordeaux" had made a great deal of money selling wine to his close friends from the Third Reich. He worried about what would happen to him now, so he made some final calls to his German friends. "Don't blow up Bordeaux when you leave," he begged.

One of the first he called was Captain Ernst Khnemann, commander of the port. It would be the captain's job to carry out the destruction when such an order was issued. With wine merchants and others in Bordeaux pus.h.i.+ng him to use his influence, Eschenauer invited his distant cousin to lunch. Khnemann, a wine merchant himself, was not surprised. He loved good food and wine as much as Louis did and the two had dined together regularly, often at Louis's restaurant, Le Chapon Fin.

Eschenauer pleaded with his cousin to save the port, describing in detail the anguish and hards.h.i.+p its destruction would cause. Khnemann listened sympathetically. He said he did not want to destroy the port, that such a move now would be nothing more than an absurd act of vengeance. "But if Berlin orders me to do it, I will be in a very difficult position," he said.

On August 19, an order marked "top secret" and numbered 1122144 arrived at Khnemann's headquarters. Destruction of the port was to start in five days at precisely 1700 hours. The atmosphere in Bordeaux suddenly changed.

The city has been closed off, surrounded by German troops. It is like a state of siege. There is no water, no gas, no electricity, absolutely no food to be seen, and no traffic either. (Diary of May-Eliane Miailhe de Lencquesaing.) While Khnemann agonized about what to do, a subordinate who shared his commanding officer's feelings took matters into his own hands and blew up the blockhouse where the detonators were kept. The blast killed fifteen German soldiers and was heard miles away. German authorities mistakenly blamed the Resistance.

Aug. 24: Last night, a terrific explosion from the direction of Bordeaux. Unclear why. Although the Maquis has liberated Chteau Beychevelle and other parts of Bordeaux, we still hesitate to fly the flag because there is only one Resistance group near us. Nevertheless, at 5:30 this afternoon, we sang the Ma.r.s.eillaise with our staff. The Americans are only fifteen kilometers from Bordeaux! (Diary of May-Eliane Miailhe de Lencquesaing.) In fact, the Americans were nowhere near Bordeaux, but the Germans did not know that and began making preparations to evacuate. Fearing the Resistance was far stronger than it was, the Germans decided to bluff, warning they still had enough explosives to destroy Bordeaux if their troops were fired on during withdrawal. The Resistance agreed to hold its fire.

On the evening of August 27, German troops began evacuating Bordeaux. The last one out was Ernst Khnemann.

FAMOUS WINE COUNTRY FOUGHT OVER.

Rome, Sept. 10 - The French and Americans have been fighting the Germans over perhaps the most famous vineyards in the world-the Burgundy district. How much damage has been done to this heritage has not yet been reliably a.s.sessed, but, according to many reports, the Germans have already gone a good distance toward the total ruination of the envied countryside.

-The New York Times, Sept. 11, 1944 There was just one problem with that report. It was wrong. The vineyards of Burgundy survived. The Germans and Allies may have fought over them but they did not fight in them.

It was called "the Champagne Campaign," a name conjured up almost at the very moment French and American troops landed on the Cte d'Azur in southern France. "We had put down a tremendous barrage before das.h.i.+ng for the sh.o.r.e," wrote British war correspondent Wynford Vaughan-Thomas. "We were expecting to be mown down by machine guns but not a single bullet whistled past us: the Germans had tactfully pulled out a few hours before, and in their place an immaculately dressed Frenchman advanced out of the dust of war. He carried a tray with a magnum of champagne and ten gla.s.ses. 'Welcome, gentlemen, welcome,' he beamed; 'but if I may venture a little criticism, you are four years late!' "

The goal of the Champagne Campaign, officially known as Operation Anvil, was to push north through the Rhne Valley and Burgundy and link up with forces which had landed in Normandy. Sometimes it was difficult to keep that goal in mind. There were too many distractions.