The Frogs, On The Other Hand ...

70th anniv. of the liberation of Paris.

Whitehead's dispatch describes the liberation as messy, chaotic and dangerous with shooting from Germans making their last stand.

"Machine guns and rifles cracked on all sides as the column I was with drove within a block of the Luxembourg (Gardens)," Whitehead wrote.

Riffaud saw one of her comrades fall dead from a gunshot wound at the Place de la Republique.

"Everyone was hugging and kissing," she said. "People were happy. All the while, we were picking up dead bodies."

40+ yrs. ago, during my time in the City of Light I'd occasionally encounter a plaque on the wall of a building reading "Here died" w/ a name & date, & the phrase "during the liberation of Paris." Morbidly cool as is; topped when the plaque is mounted over chips in the stone from the Nazi bullets that killed the resistance member. "Living" history.