FRANCE: Liberte, Liberte Cherie

Nowhere in France had U.S. troops seen such wild jubilee, such fierce passion, such bloody retribution. At last the French believed that the Americans had come to stay. All hell broke loose.

When the first U.S. tank troops rolled into Rennes last week they found most of the city’s 80,000 citizens singing, crying, dancing arm-in-arm in the streets and the parks. They threw flowers at passing tanks.

The men in every halted jeep were deluged with hugs & kisses. From then on the Bretons of Rennes enacted the Marseillaise.

Allons, enfants de la patrie!

Le jour de gloire est arrivé!

(Come, children of the fatherland!

The day of glory has arrived!)

In the ears of the citizens still rang the crump of heavy bombs, the thunderous rumble of pulverized masonry settling into rubble. Shattered were the post office, the Palais du Commerce, university buildings. The cathedral’s stained-glass windows hung in lacy tatters. It was not the U.S. guns or planes that had done this. The departing Germans had set time bombs which exploded throughout the night. The wreckage was a reminder:

Contre nous de la tyrannie

L’étendard sanglant est levé,

(Against us tyranny’s bloody standard has been raised.)

Into the mairie marched the men of the F.F.I.; grabbed the collaborationist Mayor, marched him off with cuffs and kicks to the lockup. From among their neighbors they chose a new Mayor. Thousands of men & women thronged the bomb-scarred square to hear him speak from a balcony draped with the Stars & Stripes and the Tricolor. Emotion clogged the Mayor’s voice as he gave thanks to the Americans. He said: “Up to now we have been slaves. Today we are Frenchmen.” The crowd responded with surf-like cheers: Vive la France! Vive l’Amérique! Vive De Gaulle! But some among them had freed Frenchmen’s work to do:

Entendez-vous dans les campagnes

Mugir ces féroces soldats?

(Do you hear?—from the fields, the growling of those ferocious soldiers?) In lanes and byways, terror had its inning. Patrols of the resistance corralled 40 frightened men & women in a cellar, among them some of Joseph Darnand’s hated Militia. Some collaborationists killed themselves rather than surrender to their neighbors. In an alley two gendarmes forced a collaborationist to his knees, cocked pistols at his head, made him salute the Tricolor. Nearby another group dragged along an Italian by the hair, made him kneel and shout Vive la France! Then they slugged him on the head, kicked him, spat on him. But he was lucky. For:

Ils viennent, jusque dans nos bras

Egorger nos fils, nos compagnes!

(They have come among us to cut the throats of our sons and comrades!)

Two collaborationists were hauled from the refuge of a jail. One was smashed across the face. His nose bled sickeningly. He began to cry. Then both were kicked downstairs, stood up against a wall by a group of resistance men, brandishing rifles and pistols. A group of U.S. photographers were told the pair was to be executed so the photographers could make pictures. TIME & LIFE’S Robert Landry protested that the men should be given a trial, at least. But the Frenchmen shouted: “We have been waiting four years for this—they are traitors”:

Aux armes, citoyens!

Formez vos bataillons!

Marchons, marchons,

qu’un sang impur

abreuve nos sillons!

(To arms, citizens,

Form your battalions!

Let us march, let us march

That unclean blood

may water our fields!)