Continued from Monday's entry.
During the celebrations, the flag quickly disappeared and its absence not really noticed. A different, larger flag was there the day after when French General Charles de Gaulle led a victory parade down the Champs-Elesees.
In 2008, French chef Armand Lourdin was cooking for a group of US World War II veterans in Chappaqua, New York. After dinner, they sent for him. "Everybody was standing up, they had opened up the flag and they were all singing the Marseillaise in French--they had learned the words."
One of the men said he had taken the flag when Paris was liberated and asked Lourdin to take it back to France with him when he returned on vacation. Lourdin did, and gave it to a relative in southern France. He notified the government in Paris. The flag has been verified and French firefighters hung it September 18th from the top of the town's town hall before returning it to Paris.
Good to Have It Back Where It Belongs. --Cooter
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