To all allied soldiers on leave of absence from the front, Paris represented what McGee had voiced to Larkin–a place where the war was over for the time limits of their passes. Forgotten, for a few brief hours, were all the memories of military tedium, the roar of guns, the mud of trenches, the flaming airplane plunging earthward out of control–all these things were banished by the stimulating thought that here was the world famous city with all its amusements, its arts, its countless beauties, open to them for a few magic hours.

The fact that Paris was only a ghost of her former 61self made no impression on war-weary troopers. What mattered it, to them, that the priceless art treasures of the Louvre had been removed to the safety of the southern interior? Was it their concern that the once mighty and fearless Napoleon now lay blanketed by tons of sand bags placed over his crypt to protect revered bones from enemy air raids or a chance hit by the long range gun now shelling the city? What mattered it that famous caf