*sequel to In Your Atmosphere*
1966 was a year of seismic changes for the Beatles. By the end of the year, the last single Beatle, Paul McCartney, was on the verge of saying "I do" to his California sweetheart, Marisol Hemingway. And then life happe...
The liberation of the bar of the Ritz Hotel in Paris by the writer Ernest Hemingway, as the French capital was freed from its Nazi occupiers, is the stuff of legend.
Hemingway, a war correspondent for the American "Collier's" magazine who went on to win the Nobel prize for literature in 1954, was embedded with US 4th Division troops that landed on the Normandy beaches on June 6, 1944.
Over the next two months he stuck with the foot soldiers as they marched towards Paris in support of the French 2nd Armoured Division, which entered the capital on August 25.
Hemingway had a special attachment to the luxurious Ritz hotel, and its bar, where he had spent a great deal of time before the war.
"When I dream of afterlife in heaven, the action always takes place in the Paris Ritz," Hemingway was to say.
"He did not talk about anything else," one Resistance fighter said, but "to be the first American in Paris and liberate the Ritz."
Hemingway managed, using his name and with the help of the American army commanded by US General George S. Patton, to wrangle a meeting with French commander General Philippe Leclerc.
His request: to be given enough men to go and liberate the Ritz's bar.
To the writer's surprise he got a frosty reception and was dismissed.
But Hemingway persevered and on August 25, dressed in his correspondent's uniform, he arrived in a commandeered jeep with a machine gun and a group of Resistance fighters at the hotel, on Paris' lovely Place Vendome.
He burst into the hotel and announced that he had come to personally liberate it and its bar, which had been requisitioned in June 1940 by the Nazis and occupied by German dignitaries, including on occasion Hermann Goering and Joseph Goebbels.
The manager of the hotel, Claude Auzello, approached him and Hemingway asked: "Where are the Germans? I have come to liberate the Ritz."
"Monsieur," he replied, "They left a long time ago. And I can not let you enter with a weapon."
Hemingway put the gun in the jeep and came back to the bar where he is said to have run up a tab for 51 dry Martinis.
—thelocalfrance
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Paul and Marisol found Paris the next afternoon. The Paris Ritz to be exact.
"My Papa loved it here!" Marisol exclaimed.
"So I've heard," Paul said. He rapped his knuckles lightly on the gleaming white marble reception desk and took note of the attendant's name tag. "Bonjour, Francois. Your best room for me and my lovely bride."
"Bonjour, Monsieur. Mais bien sur."
Francois was tall and dark and attractive and full of Gallic charm and spoke with the most beautiful accent Marisol had ever heard. No wonder they called French the Language of Love. And Paris the City of Love. And Francs the Currency of Love. Marisol sighed with happiness.
