Damned BIG Traffic Circle

  I had been warned about driving in France.  I was told they plant all their fruit trees along the side of the roads.  If you hit one and break it off you end up in court and paying for the fruit it would have given off had it lasted another 8-10 years. Same with farm animals. Female pigs – how many piglets would it have had during the rest of its life? 

  Needless to say I was a little apprehensive about driving there the first time; however, I had to make an appearance at NATO headquarters in 1962.  I had been escorting NATO Hawk transfer shipments for a few months and they wanted to see who I was.  To that point they were working with me based on the word of LTC  Alexander.

  So in the late spring I headed for Kaiserslautern then on to Verdun Reims then to Paris.  Being my first time in France I wanted to make sure that I was able to get fuel at our military bases along the way.  I picked up a fellow soldier at our office in Verdun. He needed a ride to Orleans so I planned on dropping him in Paris and he would take the train to the 594th Transportation Group headquarters.  I don’t remember his name but we were about the same age and got along fine.  He also eased my mind some about driving in France.

  The picture of the Arc de Triomphe above is what you see in the travel brochures.  Keep in mind I had to negotiate a city of millions that I had never been to and do it in a US Army jeep.  We were doing good until we got the The Arch. I saw a break in the traffic and shot to the center and the inner most circle thinking that we could keep going around until we saw the road we needed.  The picture below will probably show you what we were up against.

  I think there were about 8 or nine lanes and frankly we hadn’t really thought this whole thing through.  You will notice the cement like circle at the base of the Arch and check all of the darned roads leaving the circle. As we kept going around the Arch, at about 25 miles per hour, I couldn’t help noticing this very tall, de Gaulle looking French police officer.  I think he was laughing at us – at least smirking.

  After a dozen or so loops he had stepped out into the inner lane and motioned for us to drive onto the cement area.  He wasn’t President Charles de Gaulle but he sure looked like him even down the the honking nose. I almost lost it when he began to speak and sounded exactly like Maurice Chevalier.  He was a nice fellow and asked us where we were going.  We told him NATO headquarters and he said “Ah, Porto Dauphine.” He gave us the directions and then stood on the running board of the jeep and stopped traffic all the way across 8 or 9 lanes to the street we needed to be on.  We may still have been there except for him.

  The picture above shows NATO headquarters shortly after being built.  I survived the meeting with the NATO folks.  Stayed over night in a small hotel they took me to and headed for home the next morning  I don’t remember dropping the guy from Verdun at a train station so the NATO folks may have done that for me.

  In the mid 1980’s I was managing in Europe and had a couple of sales people working for me in Paris.  One of the universities we called on was Universite Dauphine.  We walked into the building from the back side and I had this overwhelming feeling of déjà vu.  It was the building I had been in in 1962.  When de Gaulle tossed NATO and the US Forces they made it into a University.

  Want to leave a comment.  Stationed in the Paris area in the early 60’s.  In the 594th.  Feel free to leave a comment.