Coffee, Croque-monsieurs and a Juliette balcony: How my British step-grandmother helped the French resistance to liberate Paris in August 1944

My step-grandmother, Hester Kennard, had made up here mind that she was going to live in Paris (before the war).

Germans invaded (France) while she was living there, and because she was an alien, she was rounded up, possibly denounced by someone in her apartment block, and dragged away by the Germans.

She was placed in a women's camp - luckily, relatives in England petitioned the Red Cross to intervene. A visiting delegation was used to inspect camps/prisons, and they reviewed the case of a small group of ladies who they deemed too frail for camp/prison conditions.

This is how step-grandmother was released - however, once released, she refused to return to the UK, and insisted on staying in France.

Mother went to join step-mother to study in France, possibly at the Sorbonne - it was very hard to ask (mother) about all of this [details hard to pinpoint]. Step-grandmother managed to get mother on the 'LAST' civilian train out of Paris. Step-grandmother still refused to leave.

Eventually, Allies took Paris (August 1944). Resistance factions were active in the city - not all as one coordinated group, all fighting their own corner. They tore up cobblestones, erected barricades and poured brimstone on the retreating Germans.

My step-grandmother was a witness to all of it - her apartment was on a main Paris boulevard and she offered it as a sniping post for her favoured Resistance group - her apartment had a 'Juliette balcony'/'Paris balcony' and this was used as a machine-gun and sniping position (these groups used the 'Juliette balconies' on countless buildings around Paris boulevards to crush/suppress the German garrison in Paris).

Step-grandmother kept resistance fighters in her apartment supplied with coffee and 'Croque-Monseurs'.

With her story, are a number of items documenting the insurrection in Paris in August 1944:
- news photos recording the liberation of Paris
- photos of captured Germans (annotated on the back)
- LAPI photos (official/professional news photography)
- Victory Parades - barricades
- Map of Vichy France - 'Carte des Operations sur Le Front Francais'
- Child runners for the Resistance in the Dordogne - bicycle baskets full of batteries & grenades. Certificate of Hester Kennard's involvement in Red Cross.
- Letters + petitions sent by family to Red Cross

S.K. Grierson's actual grandmother worked for a bureau for U.S. military family welfare - she was friends with White Russian emigres in south of France - they ran a famous a Russian tearoom in Lannes, where she lived. Grandmother's friend was in a relationship with Parater Picabier (French resistance fighter/leader) who ran a headquarters for exchange of information for the Resistance - just a gaggle of words.

Story of the Russian tearoom: "most of the time the liquid in the (samouu) was not tea".

Father too old to serve in WW2 - instead delivered aircraft from factories to air bases where needed. He flew all the time, sometimes up to 4 sorties a day - flew 126 varieties of aircraft. Sadly, he died flying a four engine American Liberator in a terrible accident.

He was one of 1,200 such pilots who died delivering aircraft in UK during the war.