Most of the really outstanding messes at which I had the good fortune to lunch or dine while overseas were, however, French. His love of la bonne chère is something that never seems to desert a Frenchman, even in combat areas, and I have heard infantrymen under fire planning to piquer (a maquis term which means “requisition”—the quotation marks are mine) a chicken for dinner and discussing how they proposed to cook it. When such unquenchable enthusiasm was combined, as it sometimes was, with the specialized knowledge of a competent mess officer, the results were something quite memorable.
The officers' mess at Orléans, one of the best in France, was run, for example, by Captain Vrinat—in happier days he had been the proprietor of a little hotel in St. Quentin which, in the Guide Michelin, had two well-merited stars for the excellence of its cuisine. His commanding officer at Orléans gave him a car and a good deal of liberty. Before long the mess had a collection of Burgundies, Vouvrays, and Cognacs of which a great restaurant could well have been proud, plus little local cheeses and patés de campagne such as, alas, you can no longer find in France except in farmers' homes.
Despite everything that has been written about French undernourishment and starvation (much of which, especially as concerns the north of France, Paris, Marseille, and the Riviera, is tragically true), there are considerable areas in France where food supplies are not too far from normal and where, in the small towns and villages, one eats well. This is especially the case along the whole Atlantic seaboard south of the Loire—the Vendée, the Deux Sèvres, the Charentes, and the Gironde. The great Allied sweep through France in the summer of '44 left behind it in this district a whole series of small enemy pockets which, until March of this year, remained pretty well forgotten and which were contained almost entirely by French troops, largely the poorly equipped troops of the maquis. Most of these had never heard of the U. S. Quartermaster Corps—they lived off the country, and lived well.
One of the most famous of the maquis leaders was a young career officer, Colonel de Milleret, who was not only a first-class soldier but a “short snorter,” an excellent host, and a great lover of good wine. Working under cover during the German occupation, and using his nom de guerre, Colonel “Carnot,” he had recruited an entire brigade of tough maquisards in the Pyrenees and Landes and gone into action shortly after the first Allied landings in France. The brigade liberated Bordeaux and then proceeded to drive the Germans northward through the Médoc, fortunately with almost no damage to the vines. The Germans settled down in heavily fortified positions in the Pointe de Grave, and Colonel “Carnot,” having no artillery, settled down to an eight months' siege. Meanwhile, he could see no reason why his officers should not be properly fed. He accordingly requisitioned the best restaurant of Bordeaux and perhaps of France—the ancient, august, and famous Chapon Fin.
Not even four years of German thirst during the occupation had served materially to deplete the Chapon Fin's great cellar, and the quality of the cuisine was remarkably close to what it used to be before the war. Meat was occasionally short, sugar often unavailable, and the “coffee” as everywhere in France, was made of toasted barley—“le café du Maréchal,” as they like to call it. But in exchange there were crevettes grises, the delicious little gray shrimps of the French coast, there were Arcachoan oysters, moules, and dry white Graves. There was even an occasional gigot of lamb with flageolets, such as I had not tasted since 1939. And there were, of course, the best clarets in the world.
Colonel “Carnot's” field headquarters was in the northern part of the Médoc, and the popote was about two miles, as the crow flies, from Chateau Mouton Rothschild. It was there one evening over a good bottle and after a day's inspection tour of the front lines, that a French captain told me an amusing little anecdote which he attributed to a French general famous for his sharp tongue.
The general, it appears, had been asked by a group of officer candidates for his advice, as to what arm of the service they should join. He looked them over with a fairly jaundiced eye. and said,
“If you are intelligent, join the cavalry—you'll be the only one….
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