on the way to the Bulge. But before I get there, I want to return briefly to the subject of General Philippe Leclerc. Studying up on Free France’s Lion, as I wrote in the linked post, I was most struck by his sterling character. His bravery was one component of it, but his character as a whole shines forth most vividly from William Mortimer Moore’s biography of Leclerc.
Leclerc was an observant Catholic and family man with six children. He married Thérèse Gargan at age 23 and never looked back, although he must have spent many years apart from her during his Army service.
Moore mentions in passing that after the liberation of Paris and before the liberation of Strasbourg, I think, Marlene Dietrich sought out Leclerc for a tryst. However, Leclerc declined to meet with her. Moore makes nothing of it. Dietrich doesn’t even make it into the index of his book. Nevertheless, it fits his portrait of Leclerc to a T.
Dietrich moved on — to General James Gavin, among others. Alex Kershaw has written many books on World War II, including The Longest Winter: The Battle of the Bulge and the Epic Story of World War II’s Most Decorated Platoon. He notes that Dietrich had her way with Gavin in the counterattack on German forces during his own Battle of the Bulge, so to speak.
Gavin had affairs with Marlene Dietrich and Martha Gellhorn, reportedly at the same time in early 1945. pic.twitter.com/YsEMugoCai
— alex kershaw (@kershaw_alex) September 17, 2020
Around the same time General Gavin also had a fling with Martha Gellhorn, the famous war correspondent and wife of Ernest Hemingway. Martin Dugard tells the story in “The General and Mrs. Hemingway” (excerpted from Taking Berlin: The Bloody Race to Defeat the Third Reich). In his own memoir — On To Berlin — General Gavin maintains a gentlemanly silence about both Dietrich and Gellhorn.
