2005.07.TARPA_TOPICS

MON AMI CLAUDE by John P. Gratz As you noticed in our Flown West Section, my friend Claude Girard died May 17 of this year.

Claude was my friend for almost twenty years. He was always kind and generous to me and to my wife Patricia when we were together. He was charming and quick witted, and he had a great sense of humor. On the job that he loved so much, he could be sharp tongued and gruff. He was known for his salty, even peppery words.

Patricia and I first got to know Claude when we were living in Chantilly, France a short distance north of Paris Charles DeGaulle Airport. I had many occasions to talk with him about TWA business at the airport before we had any social contact. We had a typical French lunch once or twice in which we discussed TWA's business. Some time later, I invited him to visit our apartment in Chantilly for a California style barbecue. I knew that he once lived nearby and so I also thought he would enjoy seeing his old neighborhood. After that, Pat and I met occasionally with Claude and his wife Dorothee in Paris for Sunday lunch, great food, abundant parking and it is free on Sundays.

In recent years, a few of Claude's many friends asked me to write about his life experiences. I was always intrigued by stories from the time of the "Greatest Generation," in World War II and the start of our International Operations. Many TWA pilots had already told me about their experiences during those times. And since some of their stories have previously appeared in these pages, I asked Claude to tell me the story of his life leading up to and throughout his forty-six year career with TWA. It did not come easy, but over time he was persuaded to share it with us in TARPA TOPICS. As Claude often said, "he was just a stupid little French kid who got lucky," but he was certainly not stupid, and it took more than luck to survive and succeed as well as he did. He was born in Epinal, in the Vosges region of France and was in love with flying from an early age. He flew both sailplanes and light airplanes there in the mid-thirties before moving to Paris.

After the Germans occupied France, Claude was drafted for forced labor, and was scheduled to be deported, but before the time came to board the train for Germany, he escaped and joined the underground resistance. He was trained with various guns and explosives in the resistance, but that didn't last too long before they were forced to disband by the pressures of the constant German searches. Claude then decided to leave France and join the Free French Forces abroad.

The best way to leave in those days was to head south across the Pyrenees into Spain. That was the same route followed by many downed British and American pilots during the war. Barney Rawlings was one of them. Of course, Claude was quickly arrested by Spanish police and incarcerated in San Sebastian. There he met some of those allied pilots, and before too long, they were all released after the U.S. Government paid their ransom. From Spain they went to Lisbon, Portugal and boarded a ship for North Africa.

For his valor in escaping, Claude was given a choice of services. He naturally chose to join the French Air Force. That put him on course for U.S. pilot training in the usual manner of the time, with Primary on PT-19s at Craig Field Alabama, Basic at Shaw in South Carolina and Advanced PAGE 68 ... TARPA TOPICS