Spectres of Churchill and de Gaulle return as Paris remembers

It was a perfect day for fin de siecle nostalgia, cold and clear, with church bells pealing for the dead and bright leaves falling. A day when the French could indulge in what the German daily Die Zeit snidely called "making souvenirs of their memories".

Queen Elizabeth was dressed in purple, with a cluster of red poppies at her collar held by a large diamond brooch. The French have adopted the blue cornflower as their equivalent of the remembrance poppy, and President Chirac wore one in the lapel of his navy blue jacket. Only Prime Minister Jospin made a sartorial statement, his black suit of mourning an allusion to the carnage of the Great War and his pacifist father Robert, who raised him with stories of the mutilated soldiers he had seen in 1917.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder was of course absent from events in France this week. Paris had been miffed when the new leader did not pursue his predecessor's plans to join in ceremonies with Mr Chirac. Mr Schroder's busy schedule was the official reason given, but advisers said he felt Dr Kohl already made the necessary historic gesture by holding Mr Mitterrand's hand at Verdun.

The new chancellor did not want to celebrate a defeat, and wants Germany to shed its role as the vanquished and guilty party.

The 80th anniversary of the armistice may have been the pretext for yesterday's ceremonies, but in Paris it was really about the second World War.

Gen de Gaulle used to say that the first World War lasted 30 years, from 1914 until the liberation of France in 1944. In a way he was right; it seemed all of a piece yesterday. The real reason Queen Elizaeth had come to Paris was to unveil a statue of her first Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill.

In Mr Jean Cardot's bronze sculpture, the British leader strides into the wind, in the RAF uniform that he wore on November 11th, 1944, when he and de Gaulle made a triumphant Armistice Day march down the ChampsElysees. Mr Chirac and Queen Elizabeth saved their speeches for the statue-unveiling, offering only wreaths of poppies and cornflowers to the first World War dead. The vehicles that clattered around the Place de l'Etoile were museum pieces carrying nurses and soldiers in period costume: horse-drawn artillery, Renault lorries, the first tanks that helped break the German advantage in 1918, the famous Marne taxis that were used as ambulances.

Even the handful of poilus who made the journey are an endangered species. Only 1,200 of the five million Frenchmen who fought in the Great War are still living.

Queen Elizabeth and her retinue of dukes and duchesses, lords and ladies, lunched at the Elysee on foie gras and truffles, roast lamb with Provence herbs, cheese and pistachio ice cream. They drank Bordeaux wines and Pol Roger champagne, cuvee Winston Churchill. Among the party was Churchill's grandson and namesake.

The statue was financed by public contributions, and was the French way of thanking Britain for raising a statue to Gen de Gaulle in London five years ago. The new statue was placed on the corner of the Avenue Winston Churchill and the Cours la Reine, a few hundred metres from the statue of "le tigre", the first World War leader Georges Clemenceau. Churchill admired the French statesman, and during his visit 54 years ago yesterday, he placed a bouquet at the feet of the Clemenceau statue while the band played Father Victory.

Mr Chirac recalled Gen de Gaulle's May 1945 homage to Churchill: "What has been done would not have been done without you." Churchill had embodied "an entire country's determination to resist", Mr Chirac said, citing the 1940 speech when Sir Winston declared "We shall never surrender."

The words are engraved in English on the base of the statue. Churchill was the first to recognise the Free French forces and called de Gaulle l'homme du destin the first time they met in May 1940.

In their celebration of the entente cordiale, Mr Chirac and Queen Elizabeth alluded to "difficulties" between Churchill and de Gaulle. On the eve of the Normandy landings, the British prime minister was so exasperated with the general that he called him a brigand and ordered him removed from the country "in chains if necessary".

That row was smoothed over and Churchill and de Gaulle became friends in later years. De Gaulle wrote movingly of his last meeting with the ageing Churchill in 1960. "Vive la France" were Churchill's final words to him.

Queen Elizabeth read half her speech in French, noting that she would join President McAleese on the Messines Ridge later in the day "in a most welcome and significant joint act of remembrance of those of our countrymen who gave their lives in that war". We should never forget our past, she added, evoking the close of "this turbulent century".

But we do forget our past. An opinion poll this week found that a third of French teenagers do not know why November 11th is a holiday. Big French commemorations of the armistice fall on the eighth year of every decade, and one couldn't help wondering yesterday whether this might not be the last big memorial.