I adore this article. It was written by an anonymous expatriate, a former American soldier of the Great War who went into some detail comparing life in 1920s Paris to the life he knew in America, and he is quite funny about it. He described a Paris that Hemingway, Stein and Fitzgerald didn't talk about:
"Back in America I sincerely thought that my hometown had the worst telephone system in the world. This was a colossal error. When the world's championship for bad telephone service is handed out, I nominate Paris; confident that my candidate will win. In truth, if any American Socialist wants to see how miserably his ideals work in practice, let him try to call a friend on a French telephone, and if he doesn't die of the weariness of waiting, he'll confess that French state ownership and operation are an abject failure... I am thoroughly in love with France, however, for life is more than telephones and railroad trains..."
This author was not alone; shortly after the war, Hundreds and hundreds of former Doughboys returned to France - some to visit, some to reside...
Click here to read about the fall of Paris...
Click here to see a 1918 cityscape of
the American Army in Paris
