The Secret French Map of World War 2 During the North-West European campaign, in 1944, the US liaison officers with General Leclerc’s troops noticed that all the French officers carried a special map.
This map contained a list of priority objectives for the French advance towards the German border, in their map cases. The French were also very careful to keep these out of sight when officers from the other Allied armies were about.
Suspecting some sort of Fifth Column treachery, or just plain baffled, the US liaison officers decided that they had to find out what was going on.
Finally, one of them sneaked a copy away from its owner, and the US officers secretly gathered around to look at it.
The first thing that bewildered them was that almost none of the carefully marked objectives had any military significance, whatsoever!
Indeed, several of them would require detours away from the direct route to Strasbourg, and the Franco-German border.
The second thing, which slowly dawned on those of the officers, who had been brought up to appreciate the finer things in life, was that the place names all seemed familiar.
Then the realization hit; they were all to be found on the labels of France’s finest vintages. Leclerc’s advance wasn’t so much of a thunder run, as a booze cruise.
