By Gijsbert-Paul Berk
Of our Three Musketeers, only two survived the war. But despite all odds, both Pourtout and Darl’mat continued to create interesting designs well into the 1950s.
Georges Paulin and the Resistance
While it was sad that the Rolls-Royce Paulin Corniche was destroyed at Dieppe, even more tragic is the fact that Georges Paulin did not survive the war. After Hitler’s troops marched into Paris, Paulin joined the French resistance group Albi, which supplied information to British Intelligence. He produced drawings of German installations and armament and transmitted information using a clandestine radio transmitter. Sadly the activities of the Albi cell were betrayed by people working within the Vichy government for the Deuxième Bureau (the French Military Intelligence Service) to the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Service). Georges Paulin, Jacques Kellner, a famous Parisian carrossier and president of the French Coachbuilders Association and Roger Raven, a friend of Paulin who worked at Carrosserie Pourtout and was also part of the Albi resistance group, were arrested and sentenced to death by a German Military Tribunal. Paulin was nearly 40 years old; when on 21 March 1942 he was executed by a firing squad at the fortress of Mount Valérien. In 1944 the government of Charles de Gaulle posthumously awarded Georges Paulin the Medaulle Militaire et Citation à l’Ordre de l’Armée.
Pourtout in the post-war era
During the occupation Carrosserie Pourtout was confiscated by the Germans, who used its workshops and painting facilities to repair army vehicles. When the American troops and the 2nd Armored Division of the Free French army under Général Leclerc advanced to liberate Paris, the retreating German army badly damaged and plundered the buildings. Nearly all the equipment had disappeared.
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