Absent Friends

Tears streamed down a thousand faces in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris on September 9, 1945. Tears for the absent French men and women who had been murdered by the Nazis. Tears for the torture, deprivation and humiliation the living had suffered under the cruel subjugation of the Third Reich’s forces of occupation. Tears of joy that the start of a motor race marked a certain return to normalcy for a war torn people. Tears of a joy that the start of a motor race might mark a certain return to normalcy.

The Second World War had ended four months earlier, and motor racing was about to make its contribution to helping the French people find their way back to freedom. The sport was also set to honor three of its own, including Robert Marcel Charles Benoist. It was almost one year to the day since the Grand Prix and 24 Hours of Le Mans winner had been executed by the Nazis. And one of the day’s races was named after him.

Many had expected the Continent’s first postwar race to be a Victory in Europe Day Grand Prix, staged in the flattened center of Berlin. But France had decided to blare out the song of victory in its own decidedly less-devastated capital instead and, at the same time, reinstate itself as the center of world motorsport. The three races that graced the Bois de Boulogne that day in late 1945 may have been of a more modest stamp than a full-blown GP—their grids made up of a hodgepodge of prewar cars—but they were the first to be held in postwar Europe and were an impassioned salute to three racing heroes of the French Resistance.