My dream had come true! Finally, at 31 years of age, I was racing at Le Mans! The famous 24 Hours of Le Mans!
It was my first time in France since the war. I will never forget the whizzing bullets on Juno beach when I landed with my French Canadian regiment and faced elements of the German 716th Infantry Division. I saw some of the prisoners two days later—frightened boys like myself.
Everywhere we went and liberated a town or city, the people welcomed us like heroes. It was easy to find a woman to sleep with; at 19 years old, I stood 6 feet 1 inch without an ounce of extra weight, thanks to the harsh military life. All I had to do was to offer her something like a candy bar, a cigarette or a glass of bourbon. This had left me with the impression that French women were in general easier to get than the ones at home in my God-fearing, Catholic hometown of Quebec City.
Making my racing dream come true had been a very long journey, fraught with sacrifices. For one, I had remained single since no woman in her right mind would marry a man whose days and nights were obsessed with one thing—driving a sports car as fast as possible while not being able to earn a living out of it, and often changing jobs, because I didn't fit in anywhere else other than on a racing circuit.
Thanks to these sacrifices, there I was on that fine day of June! I stood in front of my 1956 Corvette and looked at her sleek curves and her racy body standing on her whitewall tires, and I felt it was well worth it! In less than a week, I'd be driving this beauty from Detroit in the world's most prestigious endurance race—the 24 Hours of Le Mans!
The start would see all pilots lined on one side of the track, standing and ready to sprint and jump into their cars, all parked at an angle on the other side of the dangerously narrow track, all waiting and placed according to their qualifications lap times. The start would be given on Saturday at 4 P.M. and the checkered flag would salute the winning car—driven by the two-pilot team who would have run the most laps and distance.
Each pilot relayed his teammate every two hours. It was an ungodly long and hard race; driving at a deadly pace for two hours requires mind-boggling concentration... Now, imagine this, you have to do it twelve times over 24 hours!
Most cars didn't finish the race. Motors or some other mechanical components would fail, or the pilot made a mistake and his car swerved outside the track in what could easily become a fatal crash—there were trees and other solid landmarks right on the roadside!
The cars had no seat belts, as pilots felt it was better to be thrown clear outside during a collision than remaining trapped in their burning car or getting crushed under its 3,000 pounds of steel.
We wore a helmet with goggles, gloves for a better grip on the wheel, and we often rolled up the sleeves of our polo shirts so the ladies could see our well-toned upper arms! At least, this was what I did.
A helmet, gloves and the ladies' good-luck charm were all the protection we had! This was enough, until it wasn't.
The year before, a terrible, horrible accident had occurred between cars as they were zooming at great speed in front of the stands. Mike Hawthorn's Jaguar had suddenly braked and veered to go to the pits, which are located directly on the right side of the track; the following car braked hard and swerved to the left in order to avoid Hawthorn, but then that swerving car was rear-ended by Pierre Levegh, whose white Mercedes was closing in at 125 mph!
The last thing Levegh did was to raise his hand and signal the danger to his teammate, Fangio, who was right behind and came through unscathed.
At such a high speed, the rear-ended car acted as a ramp and launched the white Mercedes into the air! Levegh's car skipped over a protective berm and landed on the earthen embankment between the spectators and the track, throwing the pilot onto the track where he was instantly killed with a crushed skull.
The Mercedes bounced and rebounded twice on the embankment, then slammed hard into a concrete stairwell structure and disintegrated! Its heaviest components—the engine block, radiator, front suspension and bonnet—were sent flying straight into the crowd where they crushed and decapitated all in their path!
The rear gas tank exploded and burning debris were thrown into the crowd! The resulting mess of crushed bodies, agony cries and charred flesh claimed 84 lives. It was the worst disaster in auto racing ever!
As I put on my driving gloves, attached my grape-blue helmet and lowered myself into the cockpit of my Corvette, I cleared my mind and concentrated on the track and its technical details, its challenges, its dangers. I was to run a few laps to familiarize myself and take notes of the many features of each and every part of the circuit.
As always, some fans were gathered around the sports car in addition to the teams of mechanics. A local gal, a young wife, was looking at me while standing next to her typical-French husband. She was looking straight into my eyes, with an intensity that surprised me, and she struck me as peculiarly beautiful—petite, brunette, with a je ne sais quoi in her features.
She made me think of someone I knew. She stood rather short and was in her early twenties, with porcelain-white skin, black wavy hair, a gorgeous figure, a slim waist underscored by the tight-fitting belt on her dress, and a face you would never grow tired of contemplating, but in her case, her features had some sadness; she gave a vague impression of being on the verge of tears while smiling with joy in her eyes—she was smiling at me!
The shapes of her perky breasts beautifully curved the pattern of her checkered dress—grape-blue squares on a white field. I suddenly felt an urge to discover and touch these glorious breasts! There was a sense of joy in them, highlighted by her double pearl necklace with its white beads glittering under today's bright sun.
She raised her white-gloved hand to her eyes as some dust was bothering her, while her suit-and-hat-wearing husband kept eying the foreign curves of my Corvette's chassis.
I pushed the ignition, lowered my goggles and moved off as everyone made way for my American car, which sported a grape-blue stripe on a white field. A big white circle was painted on the wide blue stripe on the hood; it contained a freshly painted number 7, bold and black.
My heart began to race; I was off on the Le Mans circuit!
I moved off from the pits, very mindful of pedestrians and traffic—there were bicycles, motorcycles and cars on the track, so I drove gently.
I directly veered out of the pits and smoothly accelerated on the stretch leading to the wide-sweeping bend to the right and passed under the Dunlop Bridge, shaped like a part of a gigantic Dunlop tire.
