Avenue Gabriel.

AuthorMoon, Bart
PositionEssay

Editor's Note: A consular assignment in a major European capital can be dull and bureaucratic or full of adventures. The author seems to have had more than one brush with celebrity while working away at his obligatory tour in consular affairs.--Ed.

A self-propelled tourist looking for the American Embassy in Paris today would eventually find himself standing on Avenue Gabriel, a street beginning at the Place de la Concorde and running generally north, parallel to the Champs Elysee on the left. There he would find his objective, an aging matron of no special architectural merit set back about 20 paces from the sidewalk, its most attractive features a brick courtyard fronting the embassy's main entrance and the high, gated fence of finely worked wrought iron surrounding it. His view and his passage, however, would be impeded by a patchwork of temporary fences keeping pedestrians at even greater distance from the building and by a seemingly endless row of whitewashed concrete bollards set on the sidewalk along the entire perimeter of the embassy grounds: silent sentinels designed to keep explosives laden vehicles from crashing through the fencing.

Further, if there were a terrorist threat alert, he could find himself the object of scrutiny by a small contingent of the French gendarmerie provided by the city to help safeguard the grounds. Perhaps 100 feet down the opposite side of the street he might also see two large, blue, windowless police vans, their contents a mystery, parked in front of a small, one story building.

It was not like this in November 1958, when I, a very junior Foreign Service officer, walked into that embassy to start my first overseas assignment. Then Avenue Gabriel was a sleepy, tree-lined haven from the endless bustle of the Champs Elysee. There were no bollards, no ominous vans, and no temporary fences. One only rarely saw a gendarme in his blue capped and caped elegance idly patrolling the street, looking for the occasional vagrant or for a disoriented ivrogne left over from the night before. The great gate of the embassy's iron fence stood open wide during the day, and a lone smartly uniformed Marine stood by the main door, helping direct callers to the information desk in the lobby. That a visitor might have several kilos of high explosive hidden under his jacket would never have occurred to him or to anyone else in 1958.

After reporting in I found myself dispatched directly to the Visa Section, where I was to spend Monday through Friday for the next two years. Junior officers regularly cut their teeth doing consular work, but was this what I had signed on for? Fantasies of days spent drafting cables to Washington analyzing de Gaulle's moods and delivering demarches at the Quai d'Orsay faded fast.

Most of the embassy's consular functions, e.g., passport renewals, notary services, etc., were handled in the chancellery building along with the post's political, economic, and commercial activities. The Visa Section, however, was not part of that world. Its officers and staff worked in an embassy annex, the small building a short walk down the street near where the French police today park their vans.

There, pell-mell, I became part of a busy team headed by the consul, a mid-career officer who had dedicated his career to consular work. I joined two other vice consuls, supported by two seasoned Foreign Service Staff officers--the profession's noncoms--and five French national employees, this latter group headed by a formidable woman in her fifties. Mme. Davy greeted our visa clients, reviewed their documents, established the order in which they would see an officer, and watched over them in the waiting room.

Tall, big boned, and heavy breasted, she was physically imposing with dark hair, dark eyes, and a strong Gallic nose and jaw. Her manner, always courteous, nonetheless projected the sense that it would be wise not to test her patience, as the occasional fractious client discovered. The chancellery had its Marine guards; we had Mme. Davy.

Our leader decided that I should begin my visa career handling prospective immigrants. I gulped and dived in, thanking my stars that I would be working with the two staff officers. Visa specialists, they knew what they were doing and seemed happy that I interfered as little as was seemly in administering a complex and controversial law.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (known less formally as the McCarran-Walter Act and passed over President...

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