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.
After the Dunlop Bridge, I directly went into the first chicane, in the form of S-shaped curves bordered with oaks and linden trees; curves that could be taken in second gear, but I took them slower, in first gear, because there was quite a bit of traffic on the road—two motorcycles zoomed from the opposite direction on my left. Then, coming out of a 90-degree curve called the Tertre Rouge, a decade-old Opel car was in my way and forced me to take my right-side wheels slightly off the road; then a cyclist saw me and quickly moved away from the center of the track.
Then came the Mulsanne Straight, a long straight line that allows the pilots to max out their speed. The trees and farm houses were vanishing behind me as I stepped on it and reached almost 160 mph, going about 10 mph slower than I would during the race. I zoomed past two civilian cars.
During that long straight line, the pilot can relax a little bit. The only problem is that you have to be careful of the cars from other classes, as they would go much slower. At night, it can become quite difficult to judge the speed and distance of a slower car on that long straight line.
After reaching the top of a gentle hill and taking a smooth kink to my right, very nearly flat out, I saw the Mulsanne Corner coming fast at me while I was driving down a gentle slope. I expertly used my clutch and downshifted all my gears from fifth to first, the motor roaring loud as if it sounded annoyed to slow down, then I turned and took this very sharp curve to my right, testing the adherence of my tires and checking how my suspension responded as I came out of the curve and passed the new signalling stands off to my right.
This was another new feature for 1956. This year, all the signalling would be done from these stands right at the exit of the Mulsanne Corner, where the cars moved at their slowest during the lap. This made a lot of sense.
I accelerated to a deadly pace! There was no traffic in that thickly forested part of the 8.4-mile circuit and I drove almost as fast as I'd go during the race. What a rush! I quickly reached the Indianapolis curve, a sharp 90-degree elbow to the left, which I aced on the first gear at the very limit of the car's capabilities, feeling a heavy G-force pushing me hard to the left as my shoulder was being pressed against the side upon exiting the curve.
I then picked up speed, stick shifting into second gear before clutching down to first again and veering hard into the Arnage Corner to the right; then I had the motor raging and roaring again as I quickly up-shifted all the way to the fourth gear and was met by two passing cars on the left side, while I raced through a series of fast-paced, gentle curves. This portion of the circuit was deep in the woods and the fast-moving landscape was gorgeous under this afternoon sun!
Other improvements had been made there. The road had been widened and a bump had been flattened out, making that treacherous part of the circuit faster. Those kinky stretches of road took me to the chicane and rise in front of the White House, where the track had been considerably widened and the rise lowered, allowing us to take it very fast indeed!
I finally passed the empty grandstand off to my left, where that terrible, unspeakably horrible accident had occurred last year. After passing the pits to my right, driving at a gentle speed as it was quite crowded, I once more took that sweeping curve to the right while passing under the Dunlop Bridge to begin another lap. I was so happy to be there! What a rush!
Every time I slowly passed the pit, I tried to spot that mysterious woman, my eyes searching for the slim figure of her knee-high dress, but there was no sign of her. All of a sudden, the checkered pattern of her blue-on-white dress was a prize I desired more strongly than the checkered victory flag!
I spent the rest of the qualifications week with my thoughts haunted by her figure! She was nowhere to be seen. I even inquired around the team of mechanics, who had been there near my car on that afternoon; none of them had seen such a young woman wearing such a blue and white dress. They were positive and I knew some of them were playboys who wouldn't have failed to notice such a cutie!
Indeed, she was a classy chassis and I was sure! She was there! How odd! This strangeness intensified my fascination. My team director wasn't too happy with these sorts of inquiring about a lady no one had seen, and he ordered me to snap out of it and focus on the race.
I surprised myself and did quite well in the qualification rounds. The team director chose my younger teammate to start the race, since he was younger and could run faster. In return, I would be driving the final two hours of the race.
