An American in Paris

The first U.S. troops had scarcely entered Paris last August when huge billboard posters with an American-flag background appeared all over the city. On them was this legend: "Congratulations on a job well done--Hart Schaffner & Marx." A few days later the London Daily Mail angrily protested that American businessmen in uniform were transacting business in Paris. But who had scored this advertising scoop for the big U.S. clothing firm no one seemed able to say.

Last week the mystery was solved. Short, earnest Allen Reasoner, 38, a Red Cross field director, sadly admitted that he was the unwitting offender. The role, he said, had been thrust upon him during a 36-hour leave in Paris in mid-September. In all innocence he had called on a Paris adman named Pierre Elvinger. To him, Reasoner delivered an apparently innocuous message which Reasoner had received in a letter from his brother-in-law J. David Danforth, an executive with Manhattan's high-powered advertising firm, Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne Inc. The message: Elvinger was expected "to do a good job."

Several weeks later, Reasoner was ordered to Paris. Coldly he was told that his message had been the go-ahead for the advertising posters; that he faced possible court-martial.* Instead, Reasoner's punishment was reassignment--not in the European Theater. Last week, while he was in London awaiting transportation to a new assignment. Reasoner lost $140 in cash, had his kitbag stolen and learned that the dog he left in London had gone off with somebody named Jerry. Said Reasoner: "I'm just an eight-ball guy."

* The Articles of War state: "Personnel of the American Red Cross are subject to military law when accompanying the armies of the United States outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States or in the field within the United States."

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