She served formally in the French military during this period. She held the rank of sub-lieutenant in the Women’s Auxiliary of the Free French Air Force — the Infirmières Pilotes Secouristes de l’Air, the Air Auxiliary Nurses Corps — and she held a pilot’s license that was part of her qualifications for that role. The rank and the uniform were not honorary; she was a serving member of the French military, and she wore the uniform at public appearances for the rest of her life.
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## Paris Liberated
Paris was liberated in August 1944. American and French forces entered the city on August 25; German forces surrendered the following day. The liberation of Paris — with its famous images of Allied troops moving down the Champs-Élysées, of crowds filling the streets, of a city emerging from four years of occupation into something resembling freedom — was one of the defining moments of the war.
Josephine Baker returned to Paris in October 1944, two months after the liberation. She drove through the city’s streets in her military uniform, riding through crowds that lined the route. By her account, the experience was overwhelming in a way that the greatest triumphs of her prewar career had not been.
The specific emotional weight of that return — a woman who had spent years in wartime service returning to the city that had become her home, in a uniform that represented the country she had risked her life for — was not easily summarized. She had been away for four years. The city she returned to was not entirely the city she had left; occupation leaves marks that survive liberation. But it was Paris, and it was free, and she was part of the force that had contributed to making it free.