Reims is huge
and bustling compared to Verdun or Ypres, but how do you get out of this damn
city? We drive in circles, coming back
to our hotel twice before finding the route out of town and into the Champagne
country. For that is the region in which
we now are travelling, and it is prosperous and rolling, hills covered with
orderly vines, towns filled with tasting caves.
The incongruity with our destination could not be overstated.
The city falls
away quickly if you take the right road (hence our efforts), and despite the
jolly wine, in the space of an hour and a half, you pass French, Italian, British,
German, and American (two of them actually) military cemeteries.
They all have
different characters, of course. I’ve described the pristine elegance of
the Americans; the French are quite plain in comparison and there are fewer –
understandably, every church graveyard also contains military graves. The British are a bit Victorian, and many
contain a Stone of Remembrance that says THEIR NAME LIVETH FOREVERMORE, which
is from the Bible but was co-opted by Rudyard Kipling who was involved in the
design of the cemeteries.[1]
The Italians are
a bit flash, spelling out ITALIA in shrubbery outside the gate. The German cemeteries are in their way the
most haunting. They are not disturbed,
but clearly no one goes there, and the German government does not treat them as
the Americans do theirs. Apparently
there used to be many more German cemeteries but they’ve been consolidated over
the years. They are quiet, usually
surrounded by trees, a little weedy but still sun-dappled, and have all black
crosses and many kameradgraben. It is
jarring to find headstones for Jewish soldiers in these cemeteries, knowing
what is to come.
You’ve heard
about the Yanks. Today our goal is
Chateau Thierry on the Marne River, home to the biggest US memorial of them
all, to the US 3rd Division, known as the Rock of the Marne. As with the others, you can see this long and
massive colonnade from miles away, set as it is against the top of a hill. And again, it is empty. A family picnics nearby, the women in Muslim
headscarves.
Nearby is the
Aisne-Marne Cemetery, with yet another ghostly carillon. We are there for the extended noon concert
and at some point realize that it is playing Yankee Doodle with a dirge-like
tempo. America the Beautiful, which
follows, works better. It is both incongruous – here you are in the
middle of the perfect French countryside, champagne country no less, and here
is this American patriotic music playing out of nowhere – and appropriate to
the setting of crosses and flags.
The cemetery
backs up to Belleau Wood, one of the most infamous American battlegrounds of
them all. We walk the woods and learn
about how the Germans had advanced to this position quickly in the spring of
1918. They are 40 miles from Paris! How shall they be stopped? The Germans occupy this wood in June, and the
Americans are brought up because the French don’t have anyone left. The story goes, and I think it is really true,
that as the Marines marched to their dreadful fate in the Bois de Belleau that
June, the retreating French soldiers told them to leave, to retreat. “Retreat, hell, we just got here!” one
officer famously replied.[2]
Well, they did
stay, but suffered 20% casualties over the next four weeks. This was already a different kind of fighting
from, say, the Butte de Vauquois or Flanders:
the wood, while rich in foxholes, is not as riven with trenches as, say,
the woods of Mort-Homme or Thiaumont. One
effort to take the woods involved crossing a wheatfield, in the face of well-entrenched
German machine gun fire. The field is
not marked but we think we found it, because the shallow depressions, lined up
facing the field just under the cover of trees, deeper end at the foot, have
the look of gunners’ pits or foxholes. If I were defending that wood
against wave after wave of Marines, that's where I'd set up shop.
Here’s the big
thing about Belleau Wood. It took almost
a month, but the Marines eventually took the place, and the Germans pulled
back. It was as close as the Germans got
to Paris, but they could not sustain the offensive. It’s not just like the Americans poked them
and they fell over, but after this, the Yanks did push steadily forward toward
November’s armistice. Most people today
believe that if the 2nd and 3rd Divisions had not held
the line in this part of France, the Germans would have won that war.
Yay, USA! But you don’t say that, and the woods are so
pretty and green and peaceful that it of course makes the shocking carnage even
more surreal. It is said that logging
has been banned from this small forest, because the older trees are still so
full of shrapnel and bullets. You
imagine you can see scars from the fighting on some of the taller and older members
of this arboreal clan. A brief
discussion of fairies – they fought for the Allies in this war – ensues. The cemetery below has one Medal of Honor
winner, and three sets of brothers buried there. There is a small German cemetery just down
the road, with four times as many soldiers buried in half the space.
Not to be left
out, the Pennsylvanians (again!) left themselves a little memorial in the
charming wee village of Belleau. A
modest water pump and trough, we think it in somewhat better taste than the one
in Varennes.
In an effort
at verisimilitude, I am today among the fallen.
A treacherous curb attacked me in what shall be henceforth known as
Chateau Teary, cutting short our touring for the day.[3] So no more dead people, Isabel asks
hopefully? Well, not quite. We did
come home via Chamery, the tiny village near to where TR’s youngest and
favoritest son (and Harvard dropout) was shot down in 1918. There is a
touching memorial – another watering trough – from his family, and that is
about it. This is really a one-horse
town. Miss RC can direct you to the
actual crash site, a k. or so off the “main” road, down a dirt track, then walk
to the left and look for the mown spot in the cornfield and the tablets on the
ground. We did rather appreciate the
effect of the burning field near by, however, and dubbed it The Eternal
Smudgepot.
At dinner
tonight, Isabel tries – and likes – carpaccio, a popular menu item here in
France. She also has a frozen soufflé
with rose meringue that is quite beautiful.
While not a pink girl anymore, she does not turn her nose up at pink
desserts.
[1] Kipling was involved in this effort in part
due to his very public grief over the death of his son Jack, in the Battle of
Loos, in 1915. Kipling had pulled
strings to get Jack, whose eyesight was poor, into the army. Kipling apparently believed for years that
Jack had not been killed, and hoped to find his remains.
[2] This is not
apocryphal; you can google it. There are
any number of sources to support this quote, from Capt. Lloyd Williams, of
Virginia. He died nine days later.
[3] Transport and Payment Officer Bill acquires a
cane and Ace bandage for his fallen chef, which will prove a great help as we
continue our advance across France.
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