Here at Verdun
a terrible battle was fought in 1916, when the Germans tried to break through
the French line. Basically, the two
sides pound each other to a pulp for 10 months, mostly in the suburbs just east
of the city. Today, a
fantastically-futuristic-for-the-1930s structure, L’Ossuaire du Douaumont
dominates the hills in this area, looking like something out of the Emerald
City if it were not for its terrible contents:
the bones of 130,000 French and German soldiers who died here.[1]
Of course, the weirdly-orange lit interior (with signs demanding
“SILENCE!”) is covered with names and plaques from memorial associations like
the
Federation des
Fils des Mort Pour La France
Or the
Association
Nationale les Parents des Tuès
A large French
military cemetery surrounds the ossuary, and around that, you can wander around
the battlefield on the Thiaumont plateau, our first experience with the
undulating forest landscape of this part of France. Shell craters and trenches tossed up
earthworks, softened now with grass and green and wildflowers, which compete
for the eye with metal girders and stakes and chunks of armor plate that stick
out of the ground here and there. There
are some remains from some old bunkers that you can walk around. Like most of the sites here, it is pretty
much empty of people, and the sun shines and bees buzz and the flowers are
pretty. You really can’t imagine what
happened, just wonder at the rolling landscape and watch your footing – you
don’t want to trip over a girder.
I can’t overstate
the beauty of the weather, or the surrounding countryside here. It is serene high summer, and everywhere you
drive there are fields being hayed and contented cows and corn and now, yes,
poppies.
Our drive into
the St. Mihiel salient takes us to the pretty town of St. Mihiel for lunch, and
a stop at the dramatically-named Tranchée de la Soif, or the Trench of
Thirst. Here is another deserted site,
up and down a farm track a couple of klicks off the main road, in a wood. The trenches, among which you can walk, were
German, and filled with their good cement bunkers, now overgrown with moss and
ivy and creepers and looking pretty much exactly like ancient ruins Indiana
Jones might find in South America somewhere, rather than structures just 100
years old here in France.
If there is a
rock structure, you can be assured that Peter Laskin will try to climb it. So there is a fair amount of clambering about
on bunkers. Fortunately, most of them
have filled in over time, so he can’t get very far into them.
Anyway, back
at the tranchée, there are the now-inevitable memorial statues and plaques from
still-grieving families. In May 1915
French soldiers broke through and occupied the German lines around here. Unfortunately their reinforcements did not
get through, and while the advance held out as long as they could, they ran out
of ammunition and water (hence the thirst part) and eventually had to
surrender. It is said (by Miss RC) that
when they surrendered, their commanding officer said “Remember the Trench of
Thirst!” This is a very dramatic story,
but we are the only people here save for a couple from Denver who don’t go nearly
as far along the trench as we do.
The entire
countryside around here is like this:
monuments in the middle of the woods or by the side of the road, and if
you look in the woods, it is all shell holes and trenches, softened by
green. What we don’t quite realize until
we read about it is that we are in the middle of yet another salient, this
time, a German one poking into the French lines around St. Mihiel.
Further along,
you start to see signs to the Monument Americain,
and of course you go because you have also seen the monument itself for several
miles. The Montsec American Monument, an
admittedly beautiful round colonnade on top of a hill with a breathtaking view,
basically says, yeah, France, you’re WELCOME.
Because it was in this part of the country that the Yanks fought and,
there really is no other way to put it, saved France’s bacon.
Lesson
time! But shorter than before. America enters the war in April, 1917. But doesn’t fight until the following
summer. Why? Well, we didn’t really have any army to speak
of, so that had to happen, then they have to get there, then they have to get
supplied and trained on how to fight Over There. Meanwhile, the French try yet another
offensive and don’t get anywhere, the British try one (see above,
Passchendaele), and the Russians (about whom we are learning absolutely
NOTHING) are revolting. The Germans launch
an offensive in spring, 1918. They’re
held by les Americains in May at Chateau Thierry (more on that shortly), their
lines there blown through in the summer, and then really get their butts kicked
around St. Mihiel and the Meuse River late summer and into the fall.
So this
monument is in honor of the American effort in these parts, and if it is bigger
than pretty much any French monument other than the Arc de Triomphe in Paree,
well, they did make the difference. The
Germans couldn’t sustain their offensive in the presence of fresh soldiers in
such great numbers – two million American eventually serve in France in the
First World War, with casualties at 100,000 or so. Still, that figure, combined with the short
duration of the American effort, gives an indication of how difficult a fight
it was. The Central Powers, despite
being in bad shape and facing mutinies within their ranks, did not give up
easily.
(Sometimes
when you are out and about in the countryside, you hear big jets and you look
up and see a couple of fighter planes way up high. Whose are they, we wonder? Is it the Red Baron? Is it Snoopy in some modern-day Sopwith
Camel?)
In France, you
come upon these massive American monuments from time to time. After the war, General Pershing was put in
charge of the battlefield monuments commission, and he was clearly determined
to do it in fine style. Near all of
these monuments there are also American military cemeteries, which are equally
lush and beautiful and absolutely impeccably maintained. And empty, just like the monuments. After Montsec, it is a short drive to the St.
Mihiel American Cemetery (le cimitière américan). We get out of the car to ghostly carillon
music, which you feel compelled to follow through the rows of white crosses and
Stars of David – you know what this looks like – between lanes of perfectly
trimmed linden trees to the little colonnade.
If you see a name on a headstone inscribed in gold, there lies a Medal
of Honor winner. If you see a headstone
inscribed “An American Soldier Known Only to God” you already know what that
means because you learned it earlier in the trip at Tyne Cot.
Here, and this
will be the case at every American cemetery we visit, on one side there is a
“map room” in which a mosaic map on the wall, made out of colored stone, shows
an overview of the St. Mihiel salient offensive, and a statement about the
valor etc. of the men of the (here) the US 1st Army. On the other side there is a tiny chapel,
with the names of the missing inscribed in its walls. When they find remains, they put a little
brass rosette next to the name.
There is some
noble statuary, usually of eagles, but sometimes of men, and more pristine
landscaping. It is silent, except for
the hourly carillon, and we are quiet too because you just don’t feel giddy
here.
All the
American cemeteries have comfortable visiting rooms, with registers and rosters
and guest books and (importantly) restrooms.
Bill ducks in, and learns that after the war, families of the fallen
were given a choice by the government:
your son/husband/father/brother may be returned to you, for internment
as you choose, or his remains may be interred in one of these French cemeteries,
and the government will pay for you to visit the grave. Bill reads an article about a family who had
their soldier brought home to Texas but the author thought they should have
left him in France because the cemetery is a lot nicer.
The US
government maintains all of these cemeteries, and it is probably pretty
expensive, but would you want to be the congressperson who suggests that we cut
funding for military cemeteries in Europe?
You may think
this day is done but . . . actually we are pretty close.
I got started
on all of this reading a series of articles in the NYT about the War, and the
American effort and how it is memorialized in France. We based much of our itinerary on these
articles and on the NYT’s trip that they are offering this fall. One of these articles talked about the
proliferation of monuments thanking the Americans, and it is true, you see
American flags often on statues and around plaques. We learn of a mother from New York City whose
son was buried at this particular cemetery.
She moved to the nearby town and lived there for the rest of her life to
be near his grave. When she died, she
was buried in the town churchyard with a headstone that is a replica of
his.
And of course,
Americans sent aid after the war, and that too is duly commemorated. In a teeny town in the salient we drive past
a water pumping station dedicated to the town of Holyoke, Massachusetts, which
helped this town recover, and another town, on a gorgeous outcropping above the
plain has a plaque for the late lamented Miss Belle Skinner of Holyoke (what is
it about that generous town?), who apparently adopted the village and helped to
rebuild its school and Mairie.
This sounds
like an exhausting day, and it kind of is, but it really only covers about 45
kilometers and takes less than an hour to drive if you don’t stop at every
trench.
In other news,
I can report that Isabel is blossoming into a real eater. Tonight she enjoyed some melon and Serrano
ham, chicken in Roquefort sauce, and her new fave, panna cotta, while eating al
fresco at Le Clappier (which based on the restaurant’s logo we believe is a
mischievous rabbit).
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