We are done,
we are so done, we are ver-done. Ve’r-done
with Verdun. But we liked the little
hotel and the friendly owners and the small and delicious restaurants a lot.
On the agenda
for today: more American monuments and
cemeteries! More trenches! This is awesome, I love it but must note that
not all share my level of enthusiasm.
The short drives of yesterday did not prevent Isabel from letting loose
an eye-roll during lunch, as I banged on about yet another fascinating
war-related topic. Lunch does take a
little bit of time, and sometimes we think about just getting up and leaving
but recall that it is generally frowned upon to leave without paying. Although our Payroll Officer notes, in a rare
display of jingoism, that perhaps they should be buying us lunch. You’re WELCOME, France.
First
stop: the Montfaucon American Monument,
a tall tower (again, that you can see for miles) on a hill, where the town of
Montfaucon used to be. You can see the
ruins of the 13th c. church just behind the tower, but the town is
gone and was rebuilt at the bottom of the hill.
This important position was actually a German stronghold – apparently the
Kronprinz had his bunker here – so there are also ruins of German bunkers that
you can climb about on, destroyed in the US assault during the Meuse-Argonne
offensive of September, 1918. Before
climbing the 212 steps we read a statement from Pershing that praises, among
other things, the virility of his soldiers.
We prefer the local historical plaque that comments on la courage
fantastique des “doughboys.”
We were
sidetracked – literally – on the way here as we drove off the road (again) to
find (another) site of protracted Franco-German fighting from 1916-17, in a
forest known even before the war as the Forêt du Mort-Homme, or Dead Man’s
Forest. Here the Germans had really dug
in, with miles and miles of trenches, the remains of which you can walk along,
and see disappearing into the woods.
There is a terribly dramatic monument here, of what is basically a
screaming skeleton draped in a flag and holding a spear, with the words ILS
N’ONT PAS PASSÉ inscribed on the base.
We find it interesting that in the photo of the monument in Miss RC’s
book, the trees are so much shorter. She
did this for a long time.
Back to the
road to Reims, Miss RC directs us through some “villages détruits” which are
towns that were so destroyed in the war, they were never rebuilt. They exist on the map, and have signs, and
some even still elect mayors. But there
are no houses. We pass a teeny joint
French and American memorial here, on a destroyed pillbox, with two rusting
helmets under the cross.
Now, we mostly
planned to just get to Reims today but there are of course many stops on the
way. Both French and Americans fought in
this area over the four years of the war, so there are monuments and cemeteries
all over the place, but it is especially a place to see American
monuments. The fighting in this area
happened quickly after the St. Mihiel operation started, and there are those
who feel it was a rushed operation.
Pershing alludes to this in his statement back at Montfaucon, and I read
somewhere that 1,000,000 Americans eventually fought in this region. It was the most heavily contested spot of the
war for the US. Not surprisingly, the
largest American military cemetery in Europe, Meuse-Argonne, is not far from
the Montfaucon monument. There are over
14,000 men buried here, and the memorial walls name another 1,000 or so whose
remains were never found. Including the
intriguing AEF North Russia. What were
we doing in Siberia in 1918?!
“Protecting our interests” apparently, and it is not at all clear on exactly
which side of the Russian Revolution those interests lay.
This is the
most beautiful of the American cemeteries in this area. There is a large pool with lilies in the
middle, surrounded by roses, and the now-inevitable linden trees in ordered
ranks. The chapel sits on a hill with a
long loggia filled with names. In
addition to seeing almost no visitors, you also don’t see anyone doing
maintenance, which surely must be a prodigious job given the size and lushness
of the site. You have the sense that the
grass dare not grow one millimeter over regulation height. Maybe they mow it at night. At any rate, I wonder if the continued
gratitude towards the US is in part derived from the many landscaping jobs that
these places must provide.
One memorial
that may not generate quite the same level of devotion from the French is the
State of Pennsylvania memorial in Varennes.
Here we have a private memorial that is as big and bombastic as
Pershing’s official piles, but is purely commemorating the service of soldiers
from Pennsylvania. It rather dominates
the town, and is not as nicely maintained as the others, but provides a shady
spot for our picnic. We wonder what on
earth PA was thinking when they decided on this. Why did they feel they needed their own
monument? Does anyone from Varennes go
to Pennsylvania? Does anyone from
Pennsylvania come to Varennes? As the
NYT notes, you pretty much have to drive out of town to photograph the entire
thing, it is that big.
We really are
on our way to Reims. But we are
intrigued enough by Miss RC’s description of the Butte de Vauquois to detour
there first.[1] We arrive to find a large group of people, all
shapes and sizes and ages, donning hardhats and carrying flashlights as they
trudge up the steep path to the top of the hill. They will tour the remaining tunnels under
the hill, and we think about it but my French is tired and we have Things to
Do.
Still, we
linger because this place is compelling.
Vauquois is another village détruit that was never rebuilt, because the
landscape basically was completely altered and you couldn’t rebuild there – you
would be building on top of tunnels and in craters, and very likely on top of a
graveyard. The Germans got to the top of
the hill in 1914, but the French held the other side. They basically stayed there, shelling the crap
out of each other, and then mining under each others’ lines, for the next four
years. The top of the hill is actually
enormous craters, big enough to hold a church or a house, left from the huge
mines that each side detonated under the other, in an effort to dislodge. In 1916, the Germans blew a hole with 60,000
kilos of TNT, killing 108 French soldiers.
And still they fought.
You can walk
around the craters – watch out for metal bits that are still emerging from the
earth – and see just how close the French and German lines were. It is estimated that 8,000 soldiers vanished
here.
Yeah, so on
that cheery note, we leave the war for a bit, finally heading into the big city
of Reims (pronounced “Ras,” like “rasp” without the ‘p’). We are pretty psyched to get to our mod hotel
that has a pool and to find a swell fish restaurant for dinner. Private H-P dispatched a whole John Dory with
aplomb, and our Information Specialist discovered tarama.
Combat is one
form of son et lumière I suppose, but a far nicer one is what happens at the
Reims Cathedral at 10:30 on a summer evening.
The whole cathedral goes absolutely dark, and then for half an hour, the
large crowd is thrilled by projections on to the facade, of light and art, and
the building of such a grand structure, all accompanied by sort of dramatic
film-score/French pop/religious chant music.
Private H-P is practically asleep on her feet but keeps lifting her
camera for more.
[1] We have learned that
if Miss RC says something is particularly interesting, we should not pass it
by.
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