Now that we
know how to get out Reims, we can’t get out fast enough. Besides, this hotel is full of German and
Dutch tourists.
But wait,
there’s more war to go! We wind up our
World-War-One-ing with a visit to La Musée de la Grande Guerre in Meaux. This crazy modern structure looks like a
spaceship plunked down in the outskirts of this city more famous for mustard than
anything else. [1] But it is a great museum, the
nucleus of which is the photographer Jean-Pierre Vernay’s vast collection of
uniforms and weaponry of course, but also materials from trenches, tools, kit,
and posters, and artillery, and books and newspapers and mess kits and all that
stuff, beautifully displayed and well-described (even tri-lingually at times).
There is a mobile kitchen, and a mobile pigeon loft! There is less on the Yanks here, not
surprisingly, and like all the museums and sites we visit in France, it is quite
balanced with respect to the Germans. Where this museum really stands out
is giving the sense of this as a global war from the get-go: there is plenty of good information on the
involvement of French and German and British colonies, more on Russia than we
saw anywhere else, and really outstanding contextualizing on other forces like
Revolution before, during, and after. The museum does a lot with sound:
when you walk through the gate you hear horses (they pulled all the
artillery), then some motors, then you start to hear shelling as you approach
the entrance, all layered over one another. In the trench section, there
is clinking and clanking and trench-life noises. There are a billion
photographs, and a stereoscope section. But the most astonishing thing
that this museum has is an absolute ton of video, both French and German,
actual film footage of soldiers living, fighting, and lying dead in trenches
with rats crawling over their bodies.
I loved the
French and German trench reconstructions right across a no-mans-land from each
other, with video projected on the wall into them, of actual French and German
soldiers in trenches, so it looked like they were right there.
The final bit
is a 4 ½ minute video showing what happened in France and Germany and Great
Britain after the war, clearly linking this to the next conflagration.
And then a hall showing dates of first conflict and final resolution (or
not) for so many parts of this, Israel-Palestine, for example, or the Balkans,
issues that had their start with this war, and still smolder today. The
Yanks may have turned the tide in this war, but the larger conflict resonated
for decades, on battlefields far from France and Belgium.
One of your
last sights is a two-way exhibit of soldiers' gravestones – English, French,
American, Italian, German, Jewish, Muslim, Christian – that you see first from
the main gallery, from the back, just the silhouettes. Then as you go
down the final hallway, the front of the gravestones is revealed, and they are
all unknown: An American Soldier Known Only to God, Un Soldat Inconnu,
Ein Unbekannte Soldat and so on. So many unknown.
This museum is
actually built right next to another huge American monument, although this one
is from the American Friends of France, not the government. It is rather florid:
an enormous naked woman, not very well draped in a robe covered with
fleur-de-lis, struggling to carry a dead man. She towers over the
recently landscaped (read: inconsequential) trees, but I’m glad we saw her
because she’s been here far longer than the museum, and must have been kind of
ignored until this place was built.
Herein ends
the WW1 portion of our adventure. Guided
by Miss RC, we have learned a great deal, seen some beautiful parts of France
and the aftermath of terrible things.
The thought that hangs over everything is that all of that terrible loss
of life and unbelievable-except-that-you’ve-seen-it devastation was pretty much
for naught. Not even 25 years later,
they do it all over again. This time
there is less long-term fighting – tactics have changed and all moves much more
quickly – and there is the new horror of occupation and deportation. The Americans come again, fight hard, lose
lives, but this time must do more than just hold the line in France. You can’t help but wonder at alternative
outcomes when you see how close this one came to going the other way. And, we deal still with the fallout from this
one today, especially in the Balkans and the Middle East. So what did it accomplish? Bill read Remarque’s masterpiece All Quiet on the Western Front while we
travelled, and I have read it since we returned to that oasis of peace,
Cambridge, MA. But I recognize landmarks
in the story, and thus it acquires another layer of truth as I see it all more
vividly. As Kurt Vonnegut said, “so it
goes.”
Moving along .
. . we pop in to Chartres to see the Cathedral du Notre Dame du Chartres, one
of the great achievements of Gothic cathedral-building. You are disappointed
when you walk in, because there is so much scaffolded and wrapped, and you
think we drove all this way and walked up that stupid hill on my bum ankle
because my husband wants to see one more g.d. cathedral but as you go farther
into the structure, you see where they have finished
the cleaning and fixing, and how glorious is this light and bright and airy
space! The stone carving is like lace and the stained glass glows. The church is being restored to its 18th c.
refurbishment, so there is more white plaster than polychrome, but the contrast
with the non-cleaned areas is stunning and you think dammit Bill was right
again to stop. Especially after you come
upon a troop of middle-aged French people performing traditional country dances
on the plaza outside of the cathedral and your daughter is entranced as she
often is with dance.
We deviate now
from our regularly-scheduled programming to enjoy a weekend (well, a night) in
the country. Bill's friend Kate and her husband Bastien have a charming
place in la Perche, where they go every weekend, and we are welcomed for an
impromptu party with them and the funcles:
Andy and Laurent.[2] After a visit to a local goat
farm to collect some divine cheese and meet its caprine producers, the party is
basically sitting around on an idyllic summer evening drinking and talking and
laughing and eating Bastien's delicious cooking. There was a promise of
charades that was not entirely fulfilled, despite Laurent's gallant effort, and
it is possibly that Izzy will hold this against Andy forever. But a very
lovely time was had by all and we are so happy that our friends suggested this
detour and that we took it!
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