The Longest Day

Dear Old Bolds, Friends and Family,

At last, I’m grabbing just a few minutes to update you on some of the highlights of our current doings.

I arrived in Frankfurt on Tuesday.  Charley, intrepid 90-year-old world traveler, took the train down from Hamburg on his own and met me there.

The real adventure, though, started in Gravelotte, France, near Metz, where Charley’s grandfather fought in the 1870 Franco-Prussian war.  Imagine travelling with an American WW2 veteran whose grandfather had fought in the Civil War.  It’s mindboggling to me that through Charley there is some kind of intimate connection to 1870.

The Franco-Prussian war, which produced the highest known number of casualties of any European war up to that date (so they say here), was horrific in its use of the newly-developed Gatling-type machine gun versus infantry and cavalry.  (That anyone ever used cavalry on the field of battle in WWI and even WW2 should be recognized as a crime.)  Surprisingly, the many German memorials that dot the landscape near Gravelotte are in fantastic shape.  One can spend hours, even days, discovering dozens of marble and granite works of art and graves tucked in fields and along dirt roads in rural areas that haven’t changed much since 1870.  Eventually I wondered why there were no French memorials.  After all, this is French land.

But the victor always writes history, and this was a big German win, after which parts of Alsace-Lorraine then became German territory.  The newly-minted, very modern museum in Gravelotte works hard to pull this war out of the obscurity it fell into after World War I.  It has a very harsh lesson to teach.  Without the tremendous victory obtained by the Germans, the bitter occupation of French territory might not have been a basis for seeking revenge in World War I via the Versailles Treaty.  And without the draconian conditions of the Versailles Treaty, including the unpleasant French occupation of German territory, World War II might have been a very different story as well.

There was not much time for reflection before our schedule pushed us along ever closer to Normandy and D-Day, my much-dreaded, and Charley’s much-anticipated goal of our trip across France.

Moving through time 48 years, and by land a couple hundred kilometers, we landed in the American sector of fighting in WWI near Verdun.  In a small village called Nantillois, a young Dutch couple hosted us at their charming Bed and Breakfast.  The next day Maarten gave us a guided tour of the area and his private collection of WWI artifacts.  He explained to us that Nantillois had been occupied by the Germans for the entire four years of the war until the Americans arrived.  In 47 days of combat, our fresh and inexperienced boys pushed the exhausted but still formidable Germans back in this sector and helped ensure a victory for the Allies.  It came at a very high cost, however, as the enormous American Meuse-Argonne cemetery in this lonely rural area can attest to.

After a tour of the Argonne Forest, strategic springs, forts, battlefields, and monuments, Maarten brought us to this immaculate and most lovely cemetery in the early evening.  As he told us the story of an African-American who won the Medal of Honor for heroic deeds carried out in 1918, Taps was bugled through the loud speaker, with no warning at all.  Caught completely off guard, tears involuntarily welled in my eyes.  Dammit.  Once they started, our visit to the chapel didn’t help, and the ringing chimes of the Star-Spangled Banner were my utter undoing.

The next morning – D-Day – June 6 – brought our departure and journey another 22 years forward in history and hundreds of kilometers to Compiegne, where the armistices of 1918 (German surrender) and 1940 (French surrender) were signed.  After a quick lunch with our dear French historian friend Dominique Lecomte, we pushed onwards to visit the grave of German fighter ace Egon Mayer in the cemetery near Caen.  It took some time, even for me, to get used to the thought of laying flowers on the grave of the man who had shot down Bob Sweatt and killed so many Americans on January 7, 1944.  But in the end, Charley’s mission of peace and reconciliation, constantly demonstrated, reminded me that each of these boys was fighting for his country and had had a job to do.  In March, 1944, at the age of 26, Egon’s life ended when he was shot down by an American Thunderbolt pilot’s lucky deflection shot at 1,000 yards.  He left behind a wife and a young daughter who would never know her father.

Finally, through agonizing gridlock and after countless routine near-collisions, we arrived at our over-priced hotel in Caen, the closest we could get to the D-Day activities.  Up early on the 7th, we drove to the parking lot of the museum in Bayeux where we shared chocolate croissants with British friends, and grandchildren of Ken Ewing, one of Charley’s best friends after the war.  It was Ken who had invited Charley to meet the Sherwood Rangers in France for the first time 25 years ago, and since then his children and grandchildren, and the Sherwood Rangers themselves, have become as close as family to Charley.

Standing out in the rain with our 90-year-old after our breakfast, we peered in through the museum’s locked glass doors as the French impassively looked out at us.  Mind you, Charley, be he wet, cold, hungry, tired, or in pain, never complains when we travel.  It’s me who starts tossing my hair and flaring my nostrils.  I did a bit of it then, especially when opening time came and went, to no avail.  The French will open their doors when they are good and ready, and not a moment before.

In any case, they finally did.  Soon thereafter the Sherwoods arrived in their coach, the sun burst out, everyone visited the soggy British cemetery across the street, and the ceremony for the liberators ran its usual course.  Over ham sandwiches afterwards, we visited with our Sherwood friends.  It was only a short time before we sadly had to leave for an important engagement with our French friend Arnaud Theron.

Our attempt, however, to meet him in a timely manner at the American cemetery was thwarted by several thousand cars, restored American jeeps driven by re-enactors, and lines of buses that extended at a near standstill for the last three kilometers between us and Omaha Beach.  Arriving very late, we negotiated the large crowds to lay flowers at the graves of Bob Sweatt’s crew buried here.  Because I am so used to the ridiculous number of rude gawkers and sensation seekers at this time of year in Normandy, it almost didn’t bother me that there were 5-15 strangers at every grave impolitely taking pictures and videos as we quietly laid the flowers for the crew.

Arnaud brought some French history teachers who were honored to help us lay the flowers, and thrilled to meet Charley.  After we had spent some silent time at each grave, we sat on the stone wall overlooking Omaha Beach while Charley answered their questions.  It didn’t take long before Charley, who stands barely higher than 5 foot nothing, started to feel the afternoon heat while dressed in his woolen pants, tie, beret, and blazer.  He was in strong need of water, and so we slowly walked back to the car, before extending fond farewells.

We had many lovely, heartfelt moments with our French and British friends, who were so kind, honorable, open, and caring.  Despite the late hour, and his fatigue, upon our arrival hours later in Paris, Charley could barely sleep for his excitement and joy of the day.  So despite the substantial difficulties that the date and location engendered, I can consider our mission for this leg of the journey well accomplished.

A bientot mes amis,

Heather