An impressionistic tour of France

 

Second of a two-part series; first part may be accessed by clicking here

By Ira Spector

SAN DIEGO — Our first night in France we slept at a farmhouse with many goats, sheep, geese and chickens. We had petit dejeuner(little meal) on a massive wood table in the owner’s family room. Orange juice cheeses, cold meats, yogurt, bread and rolls, home made jam and butter and hot or cold cereal with great coffee. Little breakfast?

We drove west toward the coast through the Burgundy countryside which was draped with vineyards on every hill and valley. We came upon an obscure town on a hillside town far from the usual tourist route, and found the historic first public outdoor toilet in France, “The Pissotiere De Glockhemerle.” I gratefully added my portion to its history, and we drove on.

The bed and breakfast signs in France are all small dark green painted signs with white letters that said, “Chambre d’ Hotel.” They are so small, and innocuously placed, that we had to be highly alert to spot them. Often this meant a drive down an obscure road for a few kilometers until a small round sign appeared on a gate that read, “Gite De France.” This is the place! We were just west of the city of Limoge, when we spotted the sign, and came upon a beautiful old mansard roofed chateau in a lovely farm with cow and horse pastures.
Carole took one look and remarked, “This place looks like it will cost a fortune.” I replied “ we’ll never know till we ask.” The inside of the building was even more wonderful than the outside. The owner, a beautiful blonde woman, who looked to be in her mid forties, greeted me. She was perfectly dressed in soft plaids, and had camel colored hair, which perfectly matched the charming country décor of the interior. I almost dropped when the price for the evening was exactly what we had been paying everywhere. It was off-season.

Our room was laden with exquisite country antiques, and a brass bed. The polished oak floor sloped gently with age. The bathroom was quite large and exquisitely decorated to perfection. The view from our window was green farmland and pasture. Within a few minutes of examining all the treasures in our bedroom museum, we heard cowbells gently plinking outside. We looked out the second story window, and reveled in the site below The husband of our hostess, a farmer, was slowly leading his cows from the pastures back to the barn. What timing! The chateau and farm were over 300 years old, and had been in her husband’s family for generations.

I noticed a leather bound book in our room in French titled, “The Diary of a French General”. He had been captured by the Germans during the Second World War. The diary was the three years he spent in a Nazi concentration camp. I inquired with our hostess, who spoke hesitant English, if the General was from her family. It was her husband’s grandfather, she replied. “He used the Chateau as his summer residence when he was alive.” We later were ushered into the family parlor, and shown oil portraits of General DuPont, one of Napoleon Bonaparte’s closest confidants, and The Count De——, who either captured Corsica or saved it. Both those dudes were also direct ancestors of the non-English speaking spouse.

Carole and I decided to finish the food in our cooler for dinner. We dined on “imported” cheeses, remnants of delicious French brie, and creamy blue cheese. We had a few small tins of assorted pate’s which we spread on the day’s baguette, and washed down with “imported” French red wine.

After dinner we strolled around the farm, and found an enclosed riding ring with two students being given lessons by a woman instructor. We watched for a while, and then took a stroll down the road, accompanied by our new best friend a Golden Labrador dog who led the way. He showed us all around the area, always in front, but looking back to make sure we were following, and would not get lost.

We were so taken with this paradise, we decided to stay another night. The room we stayed in was the only one they rented out. The next morning we took a long walk along the tree-draped quiet road for miles, with only two cars passing us the entire time. We arranged for our hostess to cook dinner that evening for a nominal sum. We wanted to explore the city of Limoge in the afternoon. She suggested the highlights.

(We had visited the Dresden China Factory earlier in the trip, and were not in the least interested in visiting a Limoge China Factory).

The city had a bustling old commercial center where cars where prohibited. We strolled this area with great enjoyment, then continued to a town eight kilometers north of the city our hostess had mentioned, which I will never forget in my life.

The original Oradour-Sur-Glane, is a town in which no one lives. Only the memory lives on of 642 innocent old men, women, and children, murdered by the Nazis on June 10, 1944. It was in reprisal for the French Resistance blowing up a railroad bridge two days earlier, that killed two German soldiers. The Resistance was trying to prevent German supplies from reaching the beaches of Normandy that had been invaded on June 6th. Not only did the Naziss massacre every living soul (five escaped), but also they torched every building in town. They threw hand grenades and other explosives everywhere. When France was liberated, General DeGaulle visited the scene, and proclaimed this town should not be rebuilt, but stand forever as it was that day as a memorial to the people murdered there, and as a symbol for visitors in the future. It is for all humanity to see, and never forget the bestial horrors of the Nazis.

Carole and I walked separately through the town. Each of us lost in our own stunned emotions. Bombed out buildings with partial brick and stone walls still standing. Burnt out rusted hulks of automobiles of the thirties, sewing machines, old bed frames, stoves, bicycles and children’s toys, strewn everywhere. There was even an old gasoline pump with the enameled Texaco emblem still clearly showing. I passed by many walls on different streets with signs memorializing six, twenty or thirty people who were machine gunned dead at that spot.

I walked through the graveyard where all the assassinated people were buried, and read the names on the martyrs’ wall. It was important for the survivors to display some of their loved one’s bone remains in glass at the foot of the memorial. At an underground memorial site in the cemetery, we entered into a gloomy, poorly-lit space, with additional belongings of the martyrs. Eyeglasses, coins, and every day paraphernalia. All the objects used by the living, and of no use anymore, except in a glass covered display box.

The final stop was the church building near the edge of town. It looked intact as we approached, but it had no roof, perhaps the Nazis had respected its sanctity. To our disgust, we found from reading a plaque on the wall, that this place is where the murderers gathered several hundred children and women, some with infants in their arms, and massacred them with glee.

We stopped at the bookstore as we left, and bought a small book about the tragedy. In outrage I read that the only ghoul who served any prison time for this despicable desecration was a Lieutenant Barth, and not until 1983, when he was sentenced to life imprisonment in East Germany. He apparently enjoyed freedom until then. All the others involved lived full lives, except for one devil whose head fortunately was blown off in another battle on the Normandy front.

We returned to our manor house with heavy hearts. Anne, our hostess, was with a gray-haired, older woman I thought was her mother. Anne told us she was her friend. I told her of our sad excursion to Oradour. She said, “Although she had told us of the town, she never had the stomach to visit it herself.” Her friend who spoke no English said (translated) she was an ambulance driver for the Red Cross, and arrived in the town two days after the massacre to remove the bodies. She said they all wore masks, but the stench was intolerable. It took a week to remove the remains, and a month to sort things out. She lectured for many years about her experience.

Our mood was elevated by the exquisite meal prepared and served to us by Anne. We had a delicious soup made from pumpkins grown in her garden, and roast duck that was quacking in a pond earlier in the day. The vegetables were all grown there too. She made bread-using milk from their cows, as well as the best-tasting flan I ate since reading Michener’s book “Iberia.” We washed this down with a mellow red wine, which blended perfectly with the smooth cheese she had made herself.

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The beaches of Normandy: A place I always wanted to go, fascinated by newsreels about the World War II invasion that I saw as an eleven-year-old kid. Countless films, TV documentaries, and books, painted a vivid picture of the events of those first few days, but I never could put it all in total perspective until our visit.

I thought the invasion beaches were scattered over a larger area, but they are relatively close. As you face the ocean from shore, three beaches to the left were where the Americans landed. Utah, a flat rather deep beach ended in a steep cliff. To the right was Ponte Du Hac, the pivot point of the invasion, where there is no beach. The water laps against the rocks littering the base of the steep vertical cliff that rises straight up, This battlefield has been left as it was. Steep bomb craters mar the landscape heaped with enormous concrete blocks that once were sections of pillboxes tossed in every conceivable direction. No crane or other earth moving equipment could move these pieces. They were too large, and must have been blown there by exploding 2000-pound bombs hurled from battleships and heavy cruisers, pounding the coast from many miles off shore.

I looked down from the edge of the cliff to the rocks below, and was in awe of the incredible brave vertical climb the Rangers made while the Nazi soldiers directly above were shooting down at them.

There’s a pillbox on the edge of the cliff, in the center of the battlefield, that escaped destruction. We went into the entrance which was below ground, and walked through various concrete corridors until we came to a simple softly-lit room with spotlights lighting up a bronze plaque with the names of the eighty-two American Rangers who died capturing the Point, that was so essential to the success of the invasion.

To the right of Point Du Lac, is Omaha Beach, and the American Cemetery. The paths to the beach that brave American soldiers rushed up, some rushing to their forever hole in the ground, was closed. Signs posted said, “Danger Wild Boars.” Tourists completely ignored the signs. Many strolling nostalgically on the beaches below.

There are three Medal of Honor recipients buried there. Their names are the only ones filled with gold leaf. One of the three is Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. who was killed on Omaha Beach on D-day.

During the filming of “Saving Private Ryan” at the cemetery, the crew was indecisive as to which gravestone to use for the shot of the old soldier and his family. Steven Spielberg came by and said, “Use this one pointing to the rear of a cross.” The crew came rushing up to him a minute later with the incredulous news that the grave he selected had the name Miller inscribed on it. Miller was the real name of the Lieutenant in charge of the rescue of the remaining soldier named Ryan in the movie.

The next beach over was Sword,” where the British invasion took place. The beach is approached by descending a road from a hill above. In the distance were several giant horizontal edifices that appeared to create a sort of breakwater. What we had seen in the distance, were man-made structures weighing 70,000 pounds each. They were constructed in secret all over Britain, towed across the channel on D day. (over 50% of them never made it being lost in the stormy conditions of the Channel). The one’s that made it, were purposely sunk in place to create one of two artificial harbors. The other was at Omaha Beach. The greatest storm in fifty years hit two weeks later and the Omaha Beach structures were destroyed. The salvageable parts were brought to Sword Beach, and that facility, became the only operational harbor the allies had. Seven hundred trucks per hour were unloaded onto the beach, twenty-four hours a day, for two and a half months.

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In Paris we stayed outside the city in the ancient town of Monfort. Our digs were a 150-year-old stone-faced hotel. We took the nearby train into the city for three days, saw all the usual monuments and museums, and walked the wonderful streets unique to Paris, enjoying its fancies and flavors second only to Venice. The second day the train was full of students going into Paris to protest school conditions. Two days previously we came upon protesting students in Rambouillet, the town where the Presidential Palace is located. The people of France always seem to be striking for one thing or another. If the cheese is not ripe enough they will take to the streets. I even heard rumor there was threat of a nation wide walkout if the citizens were encouraged to wash their hair more often.

Monet’s Garden at Giverney. Mecca for Carole. More than I expected. Strolling the lovely paths in a gentle rain with a gentle brook meandering through the sensitively arranged greenery. Fallen leaves floating like boats in autumn’s harbor.

Carole’s father was gassed at Verdun in World War I, and I suggested we go there in keeping with the theme of the fascination and horrors of war dominating this trip. We drove west through a hellacious rainstorm for three hours and arrived in the city of Verdun at dusk. The rain stopped and we took a walk in the dark. Next door to our hotel was a building that previously was a church. I could see bullet holes on the walls. In the morning we found out the building had been shot up in both World War I and II.

Verdun was the site of the greatest battles of World War 1. The battlefield memorial was several kilometers out of the city. The terrible shell hole fields filled with mud, trenches and barbed wire are all still there. Trees have grown over the pock marked land, and short grass carpets the holes, but the view into the forest is like no other I have ever seen. The ground is not flat and even like a forest, but a thing onto itself. In a bazaar way it was beautiful even with the meandering trenches with their barbed wire still intact coursing through the land.

We browsed through a museum, but found no unknown revelations, got back into our car and drove up to one of the most emotional buildings I have ever seen. It overlooked the Cemetery where 14,000 slain French soldiers lay buried. The building was huge. It looked like an overturned giant canoe with no keel. The ends of the structure were rounded at both ends. In the center was a single bell tower modeled after an artillery shell. The entire unpainted structure was made of gray concrete.

Neither Carole nor myself had any idea what was in this building. We arrived at five minutes to noon on Sunday. The damned French bureaucracy, in their inevitable wisdom, close at noon for a two-hour lunch break, and we were not allowed to enter. I did ask the bureaucrat what the building contained. He said, “Monsieur, this building The Douaumont Ossuary, contains the remains of 130,000.unknown soldiers killed in the war.” As we climbed the stairs to leave the building entrance denied to us, the noon bell began to sound. It was like no other bell I had ever heard. The single bell had a deep mournful resonance like a moan for the poor unknown souls entombed there. I felt the sadness to my core.

We next came to a strange memorial. The Trench of the Bayonets. A thick horizontal concrete pediment supported by columns leaving just a few feet exposed beneath it. The ground beneath the structure was dirt and sand on which was laid several memorial wreaths. We couldn’t figure it out for a while, until someone told us the story.

On June 12th, 1916 a detachment of French soldiers was caught by an intensive enemy bombardment. One of the gargantuan shells of the German howitzer that could only be moved on railroad tracks, exploded nearby and buried them in the trench in which they had sought shelter. After the battle, the only sign of these men were the tips of several hundred bayonets protruding from the ground.

A kind matron allowed us entry into Fort Douaumont, the strongest point of the defense system surrounding Verdun. It contains three kilometers of passageways. It changed hands a few times during the horrible days of 1914-1916. On one day when the Germans occupied the fort, eight hundred men were killed inside when some ordinance exploded. They are entombed inside one of the passages, and a German memorial is in place where the concrete seal is poured. At one period the Germans took four months of fighting to advance three kilometers and capture the fort. The troops fought for seven days inside the passageways with flamethrowers and gas until the battle was over.

We meandered through the wet dripping arched passages unescorted. It was hard to imagine human beings living in this horrible place. As many as three thousand lived there at one time. Primitive holes in the ground for toilets, the stench reaching out throughout the fort. A single strand of incandescent lights was all they had, barely creating shadows in the dark. Heating and ventilating the tunnels was either nonexistent, or created choking smoke throughout the passages. On the ground above were the deep holes, reminders of the shells pounding the fort day and night. The victor of the desperate battle determined which army was going to reap the rewards of living in this hellhole below ground.

The war has been over so long that all the warriors are gone into memory. The grim black and white photos and jittery movies are all the visual remains, until you visit this place. The emotional effect is enduring. Carole, living the ghosts of the past and her father’s agony, wrote post cards to her brothers and sisters sharing her grief. Her brother Clyde, a gruff, tough retired construction superintendent and Marine hero of Iwo Jima cried his eyes out when he received the card.

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We did not plan our trip to Germany, Austria, and France in detail. It turned out to be the most rewarding and emotional trip we have ever taken. I keep thinking how much the German people and the world has lost by not having a Jewish population. Another Einstein, another Heifetz, a cure for cancer, a second Leonardo De Vinci. All gone up in the chimneys of Treblinka, Auschwitz and other ‘purification’ camps.”

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Ira Spector is an author and  freelance writer based in San Diego. This selection was republished from Spector’s 2011 work, Sammy Where Are You? .An Unconventional Memoir … Sort of.   It is available via Amazon.