Verdun to Pont-à-Mousson

The weather in this part of France turned cold and rainy overnight and stayed that way for the rest of the day. I decided to return to the Verdun battlefield this morning in an attempt to find the exact spots where my grandfather had been. I think I got pretty close--as close as I'm going to get without tramping through the woods with a compass to find the aid stations he serviced. I wouldn't want to set off any unexploded shells.

It's been ninety years since the slaughter here and most of the battlefield has grown over into a managed forest. It was hard to equate the photos of the area that Grant Willard took showing a desolate, cratered, moon-like surface with the beautiful, peaceful autumn forests I found today.

It was difficult to spot this:













In this:















From Verdun I drove southeast along the Meuse River and a beautiful canal built alongside, the surface of the canal like a mirror. At St. Mihiel I turned east into the heart of what had been the German-held St. Mihiel Salient, a knife-like protrusion in the Western Front. In September 1918 the Americans fought the Germans for the first time on their own and won a decisive victory. The salient was removed.

This part of France is very rural. I doubt the land has changed much in thousands of years. The towns are very small--a church, a townhall and a WWI monument. I passed some of the spots where my grandfather spent the spring and summer of 1918 seeing some of the most grueling action just south of the salient. While in these tiny villages he and his comrades were subjected to chemical warfare. They were all shaken out of their sleep my a mustard gas shell exploding outside their quarters. They spent the night in the cellar in the gas masks with rats dying around them. In the following days they were gassed further while removing the wounded. Grant wound up in the hospital for a few days.

By September, Grant and his unit were working the eastern end of the offensive around Pont-à-Mousson. That's where I'm spending the night.There has been a bridge across the Moselle here since the Middle Ages, but the present one was built after heavy bombardment during both world wars. The town survived relatively unscathed, despite the importance of the St-Gobain iron foundry – the name Pont-à-Mousson is familiar throughout France as just about every manhole cover in the country is made here.

Here's what was on my grandfather's mind ninety years ago:

Sunday, October 27:

Got 3 hours of sleep last night. Pretty good for me on post. Our guns cut loose this A.M. at 4 o’clock and a couple of big boys over back of us somewhere shook me out of bed. Sat in the dressing station until 6 A.M. when I got a call to Sommerance. "Fritz" raised hell in Fléville last night. Several new shell holes in the road and many newly killed horses.


Read Pres. Wilson’s reply to German plea for armistice. Hope there is no armistice until we have German militarism ousted. Don’t think it will be long now. What is the new German system going to amount to?


Took a shower bath this A.M. at headquarters -- the first since returning from Paris. Everybody has cooties!

On My Grandfather's Trail

I’m spending five days in northeastern France retracing the footsteps of my grandfather, Grant Willard, who was an ambulance driver with the French and U.S. Armies during the First World War.

Tonight I am in Verdun, a sleepy city on the Meuse River—very sleepy. Last night was Saturday and half of the restaurants in the center were closed. I couldn’t tell if they were just closed or out of business. Perhaps I’m here at the low tourist season. But then as elsewhere in the world, I don’t think the economy is hopping here in the Department of the Meuse.

I’m staying at this comical old inn called Le Coq Hardi (The Hardy Cock)—no jokes, please. The inn is housed in several old houses that easily could be several hundred years old. There is a marvelous stone fireplace in the lobby with a fire blazing away and a wood-beam main staircase. There is also an Otis elevator from the 1920s or 30s with a grate across the door that you have to open and shut yourself. To get to my room I go to the 2nd floor, walk down a hallway, then up a ramp and then down a ramp. The rooms are actually very nice and well-apportioned. There is also a bistro downstairs as well as a “restaurant gastronomique” with a menu whose prices made my eyes pop out of my head. Naturally, both are closed tonight. (As it happened, the entire hotel was closed last night including the "business center.")

I spent a good part of today exploring the Verdun battlefield. Although it’s been ninety-two years since the big battle, the earth is still scarred from the thousands and thousands of artillery shells that were fired by the Germans and the French. It is hard to visualize the hilly terrain completely devoid trees and vegetation as I have seen in photos.

Driving through the beautiful fall forests my eyes were drawn to the ground under the trees that was incredibly pockmarked and cratered. It’s damaged for centuries. I visited the Fort de Vaux and Fort Douaument, two major focal points of the battle. Both of these 19th-century fortresses were smashed into heaps of rubble and still look that way. So many explosives fell here that the land can still kill. There were signs warning not to stray off the paths.

I also saw some of the cemeteries that litter the area. It was interesting to see a Muslim section in the cemetery at Douament with all the tombstones facing Mecca. The white crosses next to them were aligned completely differently.

Grant Willard was my mother’s dad. As part of a volunteer ambulance corps he evacuated wounded French soldiers from the Verdun front line in August 1917 under pretty awful conditions. Then he joined the U.S. Army to do the same job as a buck private. He served at the St. Mihiel Salient and the Meuse Argonne Offensives in 1918.

Throughout it all Grant kept a detailed diary during his service and was a prolific letter writer. Both have been invaluable in planning this trip.

Ninety years ago today Grant was in the thick of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive that helped end the war. During a brief respite he wrote to his mother back in Mankato, Minnesota. Although he did so practically every day to his family and fiancée, everyone in his unit was ordered to write home:

Saturday, Oct. 26, 1918

Dearest Mother,

In compliance with Section Order #46, I am writing you this note. The order calls for a letter but this is the best I can do now. Maybe I’ll be here tomorrow – if so I’ll write again.

I have just come in from 24 hours on post with no sleep and just enough gas to make me very sleepy and dopey so I’m afraid I can’t do much by way of a letter.

Tonight another big racket starts and the chances are that we shall all be called out again before morning so I must pull in for a bit of sleep.

Am enclosing a “Lettre de Félicitations” sent, I think, to all [ambulance] sections by General Pétain. It makes a rather good souvenir.

Expect we’ll be going forward again tonight. Am very tired as is everyone else in the section but excitement keeps our minds off of such trivials.

Heaps of love,

Grant.

In his diary Grant wrote today:

Went up on post again this a.m. Artillery activity is picking up on our front. Apremont is shelled every morning and night to endeavor to cripple operations on the railhead. No damage has been done so far. They are coming darn close to [us], however. I prescribe another advance to spoil Fritz’s range on our home. Fléville is under almost constant fire. It’s an awfully good thing they moved our dressing station out and back to the farm because the old place has been hit twice and our nice little ambulance home is in ruins. Fléville is lousy with artillery -- 75s, 155s and 210s. Every clump of bushes and every natural shelter the other side of Fléville bristles with howitzers and 155 rifles. Tonight the roads were so choked with guns and ammunition and we had a great deal of difficulty in getting our ambulances through. "Speed" left the farm for Sommerance this evening at 6:00. At 9 o’clock he hadn’t returned. We began to get worried. At 9:15 McCrackin and I went up to the ditch and barns and Fléville. Got but one patient. Things were quiet. Told Mac that I would run up to Sommerance on phone and were told that "Speed" had left there at 7:30 with three patients. I was just starting out when in pulled "Speed." I sure was relieved because I never saw a darker night, and a heavier fog with just enough sneezing and tear gas on the roads to make things disagreeable -- and traffic! "Speed" had been held up all this time in traffic. Couldn’t do a thing against it. Never saw so many guns.

I Left My Stinky Cheese in Paris

John and I arrived in Paris last Friday afternoon for a fun, relaxing and unstructured weekend. We walked a lot--returning to some favorite old haunts and exploring some new places--and enjoyed some of the city's gastronomic pleasures.

A highlight of the trip was the apartment we stayed in. I found it on the Internet and it was a great alternative to staying in a hotel. Located on the Rue de Poissy in the 5th arrondissement, the apartment was on the ground floor of a typical Parisian apartment building. It was modern, clean and comfortable. And pet-free! For my life, I couldn't find a hotel in Paris that didn't allow pets.

We strolled around Père Lachaise Cemetery in beautiful sunshine on Saturday. Neither of us had ever visited before. With its hilly terrain and cobblestone lanes, it's a huge city of the dead. There were too many graves of famous people for us to see all of them, but some of those we saw included Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Marcel Marceau, Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas, and, of course, Jim Morrison. Wilde's tomb is covered with the lipstick traces of kisses, and Morrison's has a security guard standing by to prevent vandalism. Fans of The Doors have nevertheless scribbled notes on nearby graves and trees.

Saturday evening we had a fantastic meal at Brasserie Lipp, the renowned Alsatian "brewery" in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Generations of French writers, artists, actors and politicians have hung out "Chez Lipp." Part of the charm of the place is due in no small part to the maintenance of the original 1926 art deco interior with its bright tiles, decorated mirrors, painted ceiling and lights. It's the sort of restaurant where one can really feel the history.

I had one of the specialties of the house: choucroute garni (sauerkraut with sausages, pork and ham) and John had a delicious beef pot-au-feu. With our starters and these substantial main courses, we had no room for dessert. But we did linger over coffee and got to talking to two women to our left. They were both Australian nurses on a grand tour of Europe. We were enjoying ourselves so much that we treated the nurses to a bottle of champagne and made their night.

We had fun exploring some of Paris's produce and specialty markets. Near Notre-Dame cathedral there were merchants selling birds and other animals as pets. John worked his magic with the parakeets and soon had them talking to him. And near our apartment there was a great meat and produce market. I bought some beautiful soft-n-stinky French cheese and enjoyed eating part of it back at the apartment with a glass of Côte-du-Rhône. Then in the rush to vacate the apartment on Monday morning I left the cheese stinking up the fridge. Oh well...

Click here if you want to see our Paris photos.

The Moveable Feast

John and I have escaped to Paris for a long weekend. His birthday is coming up this week, and we thought it would be fun to get away considering how hard he has been working.

We barely made it.

We had reserved seats aboard the Eurostar from London's St. Pancras Station to Paris's Gare du Nord at 10:28 AM on Friday. We got to the station with an hour to spare--bought some sandwiches before passing through security. We were in no rush. Just as John was withdrawing some Euros from an ATM, I heard the final boarding call of a train to Paris and rechecked our tickets. It was our train!!! Some how our train was leaving 20 minutes earlier than scheduled and no one had had the goodness to tell us!

Mercifully having packed light, we scampered up the rolling ramp to the platform, found our carriage and seats, and sat down slightly out of breath and little peaved as the Eurostar pulled out of the station. It turns out that due to the fire in the Channel Tunnel on September 11 last (some of you may have read about it), trains are running through the Chunnel at much reduced speeds. That means that much of the schedule has been disrupted, but no one had told us and I had not had the foresight to verify the timetable.

In any event, we were soon flying down the rails at 180+ mph (mostly) in glorious weather on our way to Paris. The trip under the English Channel took more than half an hour in place of 20 minutes, but it was still worlds better thank flying and all that that entails. Once aboard the only serious drawback to our train travel was a 2-year-old English girl named Jemima. She had beautiful golden curls and reminded me quite a bit of Shirley Temple in her heyday. She also had a voice and scream that could etch glass. She was traveling with her parents and an older (calmer) sister.

After dear Jemima had subjected the entire carriage to her screeches, screams and yells for more than an hour, a Frenchman across the aisle from us had had enough. (He swore outloud in French which tickled me no end.)

"Putain," he said, "Ce n'est pas possible!" (Fuck! I can't believe this!) He continued in English with a gallic accent: "Please--could you calm your children?" he asked Jemima's mum and dad. They said they would try. Jemima informed her parents that she didn't want to be quiet, but somehow they got her to color, and she was pretty calm for the rest of the trip.

I appreciate that it's very difficult for children to be cooped up on a train (or plane) for hours, and it's amazing the control parents can exert when they are engaged.

More on Paris later.

Do You Like Bacon?

I went to the Tate Britain yesterday to see a new exhibition of works by the late Francis Bacon (1909-92). He's an artist whose name I've known for years, but whose paintings I haven't seen much in person. Like so many artists, Bacon had a miserable, twisted childhood and it influenced his art. While I can't say I would hang one of his paintings over my mantle (well... maybe I would if I were rich enough to buy one), I did enjoy seeing them and appreciated Bacon's talent and artistry.

I had not been to the Tate Britain since 1982 when it was called the Tate Gallery. I don't recall much about it then except they were so cramped for space; the walls were crowded with paintings from floor to ceiling. Now that they have separated the "British" and "Modern" aspects of the collection into separate buildings in London, there is more space. The original gallery is now called Tate Britain and is the national gallery for British art from 1500 to the present day, as well as some modern British art. Tate Modern, in the former Bankside Power Station on the south side of the Thames, opened in 2000 and now exhibits the national collection of modern art from 1900 to the present day, including some modern British art.

There was a piece of "modern art" at the Tate that really tickled my funny bone. As I was making my way down the museum's marble halls to the Bacon retrospective, a guy ran past me at full speed. I thought maybe he'd lost his tour group or was a chaperon gone awry. But when another guy ran down the hall at full speed a moment later, I realized I must be seeing a "work of art" of some kind. Indeed it turns out what I was witnessing was Martin Creed's Work No. 850. According the Tate web site Work No. 850 is based "on a simple idea: that a person will run as fast as they can every thirty seconds through the gallery. Each run is followed by an equivalent pause, like a musical rest, during which the grand Neoclassical gallery is empty." Seeing people run in the museum struck me as silly and not much of a work of art, but that is only my opinion. It made me wonder what Creed's Works No. 1 through 849 were like.

On a patriotic note: my absentee ballot for the November general election arrived yesterday in the post. I voted when I got home yesterday afternoon and mailed the ballot to New York today at Her Majesty's Post Office. I'm trusting that the envelope will arrive by November 4. The clerk (read: clark) at the PO agreed with my choice for president.

Indian Summer in London

It's a beautiful Sunday morning in London. To the right is a shot of Albert Street taken today from our living room window. In fact, we've been enjoying gorgeous weather all week. It's been sunny with high temperatures in the upper 60s.

I went out a while ago to buy a Sunday newspaper; Albert Street and Parkway were very quiet in the sunshine. That was a great contrast to last night with raucous crowds outside the pubs. It was also particularly noisy outside our flat because there was a party going on in one of the townhouses opposite. The revelers spilled out onto the street several times before they lost steam.

A Rainy Day in Camden Town

I flew back to London yesterday. For the first time I took a daytime flight: Virgin Atlantic's Flight 26. The plane left JFK at 7:30 in the morning and got to Heathrow at 7 in the evening. Thanks to a strong tail wind the flight only lasted six hours--that's a little longer than it takes to fly between the two American coasts.

It was a strange sensation to take a flight to Europe that didn't fly by night. We didn't hit dusk until we were almost on the ground in England. Somewhere over the Atlantic we must have passed the hoards of planes from Europe bound for the New York airports that arrive in the afternoon.

While I was waiting at the gate at JFK I sat next to an Irish couple. They were married and probably in their 70s. The man had a stunned look in his eyes and seemed feeble. I was fascinated by his facial hair. He was clean shaven, but had hairs growing out of the tip of his nose--white hairs that matched the snow white hair on his head. He also had a big forest of white hair growing out of his ears.

The plane was pretty full with no room to stretch out, but I had an aisle seat. There was a pleasant guy next to me wearing an expensive gangsta jacket and matching oversize baseball cap. He was a good travel companion: only got up once the whole flight. He said he was coming to London to see his girlfriend for a month.

It is truly autumn now in England. The nights are nippy and the days can bring rain and temperatures around 60 degrees Fahrenheit. As I look out the living room windows of the flat I can see that the leaves of the large plane tree are changing from deep green to yellow and brown. Soon our living room will not be cloaked as it has been by the tree all summer. I daresay we'll have more sunlight pouring in... when there is sun.

John and I are both experiencing the strange sensation of having lived here for three months, then having returned to our home in New York for a very brief period, and now being back here in London. We're a bit topsy-turvy. And the sensation may only get more pronounced as there is less than a month and a half left in our London experiment.

By the way, I took the fall color photos in Duluth, Minnesota, following my nephew's wedding. The maple trees were on fire.