Maybe it was because France doesn’t have a Basel or Zurich (where autobahns are devoured then regurgitated up into endless strands of tunnels, overpasses and bypasses) or because it was familiar or the last stepping-stone before going home or maybe it was because the countryside began to overwhelm the view once again. Whatever it was, my partner and I wanted to kiss the ground within metres of crossing into France from Switzerland.
We waited until Commercy, or to be more exact, Varnéville (a village 10 kms deeper into rural/real France), to get out of the car to do it. At a four-cornered village with a dominating church and a 200-year-old chateau (our abode for the night) with sweeping lawn and gardens and large pink floral rooms that overlooked the carriage house and fields stretching to a green and forested horizon.
If this wasn’t enough to convince us that we had found paradise, the Michelin-rated restaurant and meal in a nearby village that night, the non-juried opportunity to speak French with the proprietor, and the discovery of the history that the area had overcome, did.
A hilltop alit with what looked like a Roman temple first alerted us to what may have been the reality of these green fields over a hundred years ago; a World War I battle site. A trip to the Doric temple the next morning confirmed this.
Known as the Montsec American Monument (La Butte de Montsec), it had been erected by the US government to honour those American infantry divisions that had fought to liberate France and undo Germany’s hold of the eastern frontier of France in the last months of the First World War. How humbling to realize we were in the heart of the Verdun area and some of the most intense fighting of ‘The Great War.’
A four-hour drive north of Verdun brought us to The Somme, the other major battle arena of the First World War. Here, the largest monument in the area – on Vimy Ridge – honours the Canadians killed or wounded helping to liberate France in the Battle of Arras. Spacious, spare, the site is now a green haven for sheep, silence, and clusters of admirers; joggers, veterans, historians, patriots and somber groups of visiting European schoolchildren. An oasis in the middle of a busy corner in France, visitors to the site travel kilometres through quiet forests and tree-lined avenues before reaching the commemorative sites in Vimy; the memorial, the gravesites, the visitor’s centre, the trenches and the tunnels.
The memorial is strikingly large. Two columns represent allied France and Canada and nestled within them are several statues, including the luminescent ‘Mother Canada.’ A spirit of sobriety and reflectiveness pervades all the sites, from the beautifully maintained cemetery with its rows of white crosses in furrows of flowers, to the Visitor’s Information Centre and steps beyond, to the remnants of each forces’ trenches – metres and craters apart – and the warren of underground tunnels that had served them. Descending into these tunnels, one can feel the tensions, the deprivations, and ultimately, the esprit du corps that had underlain life on Vimy Ridge.
Each November, when I recollect this poignant road trip through France, I renew my gratitude for those who had sacrificed for a country striving, then and now, to be ‘strong and free.’ Thank you, my fellow compatriots.
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