Through films, books, maps, and travels one quickly gains a sense of the sweeping movement of World War II combat. In Normandy in particular, the D-Day Landing Beaches and the sites and museums maps devoted of the ten weeks of fighting in the Invasion of Normandy quickly reveal to visitors the efforts of Germans forces to defend the coast, the efforts of Allied forces to gain a foothold on the continent, and the momentum of their thrust inland. Wall-size maps at the American Cemetery are clear as can be: five red arrows arrive on the coast of Normandy, they expand and grow tentacles, black arrows counterattack, and the red arrows push on toward Berlin.

Imagining what constituted progress in northern France and Belgium during the First World War is more difficult. Films are fewer, books are more complex, and battle maps look like tidal maps on a coast of shifting sandbars.

As to travels, well, I decided to start with a guide.

Olivier Dirson in the Somme American Cemetery. Photo GLK

I met with Olivier Dirson for an afternoon’s expedition to the battlefields surrounding Saint Quentin, 102 miles (165 km) northeast of Paris, in the region of Picardy. Olivier would take me to several battle sites, monuments, cemeteries, and reconstructed towns and villages, within a 10-mile radius of Saint Quentin. By the end of the afternoon I would begin to understand how the events in that area fit in with the larger picture of the First World War. I would also get a sense of how Olivier’s own personal history fits in with the larger picture of France.

His father was born in August 1944, “on the day that Saint Quentin was liberated by American forces,” Olivier notes. That’s a coincidence of course, especially considering that Olivier’s grandparents didn’t live in Saint Quentin. But what follows was not.

In 1959, his paternal grandmother wrote to Charles de Gaulle, who a year earlier had been elected president of France, to ask if he would accept to be her daughter’s godfather. Surprisingly, de Gaulle, with whom the family otherwise had no connection apart from that of the nation as a whole, wrote back to say that he would accept, provided that his godchild be named Anne, after his daughter who, born with Down syndrome, had died at the age of 20 in 1948.

Eight years later, 1967, Olivier’s father was looking for work, and through family correspondence with the de Gaulles, he was offered a job as gardener at La Boisserie, the de Gaulle family home in Colombey-les-deux-églises in the region of Lorraine. While working there he and his wife lived nearby in Chaumont-en-Champagne. That’s where Olivier was born in 1969, the year de Gaulle left office and retired to La Boisserie. But the Dirson family, like the rest of France, was moving on. Never a gardener by vocation, his father took and passed the national exam to become a policeman and that same year the family moved to Picardy.

Olivier therefore grew up a Picard yet the family regularly vacationed in nearby Normandy, specifically the resort town of Cabourg, just outside the D-Day Landing Zone. Olivier remembers visiting the D-Day Beaches with his father when he was 7 or 8 and of wanting to return to explore even when the rest of the family, including his father, had tired of it. His father eventually retired to and still lives in Cabourg, and Olivier now takes his own family there on vacation. His/Their connection with the history, memory, sites and cemeteries of Invasion of Normandy continues.

But Olivier is a Picard, not a Norman, and Picardy is particularly marked by the events of WWI, a war defined not by the vast sweeping of troops across sea and land, but by trench warfare and millions of men inching their way back and forth across ridges, valleys, quarries, fields, and canals in a tug-of-war lasting four year. His childhood interest in WWII led to an adult interest in WWI and in-depth study of the battlefields in his own backyard. (I find that same backward chronology among men who first visit Normandy and then get curious about the battlefields of the previous war.)

American WWI monument in near Saint Quentin, France.

After years working in human resources, Olivier beefed up his knowledge of the history and (in)humanity of WWI and its aftermath, created the company Chemins d’histoire (Paths of History) and in 2009 took his passion on the road by giving battlefield tours.

Saint Quentin, 70-90 minutes by train north of Paris, is Olivier’s home base, but he will also meet travelers arriving in Amiens or Lille, depending on the traveler’s particular interests: the Battle of the Somme, the Hindenburg Line, Vimy Ridge, Fromelles, even Flanders.

Driving a van that can accommodate up to seven passengers, Olivier leads personalized half-day, full-day, and extended tours adapted to the interests and background of his clients. One naturally wants to tour sites and cemeteries associated with one’s own nationality; nevertheless, understanding the international nature of WWI is extremely significant in grasping the scope of the war, so a parallel curiosity about the sacrifices of other nations will be well rewarded. Among Olivier’s talents as a guide, I found, is his ability to adapt his presentation to the nationality of his clientele (American, Canadian, English, Australian, New Zealander, or other) without being patronizing. He also enjoys sleuthing around to find traces (graves and troop movements) of the ancestors of his clients.

During my afternoon tour we focused on the zone of the war’s endgame where the Hindenburg Line gave way in late September and early October 1918. We also visited several specifically American sites, including the Somme Cemetery, one of eight American military cemeteries of the First World War, near the town of Bony ten miles north of Saint Quentin, and, several miles from there, the Bellicourt Monument, erected above the canal that was an important part of the Hindenburg Line and commemorating American efforts in helping to break that line of German defense. (More on those and other sites will appear in a separate article later this summer.)

Somme Cemetery. Photo GLK

Apart from his work as a guide, Olivier is president of the association Les Parrains de la Mémoire—France Remembrance Association, whose mission is to remember and honor the sacrifices of Americans who fought alongside the French and British Armies in 1917 and 1918. Members undertake to recognize the sacrifice of foreign soldiers through the laying of flowers on one or more graves at least once per year, if possible on American Memorial Day. Created in 2007, the association further seeks to transmit that gesture of remembrance to future generations and therefore encourages family membership so as to involve children and grandchildren in the laying of flowers. Olivier, his companion Marjorie, and their 9-year-old daughter Tara each “sponsor” a soldier’s grave. In the photo above, Olivier is standing in the Somme American Cemetery by the tomb of John A. Norton that he flowers each year during the Memorial Day ceremony at the cemetery.

Echoing Olivier’s interest in the battlefields of WWI through his interest in those of WWII, Les Parrains de le Mémoire was inspired the efforts of remembrance by Les Fleurs de la Mémoire, a similar association concerned with the American war cemeteries of Colleville (Omaha Beach) and Saint James (near Mont Saint Michel) in Normandy.

Guide or no guide, by forward or backward chronology, the battlefields and cemeteries of France aren’t just sights for war buffs. They are places of history, large and small, international, national, and personal.

- Text and photos GLK

Links
Olivier Dirson, Chemins d’histoire: www.cheminsdhistoire.com
Saint Quentin Tourist Office: http://www.tourisme-saintquentinois.fr/
Aisne Tourist Board (department which includes Saint Quentin): www.evasion-aisne.com/en/
Picardy Tourist Board site (region which includes Aisne): picardietourisme.com/en/index.aspx
Les Parrains de la Mémoire (Picardy): parrainsdelamemoire.free.fr
Les Fleurs de la Mémoire (Normandy): fleursdelamemoire.free.fr

Eighty-five miles northeast of Paris there stands on the plateau of the old town of Laon one of the great, undervisited Gothic cathedrals of France, Notre-Dame de Laon.

Luminous by its vast, clear windows, by the light streaming in from its lantern tower, and by its bright, naked stone, Notre-Dame de Laon on a sunny day is a beacon calling the traveler well off the beaten track. If you know the other Notre-Dames north of the Loire Valley, now consider Laon’s.

The architecture styles and developments of the 12th through 15th centuries that became known as Gothic during the Renaissance were previously known as the manner of building in Ile-de-France (the Paris region) or simply the French arts. Indeed, many of the primitive Gothic (begun 1135-1190) and classic Gothic (begun 1990-1230) monsters of France (and of Europe) lie within a 100-mile radius of Paris: Saint-Etienne de Sens, Basilique Saint Denis, Notre-Dame de Laon, and Notre-Dame de Paris for primitive Gothic, Notre-Dame de Chartres, Notre-Dame d’Amiens, Notre-Dame de Reims, and Saint-Pierre de Beauvais for classic Gothic.

Laon’s cathedral is a first-generation Gothic construction started in 1155, eight years before Paris’s Notre-Dame. It replaced a Romanesque cathedral that had been heavily damaged by fire in 1112 and partially repaired before a complete renewal was decided.

In order to understand the construction of Notre-Dame de Laon and its cousins in the Paris region and beyond, opt for a guided tour when visiting the cathedral. Furthermore, the tribune (second floor walkabout) and towers can only be visited with a guide.Inquire about tours directly at the tourist office or better yet contact the tourist office in advance.

It’s rare nowadays to have access to the tribune of medieval churches and cathedrals. Along with allowing wonderful views of the interior, the tribune displays some of the building’s original late 12th-century and early 13th-century sculptures, copies of which now decorate the outside. (At Laon, as in other Gothic cathedrals, much of the stone and the sculptures were originally painted.)

There are these gargoyle gutters, for example:

And these column capitals:

And I love the wind-worn limestone of these works that could well be presented in a museum of contemporary art:

The next photo, taken from the outer landing of one of its five towers (of seven originally planned) and looking up to the top, shows the stone oxen that are a sculptural oddity at Laon, They recall the legend by which an ox miraculously appeared to replace an exhausted ox that could go no further while its yoke was pulling stones to the top of the plateau for the construction of the cathedral. The mysterious ox then disappeared once it had helped deliver the stones to the top.

Looking to the west, here is a view over the Upper Town, which is surprisingly (and sadly) quiet since most of the town’s businesses are in the Lower Town, where most Laonnois reside. Actually, that quiet makes a visit here feel even more like an unusual find.

The choice café and restaurant is naturally situated across from the cathedral, as seen above.

Loan is the capital of the department of Aisne, an area that is part a swath of Belgium and northern France—Verdun, the Ardennes, the Somme—that witnessed the incessant trench warfare that defined WWI. Laon nevertheless survived the fighting from 1914 to 1918 unscathed because it was occupied by Germans throughout much of the war and lay behind the front. Allied bombing in 1944 later caused damage around the train station and elsewhere, but the Upper Town was largely spared.

The Upper Town of Laon occupies what is geographically the last outlier plateau of the Paris region. Another such hill, the infamous Chemin des Dames (The Ladies Road) can be seen at the horizon in this photo taken from the cathedral’s south tower.

The Chemin des Dames, a narrow plateau, 18 miles long and 110 feet high, overlooking the plain between Laon and Reims, was of great strategic importance during the The First World War. For more on the Chemin des Dames click here.

Getting to Laon
Loan, 85 miles northeast of Paris, is about 1 hour 40 minutes by train from Paris’s North Station, Gare du Nord. About 20-minutes outside Paris on the train (past the suburb of Mitry and before Dammartin) you’ll notice that the landscape changes quickly from crowded suburbia to vast agriculture. The fields are largely reserved by the four main crops of northern France: wheat, barley, sugar beets, and colza/rape.

To see where Laon is on the map click here.

Across the street from the Laon train station the funicular Poma takes you up to the Upper Town, i.e. the old town, right by City Hall. As noted above, a guided tour of the cathedral is highly recommended since it will give access to the towers and the basements. (My guide for this visit, Rose Condette, was excellent.) Guided touring can also include other parts of the Upper Town, including a precious little Templar church and a museum.

American travelers are rarely seen or heard in Laon. In a typical year, according to tourist officials, only about 200 American stop by the tourist office, which occupies the 12th-century hospital building (Hôtel Dieu) next door to the cathedral. So be sure to stop in to let them know that it isn’t only the English, the Dutch, the Belgiums, and the Germans who appreciate their town and their cathedral. Inquire there if interested in visiting the WWI battle sites and museums in the surrounding area, particularly along the Chemin de Dames.

Official tourist office site for Laon and surroundings: http://www.tourisme-paysdelaon.com/.

- Text and photos by GLK