As a child during the Second World War, Alice Evleth read Paul Gallico’s The Snow Goose, a fantasy account of the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940. Rereading the novella this summer, she had a sudden urge, a need even, to visit Dunkirk for the first time, though she’s lived in Paris for over 50 years. That visit in September resulted in her memoir vignette titled The Snow Goose Returns to Dunkirk, published in the Impressions section of France Revisited.

Alice’s vignette in turn inspired me to visit Dunkirk for the first time, though I’ve lived in Paris for over 35 years. My goal was above all pragmatic since I sought to complement The Snow Goose Returns to Dunkirk with practical information for those interested in visiting Dunkirk to learn more about the wartime evacuation on site. Anyway, I’m always up for an excursion of discovery—all the better when planned just several days in advance with an eye to the weather report: a mild, mostly sunny October weekday.

Americans don’t generally venture much north of the Paris region. Hauts-de-France (Upper France), the region that tends toward the Belgian border, is typically off radar unless one’s heading south by car from Belgium. British travelers naturally have more of a historical connection to Dunkirk and closer proximity. Dover is 50 miles away by sea, and there remains the national memory of the important and terrible events of the spring of 1940, when, as France was falling to Germany, 338,000 soldiers were successfully evacuated from Dunkirk Harbor and the nearby beaches. From May 26th to June 4th 1940, as the German jaw closed in, 198,000 British and 140,000 Allied soldiers, mostly French, were evacuated to England. They managed to escape on British cruisers and destroyers and other military craft for the most part as well as from hundreds of “little ships.” Some 12,000 soldiers died during the evacuation, including 5000 at sea.

Dunkirk (Dunkerque in French) is just 8 miles from the Belgium border. It’s a 30-35-minute train ride from Lille and less than an hour by car from Bruges (Belgium). It’s also easy enough to set out from Paris, as I did, 2-2½ hours by train.

The video below presents a summary of my day trip to Dunkirk. Leaving early from Paris and returning late, I had adequate time to see what I’d come to see, yet other approaches are certainly possible, and an overnight would loosen the timetable.

Three zones of highlights

If willing to walk four or five miles over the course of the day, Dunkirk can be considered walkable. Meanwhile, city buses are free and so can serve as hop-on-hop-off transportation along the way. It’s also possible to rent a bike for the day and include in plans a 30-minute ride along cycling paths to the Belgian border then back.

Generally speaking, there are three major zones to explore during a short visit.

1. The town center: Belfries, Saint Eloi Church and Jean Bart

About 85 percent of Dunkirk was destroyed during the war, yet several important historical remnants can still be seen. It’s a 15-minute walk from the train station to the 15th-century Saint Eloi Belfry that can be climbed for a panoramic view over this town of just over 80,000 inhabitants. That’s a good place to start since the Dunkirk Tourist Office is on the ground floor. Though an elevator leads partway up the 190-foot belfry, you have to earn the view by then ducking your head to take the 65 steep, narrow steps to the top for the panoramic view. The chimes still sound in the belfry, and some of the 50 bells that comprise the carillon can be seen as you climb.

The belfry was once attached to Church Saint Eloi, but a French invasion of this border territory in 1558 damaged the church. Rebuilt, but never completed according to its original plans, the late Gothic church is now separated by a street from the belfry.

In its choir, by the altar, lies the tomb of Jean Bart (1650-1702), the town’s favorite son and one of France’s most famous privateers thanks to his swashbuckling service to the kingdom during Louis XIV’s numerous mid-reign wars. Among other heroics that contributed to Bart’s renown were his actions in keeping 120 boatloads of food supplies imported from Norway from falling into the hands of the Dutch, France’s then-enemy, at a time when France was in danger of falling into famine. That a swashbuckler should eventually earn the honor of such a distinguished place of burial is a clear sign of his reputation. Bart’s tomb is often covered by a rug but his tombstone is visible to the left of the choir. A statue (1845) of Jean Bart by David d’Angers, a major sculptor of the era, stands on the large square nearby.

The statue’s left cheek bears the wound of wartime gunshot from 1945. The edge of the sword was dented by shrapnel in 1940. An outline of Bart’s exploits can be read here, in French.

Several blocks away, on the way to the Dunkirk 1940 Museum and the beach district Malo-les-Bains, Dunkirk City Hall also sports an impressive belfry, a common feature of city halls in northern France.

2. The Dunkirk 1940 – Operation Dynamo Museum

Open daily, the museum is a 20-minute walk, just under one mile, from the belfry. (Again, there are free buses throughout the town.)

During my short visit, Emmanuel Clermont, a guide with the tourist office, provided excellent guidance throughout the afternoon, as well as pleasing company. Arranging in advance at the tourist office for Emmanuel or another available guide for several hours or for the day would certainly allow for an edifying visit. With or without a guide, the informative and clearly presented now old-fashion Dunkirk 1940 Museum is the place to start learning on site about the town’s war history. It’s located within the curtain walls of a bastion dating from 1874 that served as headquarters for the defense of Dunkirk during the evacuation. The presentation begins with the 12-minute video that explains how Dunkirk came to be the evacuation point following the German blitzkrieg of the spring of 1940 and about Operation Dynamo, the wartime code for the evacuation itself. The museum then presents the timeline of the battle through models of the beaches and harbor, uniforms, weaponry and vehicles, and also tells of Dunkirk through the war.

3. Malo-les-Bains: La digue, historic villas and the beach

Beyond the old bastion and the harbor, the resort area of Malo-les-Bains, where soldiers were able to board the smaller craft during the evacuation, was distinct from Dunkirk until the two merged in 1970. It was and remains a well-known seaside destination for the inhabitants of Lille and the department of Nord (North) in which Dunkirk located.

A 10-minute walk from the museum, at the western end of Malo and the start of the digue, as the seaside embankment and promenade is called, there stands a block-like monument that pays tribute “to the glorious memory of the airmen, sailors and soldiers of the French and allied armies who gave their lives in the Battle of Dunkirk May June 1940.” Oddly to me, accustomed as I am to seeing bilingual war memorials in the Normandy Landing Zone, the wording on this monument is only in French, though there are British poppy wreaths attached to an anchor on the side. It appears that the British and the French see the evacuation of Dunkirk from different angles. Initially, Churchill ordered only the evacuation of British soldier before beginning the transportation of French as well, leading to German and Vichy French propaganda that the Britain had abandoned its allies. From the monument, it’s possible to walk out to the start of the pier from which so many soldier were evacuated. (I leave it to readers to delve deeper into the subject of Operation Dynamo on site or from home.)

The sea was relatively calm and the sky clear during much of the evacuation of the spring 1940, which contributed to its success. Similar conditions accompanied my October excursion. Be forewarned, however, that the coastline of northern France is known to have weather that can go through four seasons in a single day.

While a visit to Malo invariable involves a stroll along the digue, also have a meander a block or two inland to see some of the restored or copied early 20th-century villas. Malo’s wartime destruction at 65% means that it was slightly less damaged than Dunkirk and its harbor.

About three-quarters of a mile along the digue from the monument, you’ll come upon a cluster of local hotspots for coffee, a drink or a meal: Le Tchin-Tchin, Le Red Rock Café and Le Cactuscafé.

Beer is the alcoholic beverage of choice in Upper France thanks to its numerous breweries. (What few vineyards exist in the region, in its southernmost tip, nevertheless come with high pedigree as they lie within the champagne grape-growing area.) One of the breweries (brasseries) of Upper France with the best reputation is Brasseries du Pays Flamand in Blaringhem. Their Anosteké was named world’s best pale beer at the World Beer Awards in London in 2021. Their Bracine was named world’s best triple in 2023.

Having mentioned regional beer, I ought to mention a regional dish that can go with it: waterzooi, a creamy Flemish fish stew that’s served in Belgium and in this border region of France. It’s what I enjoyed for lunch, after a dozen escargot-style mussels. I ate not along the digue, but at the stew’s namesake restaurant Aux Wrterzooi, 82 quai des Hollandais, located between City Hall and the Dunkirk 1940 Museum.

Celebrations

During the chill of winter, Dunkirk keeps warm on weekends by organizing shoulder-to-shoulder festivities throughout the Carnival season, culminating in Mardi Gras week celebrations that include the annual herring throw (yes, herring is thrown down onto an impatient, costumed crowd from the balcony at City Hall) and weekend balls. See here for more details.

Each year, Dunkirk also commemorates the events of the 1940 evacuation, highlighted by more extensive commemorations every five years. In May 2025, Dunkirk will celebrate the 85th anniversary with a major gathering of the surviving (and much restored) little ships that took part in Operation Dynamo. One of those ships—not so little after all—is docked year-round in Dunkirk. It’s the Princess Elizabeth, a British paddle steamer that made four crossing to evacuate British and French soldier in 1940. Built in 1926 and named after the infant princess who would become queen, it is docked in the port area near the Mercure hotel (see below), a 10-minute walk from the train station. It’s now a restaurant, tea room and bar.

Three 4-star hotels in Dunkirk

The overnight visitor arriving by train might stay either by the station (e.g. at the Mercure) or in Malo (e.g. the Radisson Blue or the Merveilleux). If arriving by car, staying in Malo would be the more attractive choice, though there’s parking by the Mercure as well. Or perhaps you plan to bike through Dunkirk at the start or finish of the Vélo Martime cycling route that extends over 900 miles from the Belgian border to Roscoff, near the tip of Brittany. In that case, any of these hotels can provide bike parking.

Mercure Dunkerque Centre Gare, 81 rue Florence Arthaud. The Mercure (Accor) chain has an 89-room 4-star outlet, conveniently located for train travelers just 500 yards from the station and by the pleasure port. There are port views from some of its family and “premium” rooms, all of decent size. From here it’s a 10-minute walk to the belfry and surroundings at the center of town. Parking across the street. The above-mentioned Princess Elizabeth is close by.

Radisson Blu Grand Hotel & Spa, 4-8 rue Marcel Sailly. Like the Mercure but with more amenities, this is a well-situated recent 4-star hotel (2022) from a major chain. The majority of its 110 rooms are 23m2 (230 sq. ft.), meaning sufficiently large by French standards. Many have sea views (the image above and the one the top of this article were taken from the hotel) with balcony or terrace, including family rooms. The hotel is situated at the start of the western end of the beach of Malo, a 10-minute walk from the Dunkirk 1940 Museum. The hotel’s indoor swimming pool is free to guest 7-10am and 8-10pm, otherwise it’s part of the paid spa area. The hotel has some private parking spaces.

Le Merveilleux Malo, 77 Digue de Mer. About three-quarters of a mile further along the digue (the seaside promenade), this is a 20-room 4-star family-run hotel with cozy smaller rooms, sea views from the front, and seaside eating and drinking establishments right nearby. Some private parking spaces. The same family owns Aux Waterzooi, where I had lunch.

See the official site of the Dunkirk Tourist Office for further information about the town and its surroundings, including other sights and museums related to the area’s military and maritime histories.

© 2024, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Dunkirk 1940, Dunkirk Today: Advice for a Day Trip or an Overnight appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

My parents were both great readers. In the family room, my father had built wall-to-ceiling shelves that my parents then filled with books. These were mostly adult books, poetry for my mother, fiction for my father. As I grew up, I came to enjoy his favorite authors: Mark Twain, with “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn,” of course, but also the less well known “Life on the Mississippi,” “Innocents Abroad,” and “Puddn’head Wilson,” a detective story.

They passed their love of reading on to me. I had my own large Philippine mahogany bookcase in my bedroom. It held, among others, the Oz stories, but I was a purist. I had only the original ones, those written by L. Frank Baum himself. The Oz books written by a successor after he died were just not the same. I also had a large collection of fairy tale books, notably the “color” series by Andrew Lang.

My father, an engineer working for a large oil company, was often gone on business, especially during World War II, which America joined after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, when I was six years old. My father did not fight in the war as a soldier. He was an engineer, and the military draft authorities considered him more important in that role. Still, Papa would be away for weeks at a time, in the Pacific Northwest and Canada where there were oil deposits. He would send me postcards, including a humorous one showing a giant mosquito carrying off a deer. They were fun, but it wasn’t the same as having him there, reading me grownup stories like “The Count of Monte Cristo” instead of just the Mother Westwind stories Mama read to me about animals named Jimmy Skunk, Jerry Muskrat and Joe Otter.

I was bored staying home with Mama alone while my father was away. Luckily, I was saved by the neighbors. My father was often transferred because of his work, so we rented a lot of the time rather than buy a home. In 1942, we moved to Hillsborough, California. The Hammonds, our landlords, lived next door. They were not demanding or oppressive, the way landlords are often portrayed. They were open and friendly. Mrs. Hammond was particularly kind to me. One day she gave me a great gift in the form of an invitation. “I know how much you love our old house,” she said to me. “Our doors are never locked, you can come in whenever you want.” This was an unusual invitation, but for me, Mrs. Hammond was an unusual person because so unlike Mama. Her dress style was a great contrast to Mama’s. Instead of straight skirts and crisply ironed white blouses topped by cardigan sweaters, Mrs. Hammond’s home attire was faded blue jeans. They were perfect for the gardening she loved. During the war the Hammonds had a vegetable garden, a “Victory Garden” as they were called, the idea being that by growing a part of our own food, we were helping the war effort. I followed their example, and was proud of the carrots, beets, peas and string beans that I eventually provided for our dinner table.

I took advantage of Mrs. Hammond’s offer to visit next door whenever I wanted and I’d wander around the house, a big Victorian that had been in the family for generations. I mostly stayed in the downstairs rooms, which had the most character, where I would soak up the atmosphere of warmth and kindness I felt there. Especially, I’d visit her daughters Kate and Jane. Kate was six months older than I, and Jane, six months younger. They were my best friends. We played together almost every day, always at their house. Sometimes we went up to the attic, which had a trunk full of old clothes we could dress up in.

The Hammonds had only one bookcase, kept in what they called “the music room” because there was an upright piano against one wall. There, I often joined Kate and Jane to practice our scales. Music lessons were a must for nice upper middle-class girls like the three of us, the piano being the most popular instrument.

One day, when it was not my turn on the piano, I drifted over to the bookshelf across the room and explored its small collection. There were mostly medical textbooks left over from Mrs. Hammond’s time as a nurse before her marriage. But I also discovered a slim volume called “The Snow Goose” by the American writer Paul Gallico. It is a tale deriving from a real event of the Second World War, prior to the entry of the United States. It recounts the desperate sea evacuation of mostly British along with French soldiers trapped on the beaches at Dunkirk in northern France in 1940, using many small non-military ships and craft along with British destroyers and other military vessels. In the story, a large Canada goose plays a role in the rescue. “If you saw the goose,” one of the story’s fictional survivors says, “you were eventually saved.”

I read “The Snow Goose” for the first time right there on the floor in the Hammonds’ music room. It is a beautiful story, about a hunchbacked painter, an orphan girl, and a Canada goose, but because the painter dies during the evacuation it is very sad. It made me weep. Kate and Jane, busy working on a duet at the piano, did not notice my tears.

I continued to find “The Snow Goose” compelling. Seated on the floor in the Hammonds’ music room, I read it over and over. I kept rereading it until my father was transferred to Texas in 1948 and we moved away, when I was 13. Before we moved, I thought, briefly, of stealing “The Snow Goose”, carrying it off with me, but I could not do such a thing to the Hammonds, who had been such good friends to me. I left it where it was.

Years passed before I saw another copy of “The Snow Goose.” I came across it in a used bookstore in Montreal, when my late husband Earl and I were on vacation in Canada. This lovely book would be all mine, forever. It is a nicer copy than the one the Hammonds had, a special edition with four full-page color illustrations: one of the orphan girl with the goose in her arms, two of geese flying over the old lighthouse where the painter lived, and one of the Snow Goose alone in flight.

In my home in Paris where I now live, I have a bookshelf holding books that have special meaning for me. Occasionally, I’ll pick one up just to hold it in my hands or to flip through its pages or to reread it. Recently, for no conscious reason, I found myself drawn to my old and beautiful copy of the “The Snow Goose.” I reread it that afternoon and I loved it just as much as ever. I felt a connection with my six-year-old self sitting on the floor in the Hammonds’ music room. Though I hadn’t picked it up in many years, I realized that the book had been a part of my life for more than 80 years. Yet in the decades that I’ve lived in Paris, I had never been to Dunkirk, even though it’s only about 180 miles northwest of the city. I felt a sudden desire—no, a need—to go there.

I made plans to go on my own for one week this past September. I took the train to Dunkirk, a 2½-hour ride from Paris’s Gare du Nord. My daughter had reserved for me a nice hotel near the beach in Malo-les-Bains, once a distinct seaside resort, now fully a part of Dunkirk. It was from Malo that much of the beach evacuation took place in 1940.

My first day there produced typical Northern France weather, a sky like homogenous gray soup threatening rain, and a brisk wind. Reluctantly, I postponed my plan to stroll by the beach. I settled for visiting the nearby Dunkirk War Museum, Musée Dunkerque 1940 – Opération Dynamo. Operation Dynamo was the codename for the wartime evacuation. Visiting the informative museum was well worth my time. While many of the displays and photos naturally tell about the war, the evacuation and its aftermath, I was intrigued by two photos of Dunkirk and Malo before the war, before they were pounded into rubble by German bombings. In the few hours I’d been in Dunkirk, I could already see that most of what now stands has been built since the war. Always a book lover, I bought two books, one in French, one in English, both titled “Operation Dynamo.”

The following day the weather began to clear. I went for a walk on the paved promenade, what the locals call la digue (the dike), that runs the full length of the beach. I could see far out across the water, beyond the low dunes with gray-green marsh grass growing in the sand. This was one of the sites of the evacuation. There was still wind, but not so strong, and it didn’t buffet the numerous small white sailboats I saw. In a trick of the mind, I imagined that they were part of the flotilla of small craft arriving to carry the stranded soldiers away to safety to the larger ships waiting farther out, to take them on to safety in England.

The next day, I returned to the path along the beach, now with “The Snow Goose” in my purse. It wasn’t the beautiful copy I had at home, but a pocket-size edition that a friend whom I had told about this touching story and about my plan to visit Dunkirk had kindly sent me from England. I found a wooden bench where, under blue skies with powder puff white clouds, I sat and began to read. From time to time, I looked along the beaches around me where the men had awaited rescue and out to the sea before me. I noticed how shallow the water was for a good distance out. For the first time, I truly understood the need for small boats to evacuate the soldiers. The larger boats that had tried to come in to pick up the stranded soldiers could not, because there was not enough depth. Thus hindered, they made easy targets for the German planes overhead, diving and strafing. Still, the little boats were not spared.

I reread the “The Snow Goose” entirely that afternoon, occasionally pausing to contemplate my surroundings. In my mind’s eye I could see those little boats trying to dart away from the diving planes. Some got through. Others did not. The little boat in “The Snow Goose” was one of the latter. For the lonely painter and the orphan girl who had come to love him, there was only loss. Although I usually prefer happy endings, such an ending would never have touched me the way this sad one has. I was moved in an unusual way, not to tears for a beautiful tale, but by the realization of how very close this evacuation, a “non-victory” as Churchill put it, came to becoming a resounding defeat. Yet in the final accounting, 340,000 British and French troops were successfully evacuated. They formed the nucleus of an army which would fight again, and, four years later, with Americans now on their side, return to the shores of France to eventually defeat Germany.

Though this was my first time in Dunkirk, being there was like visiting my own past. I thought of the kindness of the Hammonds and our peaceable lives in California. I thought about the effects of World War II on the American home front, with our sense of a just and necessary war, and the effort to engage ordinary civilians, women and even children like me, through Victory Gardens and War Bond drives, events that marked my childhood and have stayed with me as “The Snow Goose” has for over 80 years. As I sat there, watching families now walking peacefully in the sunshine along the beach and looking out to the calm waters and little sailboats sliding on the sea, I realized that I am now old enough to remember a time that fewer and fewer do. I realized this not with sadness or even nostalgia, but with a sense of privilege at having been a part of those heroic times.

© 2024, Alice Evleth

Read the accompanying article Dunkirk 1940, Dunkirk Today: Advice for a Day Trip or an Overnight by Gary Lee Kraut.

The post The Snow Goose Returns to Dunkirk appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

* * *

Americans visiting the D-Day Landing Zone of Normandy quickly learn the invasion map by heart: the five thick arrows pointing toward Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword Beaches; the lines indicating the flight plan that dropped paratroopers and released gliders to the east and west of the zone; the grey band representing the joining of Allied forces throughout the zone and their push inland; the black arrow of the German counteroffensive around Falaise, and finally the victorious block of Allied grey up to the Seine River. Mission accomplished.

The movement on the ground was full of pitfalls, of course, but between the channel, the river and the sweeping color-coded movement of troops, the momentum of the Invasion of Normandy appears clear, even inevitable, whether your recognize the names of individual towns and villages or not.

A map of First World War battle zones is not as easy for American’s to grasp. Yet the vast majority of the American Expeditionary Force joined our Allies along the Western Front in France, with some in Belgium.

Brits may be more comfortable with the map of the Western Front of WWI because of proximity, because the Somme, Amiens, Ypres (Belgium) and the Marne still resonate with many, and because the Imperial War Museum in London continues to draw crowds. Many Canadians can situate Vimy Ridge because it speaks so clearly of the coming of age of a nation and because the monument there is the most stunning Allied war memorial in all of France. Australians know of Villers-Bretonneux.

But the map below of the Aisne-Marne Salient showing ground captured by American divisions after July 18, 1918, an essential element in the development not only of the war but of “the American Century,” speaks little to us…

… even though it’s shown on the most impressive American war monument in France, the American Monument on Hill/Côte 204 above Chateau-Thierry, 60 miles northeast of Paris.

History has never been America’s strongpoint, and our grasp of our own role in the First World War is no exception to that. We need more context and basic information than other participants of the Great War in order to begin to understand its significance. Thanks to the new little museum at the foot of the American Monument, context and information are now readily available on a daytrip or more from Paris.

The museum

The museum, like the monument above it, is the work of the American Battle Monuments Commission. A presentation space was created along with the monument in the late 1920s but it wasn’t furnished until now, as part of the overall restoration of the monument.

As it had at the Normandy American Cemetery on the eve of the 60th anniversary of D-Day in 2004 with respect to the Second World War and the Battle of Normandy, the ABMC saw the need provide American visitors with an overview of the American intervention in the First and battles in the Aisne region of France on the 100th anniversary of our participation in major combat during that war. After all, pristine cemeteries and imposing monuments and pristine cemeteries aren’t intended merely to serve as dramatic backdrops for the occasional speech by a government official but are to be visited, honored, understood, questioned and contemplated year-round.

Despite its modest size, or rather because of it, the new museum plays its role to greater effect than the museum in Normandy. Whereas the ABMC’s Normandy museum seeks to direct and frame the visitor’s emotions, the Chateau-Thierry museum appears to have no agenda other than to provide visitors with context and an introduction, where much is needed, to the Great War and to American involvement in it.

The information is brief, just enough to get the uninformed visitor curious. This is not a roll call of the dead but of the situations and events of our involvement in the war: the German attack on Belgium and France, trench warfare, American isolationism, American interventionism, “Lafayette, we are here!,” the arrival of green American troops in 1917, Pershing’s plan, an American army under American command, the German offensive of 1918, American entrance into action in around Chateau-Thierry, the Battle of Belleau Wood nearby, “The Rock of the Marne,” photographs and posters, the Armistice, the death toll, and the creation of the ABMC, of cemeteries and monuments.

The presentation can be visited in 30 minutes. This isn’t where one studies the war, rather where one finds the spark to understand an essential period in American history and in our relationship with the world as a global power… and to begin to understand the significance of the monument and of the map shown on it.

The presentation ends by giving credit to Paul Cret (1876-1945), the French-American architect (and veteran) who designed or oversaw the design of many WWI monuments and memorials in France, including full involvement in the American Monument here and the chapel at the Aisne-Marne Cemetery five miles away. The shout-out to Cret is well deserved. Though his name isn’t known beyond architectural circle, Cret’s work is familiar to many: the Rodin Museum and layout of the Ben Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, the Indianapolis Central Library, the Cincinnati Union Station, the Detroit Institute of Art, the main building and campus layout of the University of Texas at Austin, the headquarters of the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C., and others.

The monument

The American Monument fulfills the four major characteristics that the AMBC sought in the 1920s to honor the American presence in the war: it’s built on the site of a significant battle; it’s visible from afar; it has a commanding view of a zone covered by American military operations, and it is accessible to the public.

(In addition to the American Monument at Chateau-Thierry, the two other major WWI monuments in France also fulfill these criteria: the Montsec Monument nine miles from the Saint Mihiel American Cemetery, and the Montfaucon Monument several miles from the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery. Both monuments are further east, in the Meuse region.)

The view from the monument shows what a strategic position this was, on a hill known as Côte 204 according to its wartime designation, overlooking the Marne River and the flat land beyond it that. We are near the southern end of the reach of Germany’s Spring Offensive of 1918, which is as close as their troops would come to Paris during the war.

In 1914 the First Battle of the Marne had seen British and French troops stop the German momentum that had swept relentlessly through Belgium and deep into northern and northeastern France. Now, in 1918, the Americans, first under French command and soon under their own, joined the fray in legendary fighting including the Third Battle of the Aisne (May 27-June 6), the Battle of Belleau Wood (June 6-26, 1918) and the Second Battle of the Marne (July 15-Aug. 6), where the 3rd Infantry Division would earn its nickname “The Rock of the Marne.” Those and other battles along the Western Front would set in motion a complete shift in momentum that would overwhelm German forces several months later.

Having enter along a long driveway, the visitor arrives before a rigid colonnade in a tight, unyielding formation. Against this backdrop of a classical theater of sorts, female allegorical figures of France and of the United States stand center stage. They hold hands as though standing severely united before a tomb in impassive echo of the colonnade itself. The figures are the work Alfred-Alphonse Bottiau, a French sculptor who worked with Cret on a number of ABMC monuments.

Division numbers, insignias and names of battles in the region are inscribed on the monument. They may not be as evocative as Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno, Sword, but perhaps your curiosity will be awakened to learn more about the origin or evolution of U.S. divisions, their insignias and engagements. Among them:
– the 1st “Big Red One” Division whose 2nd Battalion, 16th Regiment became the face of Americans in France when it paraded through Paris to Lafayette’s grave on July 4, 1917;
– the 2nd “Indianhead” Division, whose insignia of an Indian in profile with headdress was derived from an emblem a driver had painted on his truck;
– the 26th “Yankee” Division, drawn from units from New England;
– the 28th “Keystone” Division formed from units of the Pennsylvania National Guard;
– the 32nd “Red Arrow Division” from the Wisconsin and Michigan National Guards;
– the 42nd “Rainbow” Division drawn from units that stretched “like a rainbow” across 26 states and the District of Columbia;
– the 77th “Statue of Liberty” Division from New York City,
– and the 93rd “Blue Helmet” Division, among others. The 93rd was an African-American segregated division whose regiments (269th Harlem Hellfighters of New York, the 270th Black Devils of Illinois, the 372nd Infantry Regiment) were welcomed as fighting forces by French commanders (who issued them blue French helmets) at a time when American commanders saw African-Americans as a labor-only force.

After a visit to the museum, the map of American military operations below the eagle on the eastern side of the monument may still be hard to grasp, but it will be coming into focus as you head next to Belleau Wood and the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery.

Practical tips for visiting the area

A day of WWI touring in the immediate area of Chateau-Thierry can include the American Monument, Belleau Wood and the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery over the course of several hours. It’s then possible to pursue the theme of WWI sights with a visit to the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery, 17 miles northeast of the Aisne-Marne, and the Quentin Roosevelt Fountain and crash site several miles further east.

Or, after visiting the sights around Chateau-Thierry, visitors can shift their attention to wine by visiting Marne Valley champagne producers in the area.

The Curious Tasting & Travel Club organizes occasional private and semi-private tours of the Chateau-Thierry area for a morning of war touring followed by an afternoon of champagne winery touring.

See Chateau-Thierry area’s official tourist site for information about sights, activities and commemorative events in the area. The tourist office occupies the ground floor of the France-America Friendship House.

© 2018, Gary Lee Kraut

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Little to no planning is required other than knowing where to rent bicycles if you don’t have one of your own. Trains in most directions are frequent enough that you don’t even have to worry much about timing your departure (unless there’s a strike). Many trains outside of rush hour (you’ll be going in the opposite direction) accept bicycles in a special compartment.

The biking route

The heart of this daytrip is a 9-10-mile ride in each direction through the Forest of Compiegne between the palace of Compiègne and the castle of Pierrefonds. These two notable sights are connected by two major routes through the National Forest of Compiegne, with many possible detours.

The forest covers about 35,000 acres, much of it former royal hunting ground. The landscape is fairly flat with a few minimal rises. Most of the paths you’ll ride on are paved. The forest is thick with oak and beech, and perhaps you’ll glimpse a deer or a boar or a roe. Roe are small European deer, like the original Bambi (created by an Austrian), which Disney transformed into a North American mule deer.

Of the major biking routes, the southern route through the forest allows for a stop in the village of Saint Jean aux Bois, with its abbey church and picturesque houses, while the northern route goes by the village of Moulins, with its church. I recommend starting with the southern route then taking the northern route on the return since that would then allow you to make a last-minute decision to make a 3-mile detour to the Glade of the Armistice, time and biking energy permitting. The glade is a clearing on the northern edge of the forest where the armistice ending combat of the First World War was signed. Add to this a mile’s ride from the Compiègne train station to/from the edge of the forest and you get a cycling day of 20-25 miles, depending on your route. It’s therefore a moderate ride, and for those with athletic teens a family-friendly daytrip.

How much time you spend visiting the three major sights on this route, or simply admiring them from the outside, is up to you.

This biking map can be downloaded. Your point of departure, the Compiègne train station (Gare SNCF), is at the upper left of that map.

Here’s a wider view of the region:

The train from Paris

The train between Paris’s North Station (Gare du Nord) and Compiegne takes 48 to 75 minutes, with departures every hour or so. Tickets are about 31€ round-trip. They can be purchased online, at any train (not metro or RER) station or at the North Station at the last minute. I can’t guarantee that they’ll be available at the last minute, but these trains tend not to fill outside of rush hour (you’ll be going in the opposite direction) and special events in Compiegne, unless a conductors’ strike causes everyone to pile onto the one running train. The schedule for specific days can be searched on the site of the French railways company SNCF. Trains idled due to strike are generally indicated as such a day in advance.

If you’ve rented a bike in Paris or have your own, then you’ll need to know which trains have a bike compartment. In that case, look for the appropriate indication in the pull-down tab describing each departure.

As you arrive at the track, you’ll see a bicycle symbol on the appropriate wagon, but don’t hesitate to ask if you don’t see it. Communication tip for those who don’t speak French: Find a train official on the track, say “Bonjour, excusez-moi,” point to your bicycle then to the train. A shrug of the shoulders and the monkey-like sound où, meaning where, ought to get you pointed to the right compartment.

Bike rental in Compiegne

It’s easy to rent bikes in Compiegne through the rental company Picardie Forêts Vertes, operated by Vincent, with whom you can write to or speak with in English. The booking process and other details are explained in English on the website. Vincent encourages people to reserve their bikes 48 hours or more in advance, but he can often accommodate requests made less than 24 hours in advance, particularly on weekdays. You’ll also make arrangements to drop off the bikes at the end of the day.

A VTC or VTT can be rented for 20€ per day, an electric bike for 25€. Tandems, baby seats and trailers for small children are also available. Helmets, locks and maps are provided. Bring an ID as a deposit. Though the typical rental season runs April through October, you may also contact Vincent in advance about rentals during the off-season.

Compiegne also has an inexpensive bike-share system called Vélotic, with a bike station at the train station. Rentals are 2€ for two days.

Lunch options

I’m not much of a planner when it comes to a short ride involving two towns, as with this ride. You can always find a bakery and cafés in Compiegne and Pierrefords, wherever hunger strikes. My own preference is to purchase a sandwich or more from a bakery in Pierrefonds or have lunch in a café there. If you’re more of a planner you can bring a picnic from Paris or purchase picnic goodies at the center of Compiegne. Or if you set out late in the morning from Paris you enjoy a café or restaurant lunch in Compiegne before setting off through the forest for the afternoon. The Palace of Compiegne also has a nice tea room. Bring along water for the ride in any case. On your return to the heart of Compiegne at the end of the day you might stop into a bakery and chocolate shop to reward yourself for a ride well done.

Sightseeing and touring

There are three notable sights to see along this route: the Palace of Compiegne, the Castle of Pierrefonds and the Glade of the Armistice. You’ll have a fine biking day without going inside any of these, but each is worthwhile and informative should you decide to enter.

The palace is closed Tuesdays and the castle is open daily. Both are closed Jan. 1, May 1 and Dec. 25. The glade is open daily but if making this your final stop note that last admission is at 5:30PM for a 6PM closing. They’re all open daily, except for some holidays. See their respective websites for more schedule details.

As a town with a major palace, Compiègne itself makes for a pleasing daytrip from Paris even if you aren’t interested in biking. So if there are any non-bikers in your travel group they can train out to Compiegne with you and pleasantly live their own touring lives as the others go out biking. The center of town is a 10-minute walk on the opposite side of the Oise River from the train station.

Crossing the bridge you might notice to the right the ruins of a tower now (sometimes) called the Joan of Arc Tour since it existed at the time of Joan’s downfall. On May 23, 1430, having come to help defend the Compiegne from attack by the Bungundians, she was captured and eventually sold to the English and taken to Rouen, where she was tried, condemned and burnt at the stakes. That history—and the late 19th-century inclination to honor it—explains the statue of Joan on the town’s central square in front of City Hall. A local Joan of Arc festival is held the second to last weekend in May.

More eye-catching than the statue is the flamboyant façade of Town Hall, built at the turn of the 16th century. It is one of France’s most remarkable town halls for the way it represents the transition between Gothic and Renaissance architecture in the kingdom. Louis XII, who reigned 1498-1515, rides at the center. (The Loire Valley cyclist might recognize him from the entrance to the Castle of Blois.) Town Hall’s Bancloque, an ancient bell first installed in 1303, still manages a dull thud and dong. The Compiegne Tourist Office is here. If you don’t yet have a map of cycling routes for this daytrip you can pick one up here, along with a town map and other information.

As far as tourism goes, though, the palace is the town’s main attraction.

The Palace of Compiegne

Successive royal castles existed here since the 5th century, beginning with the earliest dynasty of rulers, the Frankish Merovingian kings. What’s seen today is a royal and imperial palace that began with a complete redesign and rebuilding in the latter half of the 18th century by Louis XV’s chief architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel. Gabriel’s other major works include the Petit Trianon and the Opera at Versailles, Place de la Concorde and adjacent Hôtels de Crillon and de la Marine in Paris, and Place de la Bourse in Bordeaux.

The Palace of Compiegne as it stands today is a major monument to the architectural style of the latter part of Louis XV’s reign (1715-1774) and to decorative styles over the 100 years that followed.

On our last biking excursion we didn’t go inside but we did stop to watch a parade by the palace.

Here, in 1770, Louis XV’s grandson and heir to the throne, the 16-year-old future Louis XVI, was first introduced to his fiancé Marie-Antoinette of Austria. It wasn’t the kings Louis who got the most use from the palace, however (they continued to primarily hold court at Versailles), rather the emperors Napoleon. In 1810, Napoleon I met his second wife, Marie-Antoinette’s niece Marie-Louise, at Compiègne, but the first Napoleon generally preferred Fontainebleau.

Compiègne is primarily associated with lengthy stays by Napoleon III, who reigned 1852-1870, and his imperial court. When not reigning from the Tuileries Palace in Paris, this was his Versailles, where he would gather the Court for a month or more during the autumn hunting season in the forest that you’ll soon be biking through.

If the weather turns sour while in Compiegne, you can always forgo biking and spend the afternoon visiting the palace and the town.

Warning: If you do lock up your bikes outside and decide to take a quick tour of the palace, you may soon fall under its charms and find yourself drawn into spending a few hours here: visiting palace rooms that give an excellent lesson in the decorative styles associated with the eras of Louis XV and XVI and Napoleon I and III; strolling in the park; lounging in the tearoom; visiting a museum dedicated to the Second Empire (Napoleon III) and then a large collection of horse-drawn carriages and vehicles from the 17th to the 20th centuries, including early motorized vehicles and bicycles. A biking daytrip can soon turn into an excursion to the Palace of Compiegne.

Entrance to the park is free if you’d just like to lock your bikes up outside to enjoy an impressive view the palace from that side. But if the weather holds and you still think of this as a biking excursion, either limit your time in the palace or save your Compiegne-only daytrip for another day. Then cycle on past the palace, down Avenue Royale, with stately mansions to your right and a horseracing track coming up on your left.

The Castle of Pierrefonds

At a leisurely pace with a village stop along the way you’ll arrive in Pierrefonds an hour or two later. Or you could get lost, as a friend and I did on a distracted trek through the woods, and nonchalantly arrive three hours later.

As with the Palace of Compiegne, you can lock up your bikes to go inside the Castle of Pierrefonds, or not. Since there’s less to see inside, the interior can be visited in less than an hour. From Jan 11-Sept. 16, 2018 there’s an exhibition of castle graffiti, particularly during the First World War, when the castle was requisitions to house French soldiers.

Here’s a drone view of the castle:

The feudal castle of the late 14th century was mostly dismantled in the 17th, leaving ruins to be admired by the likes of Victor Hugo and others who enjoyed exercising their imaginations of medieval time. Among them was the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the man behind many of the state-sponsored restorations of the reign of Napoleon III. The emperor’s affection for Compiegne and for hunts in the forest would have led him along some of the same paths that just brought you to Pierrefonds. He commissioned Viollet-le-Duc to rebuild the castle, and the architect was pleased to have such an open hand in creating an idealized fortified castle, drawbridge (currently under restoration) and all. While not authentically medieval, it is nevertheless an imposing sight standing on a hill above this quaint little town of about 1860 Pétrifontains, as its inhabitants are called.

Whether entering the castle or not, this daytrip calls for a relaxing pause in a café by the town square below it or by the lake.

The Glade of the Armistice

A stop at the Glade of the Armistice (Clairière de l’Armistice) adds just three miles to the ride back to the Compiegne train station. Be sure to have a detailed map of the forest so as to not miss the point at which you’ll break off from the main Pierrefonds-Compiegne biking route to head to the Clarière.

In addition to the three extra miles, count on 30 to 60 minutes to visit this reminder of the armistice ending combat of the First World War and of the French surrender ending the Battle of France in the initial phases of the Second World War.

A dining car put into service in 1914, shortly before the start of the war, was placed at the disposal of French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Supreme Allied Commander in 1918, and brought on November 8 of that year to the Rethondes railway junction in a secluded clearing on the edge of the forest. It was here that Foch and British First Lord of the Admirality Rosslyn Wemyss, together representing the victorious Allies, met with Matthias Erzberger, who led the German delegation, for the purpose of agreeing to an signing an armistice to end combat after more than four years of war. The signing took place three days after the parties first met, with the armistice set to take effect “at 11 o’clock, on the 11th day, of the 11th month.”

The original railway car was presented in the courtyard of the Invalides in Paris from 1922 to 1927 before being placed back in the glade in the forest.

It was in this same clearing in that same car that Adolf Hitler delighted in having France surrendered to Germany on June 22, 1940. The car was then taken to Germany to be proudly displayed in Berlin. It was moved again later in the war to protect it from aerial bombing, but nevertheless went up in flames in 1945. Whether the fire was due to a bombing raid or by intentional German destruction is debated. The museum here itself states that the fire was “accidental.” A replica of the wagon as it was on November 11, 1918, now stands in the clearing, along some original monuments from the 1920s, including a statue of Marshal Foch. A small museum recounts these events through photographs and artefacts.

The last train to Paris

The last train to Paris from Compiegne generally departs at about 8:30PM.

© 2018, Gary Lee Kraut

For further information see the following websites:
Picardie Forêts Vertes (Compiegne bike rental company), Vélotic (Compiegne bike share), Forest of Compiegne biking map, Compiegne Tourist Office, Palace of Compiegne, Castle of Pierrefonds, Glade of the Armistice, SNCF train schedule and reservations. Compiegne and Pierrefonds are within the department (sub-region) of Oise.

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* * *

The leaves have mostly fallen from the vines. Here and there small bunches of grapes, unripe at harvest time, remain. Sweet now but abandoned, they are the remnants of the pinots—noirs and meuniers—fermenting in vats of Olivier Belin’s champagne installation outside Chateau-Thierry, 55 miles east of Paris in the Marne Valley.

Further up the valley, the river flows into the heart of the champagne-growing area, past the town of Epernay and the Mountain of Reims. That’s the area that most travelers think of when considering a champagne wine excursion. Belin’s vineyards don’t lie within the border of the historic Champagne region, rather in historic Picardy, but the appellation for the world’s most evocative sparkling wine extends beyond the historic borders.

The western portion of the Marne Valley is primarily pinot meunier territory, the lesser known of the three major grapes of the overall champagne winegrowing zone. Meunier represents about one third of the wine that is assembled in various proportions into making champagne. It is often described as the workhorse grape, pulling the plow to add body for the more refined chardonnay (30% of the growing area) and the more noble and familiar pinot, noir (38% of the growing area). To hear some producers in the Reims-Epernay area speak of pinot meunier you’d think that they were embarrass to be pressing it at all, though press it they do. Given little respect as a grape on its own, meunier is the Rodney Dangerfield of champagne grapes.

Yet in this portion of the Marne Valley, within 10 miles east and southwest of the town of Chateau-Thierry, where 70% of the vines are pinot meunier, meunier holds its head high. Rather, its growers hold their heads high. Among them are the 40 grower-producers that form an association of Marne Valley winegrowers called the Association des Ambassadeurs du Terroir et du Tourisme en Vallée de la Marne, of which Belin is co-president.

“We are artisan winegrowers,” says Belin. “But that doesn’t mean that we’re tinkerers. Our cellars aren’t necessarily beautiful but it’s the work of the winegrower that one visits here.”

Indeed, this not zone of the sprawling chalk cellars, some of them medieval, even Roman quarries, as one can visit in the city of Reims. This is not the zone of vast underground installations as found in Epernay. This is not a zone of grand cru and premier cru vineyards. For the few (if growing number of) American visitors to this portion of the Marne Valley, the Chateau-Thierry area is less known for champagne than for the WWI battleground of Belleau Wood and the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery beside it. A tremendous American Monument overlooks the point in the valley where the German thrust of 1918 was stopped. The monument also overlooks a slope of champagne vineyard. So a taste of champagne or a deeper initiation into sparkling wine can be combined with war touring in the area.

Fact and figures about Champagne production and consumption

For the American consumer, selecting a champagne comes down to considering the labels of four or five brands, perhaps a few more at your more Francophile wine shop. Yet the champagne winegrowing region is home to 15,800 grape growers and 12,000 brand names. Only a handful of brands, those with large advertising budgets, reach most states of the union, though over the past decade medium and small houses and grower-producers have slowly been making their way into major markets.

More than half (52%) of all champagne is consumed in France. That doesn’t mean that the French are more festive than others, rather that champagne isn’t reserved for festivity in France but also serves as an aperitif at many gatherings, both casual and formal, social and festive. While bottles are available in a wide price range, there are plenty of worthy champagne available at under 30€, including a significant direct producer-to-consumer market offering good value bubbly for under 20€, as is the case of many of the champagne produced in the Marne Valley.

Even in France Marne Valley champagne is little known. Most people are unaware that the growing area extend this close to Paris, this close to brie cheese territory. Nevertheless, some of the grapes from these vineyards go into well-known labels. Belin, for example, sells a portion of his harvest to négotiants manupulants who buys grapes, juice or wine to make champagne on their own premises that they then market under their own label. All of the major champagne houses work that way. They may own some vineyards but need far more grapes than their own can provide.

Belin himself is a récoltant manipulant or grower-producer, meaning that he makes champagne on his own premises from the grapes of his own vineyards and under his own label.

The third major type of player in the wine business is the cooperatives, which produce champagne collectively, then sell them under a collective or individual label. There exist in the growing region 320 champagne houses and 39 cooperatives along with an astounding 4461 grower-producers, according to the Comité Champagne, the champagne trade association.

Last year, the U.S. ranked second in champagne’s export market (20.5 million bottles) after the U.K. (34.2 million) and before Germany and Japan (just under 12 million). Meanwhile, there are currently about 1.4 billion bottles in storage in the region.

Those are impressive numbers, but the most telling indicator of the difference between the French and the export markets is that in France 43% of champagnes bottles sold are produced by grower-producers or cooperatives whereas in the export market only 13% comes from those players. In other words, you’ll likely need to travel to discover them.

Champagne Gérard et Olivier Belin

As is often the case with small producers, Belin’s father and grandfather were grape farmers, selling their crop to others. His father, Gérard, then began selling champagne through a cooperative before producing champagne from his own grapes, under his own name. Having trained as an oenologist, Olivier began making wine with his father in 1997: tending the vines, harvesting and pressing, assembling wines, dosing sugar. He took firm hold on the reins of the business about five years ago while he continues to consult his father for his opinion whether in his vineyards or in the cellar. The label of Champagne Belin indicates both names. Olivier’s wife Katty is also involved in the family business.

Olivier Belin’s grandparents owned four hectares (just under 10 acres), to which his parents added two more. Belin now produces about 40,000 bottles per year, 60% of which he sells directly to consumers. The average grower-producer in the area makes about 20,000 bottles per year. Altogether the association’s members produce about one million bottles per year. That’s a drop in the champagne bucket consider that 310 million bottles were sold in 2015 for the entire winegrowing region. (Overall, Marne Valley vineyards represent about 10% of the overall champagne vineyard zone.).

With a hectare of champagne-grape vineyard now selling for 1-1.2 million euros, grape growers may be sitting on a gold mine, but it isn’t land wealth that one encounters in the area, rather the work and passion of these grower-producers.

To visit Belin’s installations and taste his sparkling wines in his little tasting room is to glimpse the passion of an artisan involved in his product from start to finish and from tradition to renewal. It’s the opportunity to understand the choices that winegrowers make in producing their product range. Belin, for example, appreciates the use of some oak barrel aging in his assembly. The men and women in the winegrowers association that Belin co-presides may not be tinkerers, but in encountering several of them it becomes clear that they enjoy the occasional risk of the fiddling with their grape juice, such as to create “micro-cuvées” of only a few thousand bottles.

Belin’s champagnes and those of many other winegrowers in the Marne Valley are proof that proper champagnes for celebration or for a friendly aperitif can be found for under 22€. However, it isn’t so much the price of champagne that makes visiting these local worthwhile (though Paris residents might want to take the opportunity to stock up) but the opportunity to discover the humanity behind the production of a world’s most famous sparkling wine.

Furthermore, there’s a fascinating diversity of champagnes produced in the Marne Valley, within their natural reliance on pinot meunier. On a daytrip from Paris—and certainly one can stay longer—the wise wine traveler will visit two or three winegrowers over the course of the day or the afternoon (if combined with war touring) to appreciate the diversity of approaches in the area.

Champagne Marteaux

A bench on the hill above the village of Azy-sur-Marne, four miles southwest of Chateau-Thierry, offers a view of the amphitheater of fields surrounding the village. This one of the prettiest views in the valley, though few come this way. It isn’t the view that might lead a traveler here so much as a visit to winegrower Olivier Marteaux.

Previously, polyculture was a way of in the area; farming meant wheat, corn and beets. Those crops are still grown in the area but vineyards is what one most notices when driving through the valley.

Olivier Marteaux’s ancestors were polyculture farmers until the 1950s. His grandfather then developed a wine nursery, selling young vines to grape farmers. In the 1980s the family began keeping their vines so as to grow grapes themselves. They made champagne with the local cooperative before eventually using their grapes exclusively for their own production. With 9 hectares (22.2 acres) of vines—65% pinot meunier, 20% chardonnay, 15% pinot noir—Marteaux currently produces 40-50,000 bottles per year.

Marteaux concocts what might be called connoisseur’s champagnes in the sense that they provide a deep, rich taste of terroir that one doesn’t always associated with bubbly. His vintages have been aged for at least six years prior to disgorgement and typically have low sugar content, such as the 2008 extra brut with 2 grams of sugar for a wine that’s 60% pinot meunier, 20% chardonnay and 20% pinot noir.

Among his four types of champagne he makes a rose de saignée, 100% pinot noir from a single parcel. Its tart fruitiness of Marteaux’s rose may not reflect what we’re accustomed to a rose champagne, but it is a taste that will give the wine-curious traveler a sense of the variety available in champagne wines in general and in the Marne Valley’s in particular. A 100% pinot noir champagne is a rarity in these parts and it’s interesting to compare Marteaux’s rose with Belin’s rosé de saignée, which is 100% pinot meunier.

Saignée is the more erudite way of producing rose since it requires precise pressing in order to obtain the proper color from the skin. In champagne production the preferred and allowed method for making rose is by adding red still wine (from pinot meunier or pinot noir) in assembling the wine so as to adjust the color along with the taste. Belin also makes a rosé d’assemblage. More than 90% of rose champagne gets its color that way.

Marteaux’s wife Laetitia if fully involved in the business, just as is Katty Belin is involved in the Belin family business. These are truly family affairs, which is the case of the vast majority of members of the local winegrowing association.

The Champagne et Vous wine festival

A great opportunity to meet producers on an easy daytrip from Paris is at the annual wine festival Champagne et Vous (Champagne and You) organized by the Marne Valley winegrowers association. The weekend festival takes place in late October in Chateau-Thierry on the site of the ruins of Thierry’s chateau. It’s a largely local event that invites the area’s population to understand the role of winemaking in the local economy and affirm the place of these grower-producers in the champagne-making landscape.

See Champagne et Vous for further information about the festival including portraits and addresses of participating winegrowers.

Addresses and further information

Champagne Gérard et Olivier Belin
30A Aulnois
02400 Essômes-sur-Marne
Tel. 03 23 70 88 43

Champagne Marteaux
6 Route de Bonneil, 02400 Azy-sur-Marne
Tel. 03 23 82 92 47

The Chateau-Thierry Tourist Office, situated near the House of France-America Friendship (see this article) can help those travelers who arrive with any prior appointments but would like to make last-minute arrangements to visit Marne Valley winegrowers.

For further information about war touring and other sights in the area, also see this article on France Revisited.

A B&B and lunch suggestion: Chateau de la Marjolaine
Two miles southwest of Chateau-Thierry, Jean-Pierre and Bruno have transformed this manor house by the river into an attractive B&B, restaurant and champagne bar.
27 Hameau d’Aulnois
02400 Essômes sur Marne
Tel. 03 23 69 77 80 or 06 60 39 98 79

© 2016, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Wine Travel: Respect for Pinot Meunier in Marne Valley Champagnes appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Château-Thierry, 55 miles east of Paris along the Marne River, benefited from the dedication of Reverend Julian Wadsworth, delegate of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and his wife in their efforts to honor the memory of fallen soldiers while assisting residents of Château-Thierry and the surrounding villages.

This is an area where American forces played a significant role along with our British and particularly French allies beginning in the spring of 1918 in countering the final major German offensives and pushing them back and to eventual surrender and signature of the armistice of November 11, 1918. The following October, the Wadsworths purchased the shell-ridden Hôtel de l’Elephant in Château-Thierry in order to create what Julian Wadsworth would refer to as “a war memorial” and “a community house of friendliness.”

Known as the Maison de l’Amitié Franco-Américaine (MAFA), the House of French-American Friendship, it provided day care and nursing services, a free circulating library and reading room, a war museum, tech instruction in the use of wireless telegraph and radio-telephone, the organization of Boy Scouts and Camp-fire girls and a social club for girls, while also supporting cultural exchanges and events in English and in French.

The MAFA “afford[ed] an ideal opportunity for closer acquaintance and the making of abiding friendship between the American, English and French peoples,” according to a pamphlet produced under the direction of Wadsworth in 1925. Entitled “A War Memorial: A Community House of Friendliness,” the pamphlet explains:

“Already the French Government had asked the Methodists to aid with relief for the refugees who were returning to the devastated homes. Thirty-two villages were assigned to them. It was while thinking of the aid which the Board of Foreign Missions in New York had offered for the devastated areas of France that the thought came of enlarging this temporary material assistance and making a more enduring monument which would a Memorial worthy of the soldiers whose graves are in France. The gift of the Methodist Episcopal Church to Château-Thierry should be more than a passing gift of material relief. It should be an enduring monument of happiness, built out of the desolation of war. It must be a loving service for those who are still living in the war-scarred villages of the Valley of the Marne.” (The full text of that brochure can be found here.)

In 1930 the Wadsworths donated the MAFA to the city. While it continued its vocations for decades, its increasingly dilapidated state led it to being closed in 2000.

This year, on the eve of its November 11 Armistice Day / Remembrance Day / Veterans Day commemorations, the town of Château-Thierry inaugurated a new building on the same location, now calling it Maison de l’Amitié France-Amerique (translated on the plaque by its entrance as the House of France-American Friendship). The square out front had long been re-baptized Place des Etats-Unis (Square of the United States).

While the new building doesn’t as actively serve the lofty goals of the Wadsworths’ original project of the 1920s, it nevertheless reaffirms Château-Thierry’s with the United States.

The inaugural ceremony was led by U.S. Ambassador to France Jane D. Hartley and Mayor of Château-Thierry Jacques Krabal, accompanied by local and regional dignitaries in the presence of about 200 Castelthéodoriciens, as citizens of the town are called.

Rather than recount the history of the war or the American involvement in 1918 in the Third Battle of the Aisne, the Battle of Château-Thierry and the Second Battle of the Marne, the MAFA houses on its second floor an exhibition focusing on the life and death of Quentin Roosevelt. Son of Theodore Roosevelt and his second wife Edith, Quentin was shot down by German planes at the age of 20 during aerial combat over France on July 14, 1918, 17 miles northeast of here.

Quentin and his brothers Ted Jr., Archie and Kermit all served in WWI. Quentin was originally buried by the German army in the village of Chamery, where his plane crashed. In 1955 his remains were removed to the Normandy American Cemetery, to be re-laid to rest beside those of Ted Jr., who fought in WWII. The oldest American soldier and highest ranking officer to land by sea in Normandy (Utah Beach) on D-Day June 6, 1944, Ted Jr. who died of a heart attack five weeks into the invasion.

For more about Quentin Roosevelt, read Quentin Roosevelt: The Most Famous American Killed in France in WWI.

The ground floor of the new MAFA is occupied by the Château-Thierry Tourist Office. For visitors who need logistical assistance or who arrive without firm plans for their day, it’s a good first place to stop in order to obtain information about war touring in the surrounding region. For more about sights and memorials related to the American involvement in WWI, including Belleau Wood, the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, and the American Monument of Château Thierry see this photolog.

Happily, war touring in these parts can also go hand in hand with wine touring—and not just any wine but champagne. Though Château-Thierry is located in the administrative region of Picardy and the department of Aisne, 16 miles from the border of the Champagne region (actually called Champagne-Ardenne), its surroundings lie within the champagne appellation.

As indicated above the entrance to the MAFA, the Chateau-Thierry area represents “the gates to champagne.” The tourist office is therefore well armed to advise visitors on how and where to visit champagne producers within a 20-minute drive east or west along the Marne, and they can call ahead to make last-minute appointments with grower-producers. (An article about champagne producers of this portion of the Marne Valley is coming soon.)

Finally, in keeping with the MAFA’s historical role as a center for cultural exchanges and learning, there is a space for temporary exhibitions and a room where children can come to learn English.

The MAFA is not a destination in itself, but the starting point for further explorations in this once war-torn, still champagne-filled stretch of the Marne River.

With time and interest, one might take a stroll to see the admirable facades of the theater, city hall and food market on the town’s central square and to look up towards the ramparts of the chateau occupied over 1000 years ago by a certain King Thierry IV before the Counts of Champagne took control of the region. Some medieval ruins still remain behind the ramparts.

The town’s major historical sight, involving neither champagne nor war, is its Hôtel Dieu, the former central hospital with a rich collection of works received during its centuries as a religious institution. There’s also a museum dedicated to 17th-century fable writer Jean de La Fontaine.

For outdoor entertainment, an enjoyable, family-friendly birds of prey show takes place April-September beside the chateau ruins, where, among others, a North American bald eagle takes flight.

Maison de l’Amitié France-Amérique / Château-Thierry Tourist Office, 2 place des Etats-Unis, 02400 Château-Thierry. Tel. 03 23 83 51 14.

© 2015, Gary Lee Kraut

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Meanwhile, I’ve been working, if such be called work, on France Revisited’s Pastry Issue, which involves tasting cupcakes, trying the new blackcurrant-flavored mont blanc made in honor of the 110th anniversary of the venerable tea room Angelina, and meeting several bakers.

Thinking about war tourism and commemorative travel on the one hand and about pastry tourism and yummy travels on the other may sound a bit schizophrenic, but tourism and travel present us with the wonderful challenge of enjoying the ridiculous within the sublime, the sublime within the solemn, the contemporary within the historical, the economics within the culture, and vice versa. And anyway you’ve got to eat and drink along the way, so why not enjoy.

Actually, juggling thoughts of sweets and war it isn’t so schizophrenic after all since they led me to ANZAC biscuits, which are well known to Australians and New Zealanders but new to me.

ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. ANZAC biscuits are oatmeal biscuits that were sent to soldier from down under during the Great War.

I brought back a pack of ANZAC biscuits from my visit to Picardy last week and opened it today to raise a morning toast, so to speak, to veterans and fallen soldiers (and to share with a Brazilian neighbor). The Australian War Memorial provides a recipe. They were better than I expected—quite good company with tea (as is the Brazilian neighbor and her dog)—nothing I’d dive into a trench for but a nice bite of history on Veterans/Remembrance/Armistice Day. The AWM site notes that early recipes for the biscuits didn’t include coconut. You’ll also see there a recipe for ANZAC tiles or wafers, a long shelf-life substitute for bread that was also shipped to soldiers.

Those visiting northern France may find them in bakeries and shops frequented by tourists near WWI sites and museums, possibly alongside poppy-flavored goods, such as poppy-flavored jelly and syrup. Though those aren’t wartime products (and in any case are mostly sugar), they recall the significance of the poppy (le coquelicot) as a symbol of the fallen of nations of the British Empire/Commonwealth ever since the publication in 1915 of John McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Fields” (1915): “In Flanders fields the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row…” The poppy’s significance stems from its being the only plant that grew in the traumatized soil of the battlefields of France and Belgium.

At least that’s how the British saw it. The French also noticed the cornflowers (les bleuets). Bleuet was also the nickname given to the young soldiers who arrived after the start of the war in new blue uniforms. (The old uniforms, still worn at the start of the war but too flashy for a modern battlefield, had red pants.) Thus, President Hollande wore a cornflower on his lapel today as he laid a wreath at the Arc de Triomphe, site of France’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

* * *

For general tourist information about touring WWI sites, museums and monuments in the department of Somme, see the official Somme tourist site.

© 2013, Gary Lee Kraut

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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 as a way of calling their style barbaric and unrefined 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 1190-1230) 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.

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

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