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.

Admittedly, war touring isn’t for everyone. After all, that’s far from the Eiffel Tower, isn’t it? (Well, no, you can actually see the Eiffel Tower from an American war cemetery.) And you’d rather be drinking Champagne, right? (Well, the largest U.S. WWI monument in France actually overlooks Champagne vineyards at Château-Thierry.) And you’d rather visit the Gothic cathedrals of France than the war shines of Americans. (You mean like those that you’ll pass along the way?)

OK, I won’t try to convince you. But if you’ll give a look and listen to the presentation below, you’ll see and learn why someone—maybe not you, but you’ve got curious friends and relatives, right?—might want to visit these sights.

Don’t just take my word for it.

Earlier this year I met with John Wessels, Chief Operating Officer of the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC), to ask if the ABMC would be willing to participate in a Zoom talk with me to explain to readers of France Revisited the interest of knowing about and one day visiting the American WWI sights of France. He readily agreed. There was then a question of finding the right person to co-present with me.

I’ve written many articles about touring American war sights in France relative to both the WWI and WWII, I’ve have given lectures in the United States on the subject, and I’ve personally taken numerous travelers to visit these sights. But I’m a generalist regarding travel and touring in France. So I needed a true specialist to join me for the presentation, preferably a military historian who’s visited the sights to be discussed who could speak authoritatively about both major events of the First World War and the creation and evolution of memorials, monuments and cemeteries. Thanks to John Wessels and to the ABMC’s media and communications duo of Hélène Chauvin in Paris and Ashley Byrnes in Arlington, we found the perfect specialist for the program: Ben Brands, the ABMC’s historian and a war veteran himself (Afghanistan).

I now invite you to watch the France Revisited “Conversation with an Expert” below in which Ben Brands and I speak about the American WWI memorials, monuments and cemeteries of France. This presentation—illustrated with numerous maps and photos—was conducted and recorded via Zoom on November 10, 2022, with a live audience of readers of France Revisited. Several segments were rerecorded shortly thereafter so as to resolve technical problems and for coherence.

The timeline below the video indicates the list of topics, events and sights along with the speaker, whether Ben Brands (BB) or myself (GLK). The full presentation lasts 1½ hours. If you wish to watch only portions of the presentation, I recommend that you watch it directly on Youtube and on full screen so that you can click or tap directly on the timeline in the Youtube description section in order to arrive at segments of particular interest to you and better view details of the images. Be sure to watch my introduction and Ben Brand’s conclusion to understand the underlying reasons for organizing this presentation.

Video timeline

0:00:00 Introduction by Gary Lee Kraut
0:05:40 Ben Brands presents the work of the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC)
0:07:12 Who is Ben Brands? What is his role as historian at the ABMC? His tour of duty as a company commander in Afghanistan.
0:12:22 A comparison between a WWII map of the Invasion of Normandy 1944 and WWI maps of northern and northeastern France and Belgium. (GLK)
0:15:24 American entrance into war. Pershing visits Lafayette’s tomb in the Picpus Cemetery in Paris. (BB)
0:18:39 The annual changing of the American flag over Lafayette’s tomb in Paris. (GLK)
0:19:30 Origin and evolution of the ABMC. (BB)
0:23:35 The Lafayette Escadrille Memorial. (BB)
0:27:41 The Suresnes American Cemetery. (GLK, BB)
0:32:00 Mont Valérien, a major French WWII memorial, a 5-minute walk from the Suresnes American Cemetery. (GLK)
0:34:17 The American Naval Monument at Brest. (BB)
0:36:39 Why didn’t the Germans intentionally harm the Allies’ WWI sights during WWII? American involvement in the Somme. The Somme American Cemetery. (BB)
0:40:35 Cantigny. (BB, GLK)
0:42:09 Amiens and the American Red Cross huts at the former Cosserat Textile Factory. (GLK)
0:45:01 Art Deco design and architecture in Saint Quentin and Reims. (GLK)
0:46:33 The American Monument at Château-Thierry, Paul Cret, Belleau Wood, the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery. (BB)
0:57:52 The French-American House if Friendship in Château-Thierry. (GLK)
0:58:34 The Oise-Aisne American Cemetery. (BB)
1:01:04 Quentin Roosevelt, a president’s son killed in aerial combat. (BB)
1:05:08 Anne Morgan and the National Museum of French American Cooperation in the Château de Blérancourt. (GLK)
1:05:56 The Saint Mihiel American Cemetery and the Montsec American Monument. (BB)
1:09:20 Philanthopist Belle Skinner and the village of Hattonchâtel. (GLK)
1:10:18 Verdun and the Douaumont Ossuary. (GLK)
1:11:56 The Montfaucon American Monument. (BB)
1:14:18 African-American soldiers: segregation, heroes, awards and burials. Jewish grave markers. (BB)
1:20:52 The Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery. (BB)
1:23:09 The Romagne German Cemetery, Jean-Paul de Vries’ Romagne 14-18, Sergeant York. (GLK)
1:25:17 The French and American Tombs of the Unknown Soldier. (BB)
1:27:25 Conclusions by Gary and Ben.

Sights discussed in this presentation are located in the Paris region and the departments of Finistère (Brittany), Somme (Upper France), Aisne (Upper France) and Meuse (Eastern France).

Text © 2022, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Where and Why to Visit the American WWI Sights of France appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.