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.

On the triple occasion of the 80th anniversary of D-Day, an exhibition of Ian Patrick’s portraits of Normandy veterans at the Army Museum at the Invalides in Paris, and the publication of the expanded second edition of D-Day Portraits: Héros Anonymes – Anonymous Heroes, his collection of portraits and first-hand accounts of veterans of the Invasion of Normandy who have returned over the years, I sat down with Ian to discuss his relationship with Normandy, with WWII veterans, and with the veteran who first awakened his interest in the “anonymous heroes” of the invasion that changed the course of the war: his father.

Ian Patrick is an American-born photographer, now a dual citizen, who moved to Paris in 1979 after launching a successful career as a portraitist in New York, where he photographed such well-known cultural figures of the time as Bob Marley and Andy Warhol, among others. It wasn’t until Ian was living in France that his father, William Patrick, when visiting, told him that he had taken part in the Invasion of Normandy 1944. Together, in 1980, they visited Utah Beach, where his father had landed six days after D-Day. Since then, Ian has returned frequently to the D-Day Landing Zone to photograph veterans of the Invasion of Normandy. With the disappearance of the generation that fought in the Second World War, his 44-year project of photographing veterans is coming to an end.

What do you remember of the first time you visited the D-Day Landing Zone?

It was 1979. I’d done a photography job in La Rochelle, and since my assistant and I weren’t in a rush to get the car back to Paris, we drove up the Atlantic coast and cut across to Normandy. I remember seeing the sign for Omaha Beach and driving down to the beach and saying, “Well, there’s nothing here!” We drove up and down the beach a couple times, unimpressed, and then went up to the cemetery where we got the jaw-drop view of the tombs and the channel beyond the cliff. But we didn’t spend much time in the area because we had to get back to Paris.

Then the next time you went back was with your father?

Yes. In 1980. My father flew over on a military plane, which he could do for free as a career military man. He flew from California to Dover, Delaware, from Dover to the Azores, from the Azores to Ramstein, Germany. Then he took the train to Paris, Gare de l’Est, and walked over to our apartment by the canal [Saint-Martin]. Sometimes he’d just show up, without letting us know he was coming. But this time we knew he was coming because he wanted to meet Véronique, my fiancée at the time, before we got married.

After a few days in Paris, he was bored and he said, “How about taking me up to Normandy?” And I said, “Sure, Dad, but if it’s Calvados [apple brandy] you want we can get it in Paris.” And he said, “Yeh, I’d like some Calvados, too, but I’d like to visit Normandy because I was there in the war.” I said, “You never told me about that.” He said, “Well, let’s go up there and I’ll tell you all about it.”

At the time I had a “Quatrelle,” one of those funky little Renault cars, that wasn’t exactly a bomb on the road. Dad didn’t want to go on the freeway but on the smaller national roads because he figured he’d recognize all kinds of stuff. As soon as we got into Normandy, which you do fairly quickly from Paris, he started noticing signs for Calvados and he asked me why were there so many of them. I told him that there are lots of farmers who make and sell Calvados. He said, “Let’s go get some.” We were still two hours from the beach. We went into one, where I introduced my father and told the farmer that he wanted to try some Calvados. The farmer said, “Here’s 7 years, 10 years, 15 years.” My father said, “Let’s start with the 10 years.” He tasted it and he said, “My god, this is so much better than the stuff we had during the war. Get three bottles of that.” I said, “Three bottles, Dad?” He said, “Yeh, one for you, one for me, and one for right now.”

So we started drinking it at 9 o’clock in the morning and by the time we got to Utah Beach, we were feeling “in our cups,” as they used to say, and he started talking to me about his time in the war. He landed at Utah Beach on June 12, so the beach had been won by then, of course, but there were still corpses around. My father had started off the war as a pilot but blew his eardrums out, so they put him on the ground, which he was really disappointed about. He was an armorer, making sure that guns were perfectly in alignment and worked and the bombs properly place, anything to do with ammunition. They had a special place on the airstrip where they could lift the tail up and fire at targets to make sure that the guns were aligned correctly. What’s incredible is that they actually had gun cameras on those machine guns and rockets so that same evening the films were developed and they would project them in the barn of the farm where they were staying and write down what needed to be done. And they saw the carnage they were creating for the Germans.

When he arrived on the 12th, the airstrip where he was assigned, which was just behind Sainte Mère Eglise, was still being finished by the Corps of Engineers. It was being made so that their P47s wouldn’t have to go back to England to refuel and rearm. He was there until the end of August, after the Germans had been hammered in the Falaise Gap. From there he went to Le Mans, then Nancy, then Saint Dizier, and also provided support for the Battle of Hürtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge. They put special pouches under the wings to drop ammunition and supplies to the men who were stuck in the Hürtgen Forest. They then moved into Germany.

I knew practically nothing of this before going to Normandy with him. I knew that he was in the war but he never talked about it. He was a career army man but he never talked about the war. I lived on army bases as a kid and saw army stuff all the time. When you’re a little kid you play army but you don’t necessarily ask your father if he ever killed any Germans or stuff like that. It was with our trip to Normandy that he started talking about it.

Why do you think it took your father so long after the war to come to Normandy given that returning there came to mean so much to him?

My parents came to Paris in 1950 on their honeymoon from Austria, where my father was stationed. My mother was already pregnant with me. I have photographs of him in his uniform at the Eiffel Tower—in those days you had to wear your uniform when you traveled. They also went to Nice. After I was born, we lived in Austria and later we lived in Germany. We’d go on vacation to the French Riviera or the Italian Riviera. They liked going to Vienna as well. But Dad never talked about the war. After we moved to the U.S., they loved coming back to Europe because they lived a long time here. But Normandy wouldn’t have been a place that he would think of going with my mother. So when he came to visit alone that time, it was an opportunity for him to go and for me to go with him. My mother had no interest in the war. But when she came with him later, she realized the effort and the massiveness of the invasion and… you can’t help, even if you’re opposed to the military and to war, you can’t help but take your hat off to those people who were a part of it and who lived through it. My parents returned may times, especially my father.

That trip with your father, to whom you dedicate “Anonymous Heroes,” your book of veterans’ portraits and their first-hand accounts, must have been the spark to your interest in photographing veterans.

Yes. We drove up and down the Utah Beach that first time. He showed me certain bunkers where he would tell me what kind of shell had hit it to make the hole or the mark on it, using all this military jargon. He was into ammunition because that was his job. Then he wanted to find the farm where the airstrip had been. Of course, the strip was no longer there, and there was no sign marking where it had been. Also, most farmers in the area didn’t want visitors. But we drove into one farm in my “Quatrelle,” where we met a lady named Alice. It was lunchtime, and she and the family came out with their napkins in their hands. “Oui, Monsieur?” she said to me. “Excusez-nous,” I said, “Mon papa est vétéran…” and right away she said to him, “Entrez, monsieur.” So we went in and they brought out two plates and we sat down to eat with them. My father was in tears, he couldn’t believe it. Their welcome was so sweet. At the end of the meal, the farmer went out to the barn, or wherever he went, and he comes back with a half-full dirty old bottle of dark alcohol, and written in chalk on the bottle was “1944.” He gave us each a little snort of it. It was absolutely delicious and my father started crying again. He said, “This isn’t the kind of stuff that we had in 1944. What we had was green rotgut, whatever we could find that the Germans left behind.” From there we went into Sainte Mère Eglise and we meet other people who then invited us in for coffee. My father couldn’t believe the welcome we were receiving. I took some pictures of him on the beach and in different places.

After that I decided to go up there every year on the sixth of June, and I would take pictures. Many times, there were no veterans at all. I would go each year, whether my father would come to France or not. Years later, I went to a fair in a hotel in Paris promoting Normandy for the upcoming 50th anniversary [1994]. By that time I’d already done a number of photographs. I met the secretary of the Comité du Débarquement [Landing Committee] and showed her some pictures. She said, “Oh c’est bien!” Then she explained that not only was she a part of the Landing Committee but she was also the director of the Musée de la Tapisserie in Bayeux, and she invited me to show my work in the Salle du Chevalier, which is the vaulted hall that later became the giftshop of the museum. So that was the first exhibition of my Normandy work, which I’d been taking just out of my own interest until then. From then on, she would send me an official invitation to the June 6th ceremonies every year so that I had actual credentials to go wherever I wanted to photograph veterans.

I also then started to interview the veterans, usually calling them on the phone after meeting them since there was no time to interview them during the ceremonies. On the phone, they would speak differently, more freely, as though to themselves, since they were alone and weren’t perturbed by my presence. Sometimes they’d go off track and I’d bring them back with another question. I asked them to tell me about their experience, whatever was bizarre or sad or happy that they wanted to recall. Most of them didn’t talk about terrible stuff. Some of the ones who landed on Omaha Beach did, in a very cold manner. A lot of them didn’t want to talk at all. I just tried to let them tell me what they wanted to tell me.

I wasn’t necessarily meeting them at the ceremonies. I would attend the big ceremonies, and I might come upon a smaller one here and there that I only learned about when I got there. Nine times out of ten it was just serendipity that brought me in contact with a veteran. I have photographed veterans I happened to come upon in the cemeteries while they’re paying homage to a particular person. I got the shot of Major Howard at Pegasus Bridge because the owner of the B&B where we were staying during the anniversary that year [1993] told us about an event that was taking place there on June 5th. So we immediately went there, and there they were, Major Howard and a few men popping Champagne. There weren’t that many people. There were no guys dressed up as paratroopers as you’d see more recently. There was just Madame Gondrée at the café by the bridge when I was in there talking with Bill Millin. Some years when there were few veterans, I would do landscapes, which is why there are some landscapes in the show and in the book, photographs of ceremonies and of places that reek with history.

In my first show for the 50th anniversary there was very little text next to the portraits. Just who they are, were they are, basic facts. Then little by little, as I took more portraits and gathered more stories, I realized that I had material for a book, which I put together with the backing of the Military Museum at the Invalides [in Paris] for the 65th anniversary in 2009. That year I also had exhibitions of my work at the Invalides and at the Museum of the Battle of Normandy in Bayeux, near the British Cemetery. That’s the first time that I put together the photos with the text [first-hand accounts] at an exhibition as well as putting them in the book.

After that first edition I continued to meet veterans, and even since completing the new edition last year I’ve met others. For example, I recently met some Belgian soldiers who managed to get to England during the war and joined up with a brigade that took part in the Invasion of Normandy under British command.

How often did your father return after that first visit?

He would come every two or every five years. He would come for the big ceremonies and some little ones as well. Even if it wasn’t the sixth of June, whenever my parents would come to France they would usually drive to Normandy, even without me.

In the early years of his visits, my father and I would be at Sainte Mère Eglise and school children would come up to him and ask him for his autograph. My father said, “Why do they want an autograph from me? I’m just an old veteran.” I had to bug him to put on his medals. He didn’t want to wear them, it embarrassed him because he thought it would be showing off. He didn’t even bring them for the 65th [2009] though I thought he might. I hadn’t told him in advance, but he was going to get the Legion of Honor at the Invalides that year along with 50 other veterans. I didn’t want to tell him before he got to France because I knew that he would be angry about getting a medal now. Finally, I told him about it when he got to France. He was kind of embarrassed. He hadn’t brought his medals, so I called my sister and asked her to dig through the drawers in his bedroom to find them and to send them asap. She did, and the day of the ceremony I pinned them on him. He complained, “Where the hell did you get those?” But he was enthralled by the whole thing, a big ceremony—he thought it was incredible. Then we all went to Normandy for the 65th anniversary commemorations. They reserved a train for the veterans, red carpet at the station, the band of the Garde Républicaine playing Glen Miller, wine and foie gras on the train. Then a bus took us from Caen to the American Cemetery. My father sat with all of the veterans on the podium, where they all shook Obama’s hand and Sarkozy’s hand. Then we all went back to Paris, exhausted.

He and my mother both passed away a year later, in 2010. They wanted their ashes spread together at Utah Beach, which we did.

Why did you want to put together a new edition of your book?

Because this could be the der des ders, the last flame. There are at least 25 additional veterans in this edition. I’ve met a lot more British and Americans but especially British through British families who live or have vacation homes in Normandy. I’ve gotten to know a lot of people in Normandy over the years. The British and the Dutch get together a lot, say for a drink on a Thursday or Friday evening, and a lot of them have fathers who were veterans. So I’d meet the fathers when they came over. Many of them have become part of the Deep Respect Association, with which I’m involved. [Editor’s note: Created in 2010, Deep Respect is a Normandy-based non-profit whose mission is to preserve and transmit the memory of veterans of the Second World War who contributed to the success of Operation Overload and to help veterans who participated in the Battle of Normandy visit the region.] We take around the veterans when they visit and it’s super interesting listening to them talk about their battles.

A series of your portraits and stories from the book are now on permanent display at the Overlord Museum Ohama Beach that’s located at the round-about where one turns to enter the Normandy American Cemetery. How did that come about?

The museum houses a tremendous collection of war materials—tanks, artillery, much more—started in the 1970s by Michel Leloup. He presented some of it in a museum in Falaise but as he grew the collection he began looking for more space and for a location with potential to draw a wider audience. He died before the project to move it to the site near the American Cemetery was completed. It was opened in 2013 by his son Nicolas.

For the 70th anniversary, in 2014, I had an exhibition at the round-about at Omaha Beach where the big monuments are located. Nicolas saw the exhibition and asked if he could buy some of the photos. I said, “Sure.” He bought about five. Since the veterans in the some of the photographs were at the event, we got pictures of them with the photographs, which they signed, which helped promote the museum. Over the next few years, the museum really took off, so Nicolas decided to expand the museum to show more of the collection, and in part of it he’s now consecrated one long corridor to presenting about 70 of my photographs—a lot of which he bought and some of which I donated—along with the text of the stories the veterans told me. My daughter Leah did the scenography and the soundtrack of 40s music and various sounds (waves, planes, bombs) for the exhibition.

You’ve now been photographing veterans for 44 years. With so few Normandy veterans still with us, and very few able or willing to travel, where does your project go from here?

I’ll still see some veterans this year and possibly next. But since I am basically a portraitist, there will soon no longer be men to photograph. That means that the project is now passing into the archival stage. It’s important to show them. I want to help maintain through the show at the Invalides, the permanent exhibition at the museum and the book the memory of those who are or will soon no longer be around to share their stories first-hand. The portraits are a way of people getting to know these veterans as they were as young men and as they were when I met them.

Where to see Ian Patrick’s photographic work

– His personal website Ian Patrick Photographer.
– Permanent exhibition at the Overlord Museum, near the entrance to the Normandy American Cemetery, Colleville-sur-Mer.
– The book: Héros Anonymes – Anonymous Heroes: D-Day Portraits. The captions and first-hand accounts of veterans are in both English and French. The book is available at major museums in the Normandy Landing Zone—the Overlord Museum, the Airborne Museum in Sainte Mère Eglise, the Arromanches Museum, the Utah Beach Museum and the Pegasus Bridge Museum—as well as at the Army Museum at the Invalides in Paris. It can also be ordered directly from the author by contacting him at ianpatrickphoto@gmail.com.
– Temporary exhibition at the Army Museum at the Invalides, June 1 to August 26, 2024. The exhibition is presented under the arcades surrounding the main courtyard. Entrance is free as it isn’t necessary to purchase to museum ticket in order to enter the courtyard. 129 rue de Grenelle, Paris.

© 2024. Interview conducted by Gary Lee Kraut.
All photos © Ian Patrick.

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Despite its significance in 20th-century history and its role in transforming the United States into a world power, the First World War sights, cemeteries and museums of France typically hold little interest for American travelers. Yet several are at Paris’s doorsteps: the Suresnes American Cemetery and the Lafayette Escadrille Memorial are both in the suburbs while the Musée de la Grande Guerre (Museum of the Great War) in Meaux is just 25 miles east along a meander in the Marne River.

In the history of the war, Meaux and the surrounding region are particularly associated with the First Battle of the Marne of September 1914 that pitted French and British forces against rapidly advancing German forces. By halting the German advance before its forces could reach Paris, the battle helped stave off a German victory while putting the belligerents on course for a long slog of trench warfare. Nearly four years later, in July 1918, the Second Battle of the Marne involved a final major German offense followed by an Allied counteroffensive that, with the participation now of American forces, would lead to the Armistice of November 11 and the defeat of Germany.

Meaux itself was not a battleground of the Second Battle of the Marne. It took place farther east and north, so the battlefields where Americans fought are therefore further out from Paris, such as in and around Chateau-Thierry, 35 miles northeast of Meaux. Yet long before the Museum of the Great War opened in 2011, Meaux had its American Monument. Also known as Tearful Liberty, the sculpture by Frederick William MacMonnies was dedicated in 1932, a gift from the United States to honor “heroic sons of France who dared all and gave all in the day of deadly peril.” The museum was created right nearby.

The core of the Museum of the Great War is the tremendous collection of objects from the First World War that had been amassed over more than 40 years by the historian and collector Jean-Pierre Verney. Under the guidance of Mayor Jean-François Copé (pictured at top of page addressing WWI reenactors), who continues to head this town of 56,000 and presides over the wider agglomeration of 107,000, the Greater Meaux region (Pays de Meaux) purchased Verney’s collection of 48,000 objects in 2005 and set about creating this museum to house them. The collection has since been enriched by thousands of additional telling objects from the war of 1914-1918, including major pieces such as a tank, a plane, a truck and artillery.

The museum’s permanent display begins by dialing back its historical clock to France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 and the ensuing decades of conflict and rivalry between France and the powerful, newly unified Germany. Through objects rather than lengthy descriptive panels, the displays then cover the First Battle of the Marne, trench warfare, weaponry and protections, uniforms, the daily lives of soldiers, treatment of the wounded, the United States’ entrance and participation in the war, the Second Battle of the Marne, women and society, attempts at creating a lasting peace, and more.

As interesting and accessible as the museum can be for uninformed visitors, it will be especially appealing to war buffs and collectors due to the depth and breadth of the collection.

Reenactment Weekend in September

Uninformed and informed visitors alike will find no more pleasurable time to visit the museum than the first weekend in September when First World War reenactors parade through the streets of Meaux then set up camp alongside the museum.

This year’s Saturday morning parade started at the covered food market and ended an hour later at the town’s war memorial, just past the medieval cathedral. There, the reenactors gathered for the laying of wreaths and the playing of La Sonnerie aux Morts, France’s bugle call for military funerals and memorial ceremonies. (The Sunday morning parade marched through other quarters.)

The museum is informative and insightful at any time of year, yet visiting over reenactment weekend additionally gives visitors the opportunity to meet reenactors and share in their comradery and their passion for the historical period from 1914 to 1918 and its uniforms and paraphernalia and ways of life.

Meet some of the reenactors in this France Revisited video, which also contains a presentation of the museum by its director, Audrey Chaix.

Along with its vast permanent collection, the museum is currently hosting two temporary exhibitions. The first, “Trenches,” explains the complexities of the trench system that so defined fighting and near-stalemate during the war. It runs until Jan. 2, 2023. The second, Women in the Great War presents, in the forecourt of the museum, photography and archival material revealing the role of women during the war. It runs until Aug. 14, 2023.

Museum of the Great War / Musée de la Grande Guerre, Rue Lazare Ponticelli, 77100 Meaux. Open 9:30AM to 6PM daily except Tuesday. Entrance: 10€; 7€ with regional public transportation Navigo Pass and for over 65; 5€ for under 26. Free on Nov. 11 and the first Sunday of each month.

The Meaux Tourist Office, 1 place Doumer, is a 10-minute walk from the train station and several minutes past the Gothic Saint Etienne Cathedral.

Brie cheese

Meaux has more to offer than wartime memories. As cheese lovers in France are well aware, Meaux is a part of brie country. Brie is the historic name of the region directly to the east of Paris. As a location, the name has largely disappeared from the map other than at the tail end of the names of several small towns. As a cheese, brie is known around the world.

Yet Brie without a geographical title of nobility is not a protected appellation of origin—it can be produced anywhere in the world as a style of soft cow’s milk cheese. Brie de Meaux, however, can only be produced in the swath of the region that passes this way starting just east of Paris. It’s much tastier than the pasteurized bries made beyond the region and abroad. Brie de Melun (Melun is a town in the southeast of the Greater Paris region), also made from raw cow’s milk, is slightly stronger and saltier. So Brie de Meaux and Brie de Melun are the bries to seek out when in France. If you’ve got a nose for cheese, it can be particularly interesting to compare the two. Cheese hunters setting out to discover the variety of regional bries might also seek out Brie Noir, a far less common brie that has been aged for about one year to the point of becoming dark, crumbly, chewy and more earthy and still stronger in taste.

In the same general area of town as the museum, one can learn about the production of appellation brie cheeses at Fromagerie de Meaux Saint Faron on rue Jehan de Brie.

Getting to Meaux from Paris

By train, Meaux is 30-40 minutes from Paris’s Gare de l’Est (East Station). No ticket is necessary for holders of the 5-zone Navigo Pass. The museum is two miles from the station. A regular bus from the Meaux station takes about 10 minutes to get there. There’s also a free shuttle to the museum from the station on weekends and during school vacations in the region.

By car, Meaux might be visited as a first stop on a day or more of touring war sights further to the east, before heading on to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, Belleau Wood and the American Monument at Chateau-Thierry.

By bike, those who wish to combine sport with a visit to the war museum can reach Meaux from Paris after a 32-mile pedal that largely follows along the Canal de l’Ourcq. The Canal de l’Ourcq begins just after the Bassin de la Villette toward the northeast edge of Paris. After a mile along the canal, the capital is left behind, then apartment buildings, train tracks and office buildings give way to suburban residential housing which eventually disappears in favor of parks, wood, fields, country roads, villages, and finally some more trafficked roads as one enters Meaux. Much of the ride is along the canal’s tow path (mostly paved, some dirt) but there are occasional stretches of road biking. Check the weather, rent a bike first thing in the morning or the previous evening, then set out at 9 or 10 for an athletic 3-hour ride or a more leisurely 4+, have lunch in town, visit the museum, then ease your way back to Paris by riding to the Meaux train station and taking your bike onto the train.

© 2022, Gary Lee Kraut

On November 10, 2022, France Revisited will be hosting Zoom conversation with a Ben Brands, a historian with the American Battle Monuments Commission, to discuss the history of the American WWI cemeteries and monuments of France and how best to visit them. Details will be sent out to subscribers of the France Revisited Newsletter.

Readers interested in private touring of the American WWI sights and other highlights in the regions where they’re located may contact Gary Lee Kraut personally by writing through this site.

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It’s fair to say that an exhibition about war photography is always timely—inevitably, somewhere, there’s an armed conflict going on. But Women War Photographers has now opened while Russia tries to execute its cruel, murderous design on Ukraine, and its showing at the Museum of the Liberation of Paris makes it all the more poignant.

The timeliness that the show’s organizers had in mind in mounting this exhibition likely had less do to with any ongoing war than with the current vogue for “lest we forget the contribution of women” shows. Case in point, just a week earlier Pioneers: Women Artists in Paris of the Roaring Twenties opened at Paris’s Luxembourg Museum.

But it’s impossible to consider the powerful images of the eight photojournalists presented in this exhibition without thinking about the war now killing, maiming and displacing Europeans in numbers not seen since the Second World War. That the photographers are women is nearly irrelevant.

Co-organized with Dusseldorf’s Kunstpalast, the exhibition presents the work of photojournalists who covered armed conflicts from 1936 to 2011, from the Spanish Civil War to the War in Afghanistan by way of WWII, Vietnam, Northern Ireland and conflicts in the Middle East, Latin America, Chad and elsewhere. Of the eight war photographers—three French, three American, one German, one Dutch—two were mortally wounded while on assignment and a third came to suffer from depression, possibly linked to PTSD.

Their documenting of armed conflicts includes a wide range of approaches and angles, from closely cropped intimacy to direct confrontation to devastated landscapes and stolen lives. Heightened by the brief descriptions that accompany each image, each photographer exposes brutal and (at the time) newsworthy narratives.

(Meanwhile, the Army Museum at the Invalides has put together a studious exhibition entitled Photography at War, showing April 2 to July 24.)

Several images in Women War Photographers show survivors’ or combatants’ attempts at solace, of normalcy and of moving on among the ruins, but there are no saviors. The photographers often reveal the disequilibrium between the armed and the unarmed or lesser armed. They document various facets of threat, menace, aftershock, pain. They reveal the death and destruction that’s left after a moment or extended period of combat. The vast majority of images are in black-and-white. Several photos present views of life pursued but none presents a vision of hope.

In a photograph by the American Carolyn Cole, several men appear to be peacefully, seductively asleep side by side though the image’s context tells us they have been killed.

A rare scene of joy is found in an image by French photograph Christine Spengler showing Cambodian boys playing in the waves with spent rocket shells. But that joy is immediately dismissed, even mocked, when, in the high-contrast photograph beside it, we see one of those boys in tears, kneeling by a body bag that, the caption explains, contains his father. Beside that second photograph is a hazy image of Phenom Penh, bombed and in ruin.

Along with biographical panels for the eight photographers that can make us want to learn more about each of them, the texts and captions accompanying each image provide valuable insights and information for understanding the moment in history or the given conflict. Some are also accompanied by information about the editorial choices made in publishing the photograph or series of photographs, adding to the interest of the exhibition.

The biographies, captions and other explanations—all are in French and in English—provide enough information for a multilayered reading of the singular and collective images of the eight photographers: as individual narratives, as reflections of the broader armed conflict, as works of photojournalism, and as the work of women.

Of those possible readings, the latter turns out to be the least significant. This is not the war photography version of Mary Cassatt among the Impressionists. Clearly, each of these photojournalists was/is courageous, determined and professional. Thankfully, little attempt is made to distinguish theirs from the work of their male counterparts or to describe the particular struggles that women photographers may have in carrying out their assignments in a war zone.

In fact, the overriding subject here turns out to be less the photographers themselves—however worthy they are of awards, further study and movie biopics—and more the significance of the photographic narratives they presented of the various conflicts when published in the Western press. That in turn invites us to examine our own understanding of and reaction to images on our screens.

We are to assume that the photographs presented here were published for their newsworthiness—to tell a certain “truth” of the moment. However, their very attempt at presenting newsworthy “truth” reminds us that images can be used as propaganda and manipulation by news corporations, social networks and their users, politicians and government or governmental lapdogs. Even in their brevity the texts serve as a reminder of the importance of critical thinking when it comes to our own viewing, discussion and sharing of images and videos.

The intensity of the narratives told in Women War Photographers makes this gathering of images and texts horribly mesmerizing and insightful and this exhibition among the most notable in Paris this season.

The eight photographers

Gerda Taro, pseudonym of Gerta Poharylle, born in Germany in 1910, covered the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and 1937 along her partner Robert Capa (pseudonym of Endre Ernő Friedmann). She was fatally wounded while covering combat action in Spain in 1937, shortly before he 27th birthday, and is buried in Paris’s Père Lachaise Cemetery.

The American Lee Miller (1907-1977) was the rare female photojournalists to be accredited by the U.S. Army as a war correspondent in Europe during the Second World War, beginning a month after the D-Day Landing in Normandy and through to the liberation of Nazi concentration camps and the end of the war. Previously she had worked as a fashion model, photo portraitist and fashion photographer. Though she continued to work in the 1950s and eventually switched gears to become a gourmet chef, she was increasingly debilitated by depression or PTSD, likely caused by her war experience. She is the subject of the documentary Lee Miller, a Life on the Front Line.

Born in Paris, Catherine Leroy (1944- 2006) earned her chops as a war photographer at the age of 22 as a U.S. accredited photographer during the Vietnam War despite having no prior professional experience as a photographer. In 1976, for her coverage of the Lebanese Civil War, she was the first woman to receive the Robert Capa Gold Medal honoring the “Best photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise.”

Françoise Demulder (1947-2008) was another Paris-born photographer who was largely self-taught. She launched her career by reporting on Vietnam War. For her coverage of the Karantina massacre in 1976, when Christian militias killed hundreds of Palestinian refugees during the Lebanese Civil War, she became, the following year, the first female photographer to receive the World Press Photo Award. She went on to cover numerous conflicts around the world.

The early career of Anja Niedringhaus was devoted to covering the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s. She went on to cover war zones in Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza and Libya, and in 2005 receive a Pulitzer Prize for her work in Iraq. She was killed during combat in Afghanistan while covering the country’s presidential elections on April 4, 2014. In 2015, the International Women’s Media Foundation created The Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award in her honor.

Frenchwoman Christine Spengler, born in 1945, simultaneously took up photography and photojournalism when she found herself in the midst of a war zone while traveling through Chad. Before long, in 1972, she was covering The Troubles in Northern Ireland, followed by assignment in Vietnam, Cambodia, Western Sahara, the Middle East, Afghanistan and Irak.

American Susan Meiselas, born in 1948, has covered wars and humanitarian crises in Central and South America. She was awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal in 1979 for her documenting of the Nicaraguan Revolution. Information about her career and current projects can be found on her own website.

Carolyn Cole, born in 1961, another American, has worked for the Los Angeles Times since 1994. Her coverage of war zones began several years later. She was awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal in 2003 for her coverage of the siege by the Israeli Army at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. The following year she received a second Robert Capa Gold Medal for her coverage of conflicts in Iraq and Liberia. She also received a Pulitzer in 2004 “for her cohesive, behind-the-scenes look at the effects of civil war in Liberia, with special attention to innocent citizens caught in the conflict.”

Practical information

Women War Photographers / Femmes Photographes de Guerre, March 8 to December 31, 2022, at the Museum of the Liberation of Paris*, 4 avenue du Colonel Rol-Tanguy, Place Denfert Rochereau, in the 14th arrondissement, across the street from the entrance to the Catacombes. Open Tuesday-Sunday, 10AM-6PM.

Entrance the permanent exhibition is free, however there is a fee to enter this temporary exhibition.

Purchase of a timed tickets for the exhibition is recommended: 8€ + 1€ online reservation fee. Free entrance for those under 18, with no additional online reservation fee for a timed ticket.

*I refer to the museum where this exhibition takes place as the Museum of the Liberation of Paris however it’s full name also includes the General Leclerc Museum and the Jean Moulin Museum. All three are related to the Second World War. Though each is called a “museum” they are separate sections of the same structure. Read this France Revisited article about the museums.

© 2022, Gary Lee Kraut

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Watch below the wide-ranging video interview with Kristen Grauer, the U.S. Consul General in Marseille, conducted by France Revisited’s Gary Lee Kraut on October 8, 2021. (With apologies for pronouncing Madame Consul General’s title as “counsel” instead of “consul.”) Also see further below Marseille & les Américains, a documentary produced with assistance by the consulate about the U.S. presence in southeastern France during and immediately after WWII, from August 1944 until early 1946.

Timeline for the 25-minute video interview
00:00 – Introduction and Kristen Grauer’s background as a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State.
02:33 – How does the U.S. Consulate General in Marseille help Americans in southern France and Monaco? Lost passports, missing persons, natural disasters and civil unrest.
08:18 – Will the U.S. Consulate get me out of jail if I’m arrested?
10:07 – The U.S. Consulate’s involvement in American economic development.
12:21 – The consulate and the U.S. Sixth Fleet.
13:14 – Operation Dragoon and the invasion of southern France, “the Second D-Day,” in August 1944. (See further information about the landing and about Marseille and the Americans at the bottom of this page.)
17:03 – Kristen Grauer speaks about American WWII heroes Varian Fry, who helped writers, artists and other anti-nazis flee persecution in Europe (the square in front of the consulate has been renamed in his honor) and Vice Consul Hiram Bingham, who bypassed the official policies of the United States in order to provide visas and passports to allow many to obtain visas allowing them escape France.
19:11 – Kristen Grauer’s travels in and impressions of southern France and Monaco.
22:34 – Does Kristen Grauer enjoy the anise-flavored spirit pastis and the rosé wines of Provence? Does she play pétanque?

Kristen Graeur is a career diplomat who previously served in France as the economic officer at the American Embassy in Paris (2010-2013). She most recently served at the U.S. Department of State as the Deputy Director in the Economic Bureau’s Office of Economic Policy and Public Diplomacy. Earlier in her career, she completed tours as an embassy economic officer in Baghdad, Iraq, and Moscow, Russia, and as a political officer in Monrovia, Liberia and Cotonou, Benin. As a career diplomat rather than a political appointee, her assignments don’t necessarily follow the election cycle. She has held her current position as Consul General in Marseille, a 3-year assignment, since the summer of 2020. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan, completed a mid-career Master of Science in National Resource Strategy at the U.S. National Defense University’s Eisenhower School, and is a graduate of the Foreign Service Institute’s long-term economic course. She is married and has two sons.

The U.S. Consulate General in Marseille covers southern France (Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur and Occitanie), Corsica and Monaco. For more information about services provided by the consulate, including its location and contact information, see here.

Operations Dragoon 1944 and Marseille & the Americans

Even among the millions who’ve toured the D-Day Beaches in Normandy, few American visitors to France are aware of the second major D-Day landing in France during the summer of 1944. Code-named Operation Dragoon, it involved the amphibious invasion on August 15, 1944 by the U.S. Seventh Army on a stretch of the Riviera just west of Saint Tropez.

After penetrating inland, forces veered west toward the Rhone Valley. Free French forces then entered the scene to capture the ports of Toulon and Marseille. Led by the Americans, together they pushing German forces to withdraw from the south. Within four weeks, the U.S. forces that had entered from the Riviera linked up with some of those that had earlier entered from Normandy to continue their northern and eastern drive.

Travelers to the region can visit the Rhone American Cemetery in Draguinan, 25 miles from the coast. It’s the burial site of 851 servicemen, with an additional 294 names inscribed on the Wall of the Missing.

After the southern landing and for the following two years, there were major American bases between Marseille and Aix-en-Provence through which two million soldiers would transit. The Consulate General assisted in the creation of a documentary about that American presence. The 4-part documentary entitled Marseille & les Américains is available in French and in English. Here’s Part 1 of the English version.

The Consulate General in Marseille also recently supported an upcoming film on Jamaican-American Harlem Renaissance author Claude Mckay who lived in Marseille from 1924-1929.

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Working from home you managed to make lunch of the last of your cheese (a 24-month comté) and the last of your vegetables (a brown-edged endive), mixed with your homemade vinaigrette of Les Baux de Provence olive oil, Modena balsamic vinegar and Dijon mustard with honey and thyme.

Now, as night falls and your thoughts turn to dinner, your refrigerator offers you nothing but the Dijon mustard, a jar of apple-pear jelly from Normandy and a bottle of champagne. In the little freezer compartment there’s only a tray of ice cubes and a wine bag.

On a shelf beside the refrigerator there’s a bag of fusilli, a box of long grain rice and a box of couscous, with only olive oil and condiments to add to any of them. There’s cereal and a box of UHT 2% milk, for an emergency, but no need to panic. On another shelf there’s a collection of items that you’ve been given at press events and trade shows: several more jars of Dijon mustard (with curry and coconut, with Madagascar black pepper, with white truffles), from a food fair; a bottle containing a dry mix for making the chickpea crepe called socca, from a presentation about the Riviera; mignonettes (mini bottles, nips) of cognac, mirabelle de Loraine, genepi de Savoie, Grand Marnier, liqueur de chataigne and others, from various regional events.

Then you see something you forgot you’d been given: a box of French combat rations, from the opening of an exhibition about war photography and photographers at the Army Museum in Paris. You retrieve it from the lower shelf.

It’s stamped with the expiration date January 27, 2019, nearly one year ago today. You wipe off the dust and place the box on the table.

Expiration date

Just then your intercom buzzes. It’s a friend who said he would stop by to pick up a pair of shoes that he’d left at your place when his feet were hurting from walking so much during the transportation strike and you’d lent him a more comfortable pair. That’s another story—and it’s this story as well since your friend’s work entails ordering food for the cafeteria of a public hospital. So his arrival is perfect timing—you’ll ask his advice regarding the expiration date on your box of combat rations.

“The box looks clean,” he says. “Probably no extreme temperatures in this kitchen. I’d say it’s good. But you’ll have to see how it looks inside.”

You open the box. Inside are a compact abundance of packets and tins. Your friend observes that nothing is dented or torn.

“It’s good,” he says.

“Do you want to stay for dinner?”

“No,” he says, “my feet hurt. But I’ll take the chocolate for the walk home, if you don’t mind.”

He takes the chocolate and the power bars and his shoes, and he leaves.

Duck rillette

You decide to go for it, beginning with the tin of duck rillette. Rillette is a kind of cold pulled pork except that in this case it’s duck, 74%, so a cold, shreaded confit de canard is more like. You try a spoonful. Cooked in fat (20%), it’s slightly greasy, as is to be expected, but not too salty. Tasty!

You open the packet of army biscuits to spread it on. First, a bite of dry biscuit. It tastes like an underbaked mix of wheat flour, water and skimmed milk powder. Is it stale or is it supposed to taste like that? Or are you just spoiled by easy access to some of the finest bread in the world?

You give the biscuit another try with some duck rillette. It’s still bad. So you chuck the biscuits and enjoy the rillette by itself. Quite good indeed. Ensuring that deployed soldiers enjoy their meal is essential for troop morale.

“An army marches on its stomach”

“Une armée marche sur son estomac,” said Napoleon Bonaparte. An army marches on its stomach. He offered a prize of 12,000 francs to the person who could come up with a means of preserving food to feed advancing troops. It took several years for a Frenchman, Nicolas Appert, to perfect a method for bottling fruits and vegetables, which he then extended to other foods. The use of metal containers was then patented several years later in England. By the second half of the 19th century tin cans had begun to supply armies, doing so on an industrial scale beginning with the First World War.

More than 30,000 French soldiers are currently deployed around the world: about 20,000 in operations in continental France and its overseas departments and territories and most of the rest in Africa (Dijbouti, Mali, Nigeria, Chad, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Senegal, and elsewhere) and the Middle East (Syria, United Arab Emirates).

A 10-person jury of military taste-testers in Rambouillet, 27 miles southwest of Paris, is partially responsible for approving of the contents of French combat rations. These rations, also NATO-approved, contain a hefty dose of protein along with a proper balance of carbs, lipids, calcium and omega 3.

Pasta and salmon salad

You gaze out the window of your quarters at the peace of Paris below. It’s momentarily disturbed by the bass horn of a bus intended to stir an ill-parked car without violence. Then the calm returns. You have nothing to fear but the fear of the expiration date itself.

Since you haven’t left your apartment all day, your nutritional and energetic needs differ from those of a soldier taking part in the Barkhane operation against Islamic terrorist groups in western Africa. Nevertheless, you’re still hungry.

You snap open the tin of pasta and salmon salad.

Forking some onto a plate reminds you of why you preferred dry food over canned for your cat back in the day.

After several years in the can it takes a dish a bit of time to get used to fresh air, so you let it sit for a few minutes, like fine wine. When you do take a bite you’re surprised to find that the chunks of Atlantic salmon (36%) actually still taste salmony. Another bite, then another. The dish is bland, but salmon and pasta do make for a worthy combination. You could add some of the enclosed packet of salt and pepper, but you’re glad for the salad’s blandness because if it had any bite to it that might come from rot rather than from the bits of red pepper, carrot and onion.

You stop halfway through the contents of the tin. Enough calories for now. Furthermore, you don’t want to tempt fate. Better to call it a meal and stop there for the evening. See how you feel as the evening winds down.

You put the unopened packets and tins in the box and place it on the shelf. Doing so draws your eyes to the assembly of mini bottles of brandy. What the hell, you think, and you pour yourself a nip of plum brandy from Lorraine. A little schnapps could come in handy should tensions flare in the night.

Muesli with chocolate bits

The night was calm. Few shots were fired. You slept well.

Opening the curtains in the morning and looking out the window you see people stopping in at the bakery across the street. Fresh bread is just a few flights of stairs away, but you resist. You stay in your quarters. You won’t let fresh artisanal bread about which food journalists write glowing articles distract you from what you now see as your mission: getting three meals from your box of rations. If you had any butter the choice would be more difficult, but walking 300 yards to the fromagerie for some raw-milk butter from Brittany would be undisciplined. Besides, it’s raining. So you follow instructions as indicated on the pack of muesli with chocolate bits: Tear open. Add water to line.

The muesli tastes like wet chocolate-flavored paper with bits of lyophilized apple (4%). The wet paper with apples would have been fine, but you haven’t liked chocolate (13%) in your cereal since you were 10. Of course, many of the soldiers for whom the ration box is intended are barely a 20-mile hike and a few hundred push-ups past adolescence, so the chocolate chips do have their place on the menu. Whatever gets a soldier going, you guess. But you, you stop after a few spoonfuls and make yourself some soluble coffee.

Breakfast. Check.

Chili con carne

For three hours you work cleaning out your gun (desk), examining the map of an upcoming mission (crossing Paris during the strike), conferring with fellow men at arms about the night shift (a dinner party that you didn’t go to because of the strike) and checking in on the wounded (calling a friend who had an MRI on her knee after tripping over a scooter lying on the sidewalk). You’re quite hungry by the time noon comes around.

Returning to your ration box, you see what remains for lunch. If you’re going to get out of your mission unscathed you’ll have to get past the box’s most formidable expired dish: chili con carne. You hesitate and return to your desk. One o’clock passes, then two. You consider putting it off until evening. You’d rather not face it alone, so you text your friend who works at the hospital to see if he wants to come over for dinner. “Chili con carne,” you write. He responds: “Don’t each much carne anymore.” You text back: “I have a packet of dried soup, just add water, for you.” “Feet hurt,” he responds. Then radio silence.

You’re famished. At 14h20 you make your move. While the box indicates an expiration date of Jan. 27, 2019, the tin of chili con carne is stamped 04 2019, meaning that it expired only nine months ago—that’s three months in your favor. And not a dent. You remember what the foie gras and smoked salmon producer said about an old glass jar of foie gras: “It gets better with time. So as long as it’s still properly sealed you can consider the suggested sell-by date as simply a legal obligation.”

You unpack the heating kit and assemble the pieces. You light the cube and place the tin on top. The contents boil quickly. After a few minutes the cube is consumed; the flame goes out. You unfold the plastic spork. Despite its resemblance to dog food (but isn’t that the aspect of chili con carne anyway?), the mix of ground beef (32%), rehydrated red beans (25%), tomato concentrate, salt, pepper, cumin and onions is appetizing, hearty and filling. After downing half the container you feel satisfied. More than that, you feel triumphant.

Caramel cream

You pop open the caramel cream dessert to end the meal. It has the look and consistency of orange-brown house paint. You taste the slightest bit. It’s disgusting. Or was that because there was some chili con carne left on your spork? You wipe it off and try another slightest bit. Equally disgusting. This one has certainly turned, at least you hope so for the sake of French soldiers in Chad.

Your training and experience have taught you make quick, logical decisions for the good of yourself and your team. You wouldn’t lead anyone down that orange-brown path, least of all yourself. You set it aside and immediately return to the chili con carne for a few more sporkfuls to end your meal on a meaty note.

Taking risks

You’ve completed your mission of three meals. You forgo the second packet of soluble coffee. After 20 hours garrisoned in your hovel you’re ready to go out. You’ll stop in a café while out food shopping.

You place the trash and unopened packets into the ration box and take it downstairs to the garbage. As you exit the building you’re nearly hit by a scooter on the sidewalk. You wave to the baker across the street. You think of the young, dedicated, dutiful soldiers risking their lives during operations, making an unsafe world a tad safer, nourished by a tin of chili con carne. Completing a mission of eating three meals from a box of combat ration was just a game for you—a food game in one of the world’s greatest food playgrounds. It was all for fun, a personal dare to have a story to tell, like a 15-year-old American trying escargot for the first time. There was never any risk in eating the expired combat rations. Of course there wasn’t. If you were truly a risk-taker you wouldn’t be living in Paris.

© 2020, Gary Lee Kraut

The post You know you live in Paris when…: French Combat Rations appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Seventy-five years after the Liberation of France, a visit to the D-Day Landing Beaches and the WWII memorials, museums and cemeteries of Normandy remains high on the wish-list of Americans and other international travelers to France. Yet few are aware of the French role in the Liberation of Paris.

A new, free, highly informative museum, partially located in an air raid shelter used by the Resistance during the liberation of the capital, provides insights into the history of Paris and Parisians during the Second World War.

The Liberation of Paris

By mid-August 1944, as the Allies were breaking out from Normandy and simultaneously gaining a foothold in the south of France, General Charles de Gaulle, who had led the Free French in exile, disagreed with the Allies as to the urgency of liberating Paris. For the Americans and allies, Berlin was the prime objective in the effort to defeat Nazi Germany. Paris, of little strategic value, could be bypassed on route to the German capital. But for de Gaulle, liberating Paris was essential to the country’s future unification and independence, and that required securing military and political French control of the capital sooner rather than later.

The issue was soon forced. Strikes had formed on August 10, growing to a general strike on August 18, and the insurrection began the following day. Skirmishes broke out and barricades were set up as a scrappy, lightly-armed Resistance fighters, policemen and civilians emerged from the shadows in an attempt to take on some 20,000 German soldiers and 50 tanks. On August 22 General Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, gave permission to the French 2nd Armored Division, commanded by Free French General Leclerc, supported by the American 4th Infantry Division, to enter the city.

On the evening of August 24, Leclerc’s men entered Paris from the south and southwest, including along the road that would later be renamed Avenue du Général Leclerc. In the afternoon of August 25, German military governor General Dietrich von Choltitz, aware of the futility of fighting for control of the city in the face of advancing armies and unwilling to follow Hitler’s orders to leave the city in ruin, surrendered German forces in the Paris region. After four years of German occupation, the capital was free again.

De Gaulle entered Paris that afternoon. He proclaimed at City Hall the continuity of the French Republic and the restoration of Paris’s lost nobility with a phrase famous in the capital to this day: “Paris! Paris outragé! Paris brisé! Paris martyrisé! Mais Paris libéré!” (Paris! Paris outraged! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But Paris liberated!) He went on to say that Paris was “liberated by itself, liberated by its people with the help of the French armies, with the support and the assistance of all of France…” with little mention of Allied efforts other than to acknowledge “the help of our dear and admirable allies.”

Had Paris been strategically important to the Allies and the Germans, there would have been far greater material damage to the city in an effort to dislodge the occupying forces, so, thankfully, little direct help was necessary from those “dear and admirable allies.” The museum gives them more due, yet this is appropriately and above all a French affair, and as such it offers foreign visitors insights into the German occupation, the French Resistance (and collaboration), the liberation of the capital and several of the homegrown heroes of the war.

General Leclerc and Jean Moulin

Located in the 14th arrondissement, across the street from the entrance to the Catacombs at Place Denfert-Rochereau, the museum partially occupies an underground air raid shelter that was used by Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy in August 1944 as a command post to direct the Paris Resistance during its uprising. (The segment of avenue in front of the museum bears his name.) The command post presents period newsreels along with displays about its functioning during the uprising, including the critical role played by Rol-Tanguy’s wife Cécile.

The museum, actually three related museums in one—it’s full name is the Museum of the Liberation of Paris/ General Leclerc Museum / Jean Moulin Museum—highlights the roles of General Leclerc and resistance organizer Jean Moulin, two French heroes from very different backgrounds who helped liberate France from within and without.

When France fell to the Germans in June 1940, General Leclerc, a military officer from a Catholic aristocratic background, escaped the country and over the next three years helped assemble and lead Free French forces in Africa, North Africa and Europe. Born Philippe de Hauteclocque, he changed his name to Leclerc to protect his family in France from reprisals. He eventually assumed command of the 2nd Armored Division, integrated into Patton’s Third Army.

Jean Moulin, meanwhile, was a Socialist and a rising prewar civil servant, the youngest prefect in France at the time of his nomination. After the fall of France, Moulin refused to become a pawn for the German occupation and focused on coordinating General de Gaulle’s activities and those of various Resistance groups within France. His work required clandestine travel (including a hazardous nighttime parachute jump) during trips back from London to meet with de Gaulle. Under constant threat of detection by the Germans, he negotiated with and unified most groups of the French Resistance in a single structure, becoming the first president of the National Council of Resistance in the spring of 1943. In June, several weeks after the council’s first official meeting, Moulin was arrested. He was tortured by the Germans—notably by Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyon”—and died of his wounds on July 8.

Visiting the museum

While the museum exhibits are heavy on archival material (letters, government decrees, posters, etc.), there are poignant historical objects, such as Moulin’s matchbox for concealing microfilm, Leclerc’s desert uniforms and a graffiti fragment from a Jewish family deported from Paris’s Drancy transit camp.

The museum also offers a variety of multimedia exhibits and interactive maps which show the location of key buildings requisitioned by Germans during the Occupation, Resistance strongholds and sites of fighting during the Liberation. At Barbès metro station, for example, a Resistance commando team, led by Colonel Fabien (after whom another metro station on line 2 is named) assassinated a German soldier in the summer 1941. The Hotel Lutetia housed the Abwehr, the German counterintelligence service, during the Occupation and then at war’s end was a processing site for the few returning French who survived German concentration camps.

Sections of the museum are punctuated by short films (all with English subtitles) presenting visions of life in Paris during the war, from pro-German propaganda newsreels condemning Allied bombing raids to instructions for women how to paint their legs in the absence of silk stockings. The final sections include extensive footage of outgunned Paris Resistance fighters battling the German Army and of de Gaulle’s famous Liberation speech (“Paris outraged!…”).

Spartan grey walls and a realistic soundscape give the interior the sound and feel of a military bunker. The subterranean command post resounds with the clack of invisible typewriters, ringing telephones and the whine of an air raid siren. As the exhibits progress to the darkest period of the war for Paris, the visitor descends into the basement of the building, and later, after the Liberation story, one emerges into a sunlit atrium adorned with French flags and offering views of the neighborhood where Leclerc’s American M4 Sherman tanks rolled to the center.

Other wartime memories in Paris

The Liberation Museum adds an important voice to the city’s extensive historical narrative of World War II. Elsewhere in Paris, memories of the Second World War can be viewed from other angles at the Army Museum at Les Invalides (sections devoted to de Gaulle, to WWII, and to the Order of the Liberation); at the Shoah Memorial in the Marais; at the Deportation Memorial behind Notre-Dame; on plaques commemorating Resistance fighters and deported Jewish school children, and in the form of pockmarks from fighting during the Liberation of Paris.

Evidence of damage can be seen on the southeastern corner of Luxembourg Palace (the Senate building), on the southeastern corner of the Palais de Justice (the central courthouse on Ile de la Cité) and on the wall of the Tuileries next to the Place de la Concorde, as well as elsewhere.

The material damage in Paris was limited during the war, but the city’s liberation brought about the death of 1000 resistance fighters, 156 soldiers of the 2nd Armored Division, 588 civilians and 3200 Germans, along with thousands of wounded.

Since 1945 the Cross of the Liberation, an order created by General de Gaulle, has been a part of the arms of the City of Paris.

Post-museum R&R

The museum draws visitors into its subjects so well that the curious traveler could end up spending over an hour and a half here (while the rest of the family visits the Catacombs?) before emerging to contemporary café life in liberated Paris. Numerous cafés are right nearby, but consider heading away from the bustle to a stroll and a sit one block away on Rue Daguerre, the neighborhood’s wonderful pedestrian food market street.

Practical information

Museum of the Liberation of Paris/ General Leclerc Museum/ Jean Moulin Museum
Place Denfert-Rochereau, 75014 Paris. Metro Denfert-Rochereau.
Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10AM to 6PM. No entrance possible after 5:15PM.

Tickets are free for the permanent exhibition, where displays present texts in English as well as French. The free ticket gains entrance to the command post in the air raid shelter, however only a limited number of people are allowed into the post at any one time, so visitors should request a timed reservation (not available online) to visit it as soon as they enter the museum in the hopes that tickets remain for the following hour.

The 100 steps down to the command post are steep, so a visit to that part of the museum could be difficult for visitors with small children or limited mobility. For those unable to access the command post, a virtual tour can be viewed on tablets available at the reception desk.

© 2019, France Revisited

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I was pleased at their sight. Standing beneath my umbrella I counted eight, no, ten, no, twelve, or more rabbits scattered along the lawn and I felt contemplative as I watched them, though contemplative of what I cannot say. After a minute I heard voices behind me and looked back as two military officers walked by, and they looked at me, a man beneath an umbrella on the edge of the lawn as the museum was closing, and while one offered slightly more than a half-smile to say, “Yes, there are rabbits here,” the other offered slightly less than a half-smile to say, “Don’t you dare step onto that lawn.” I admit that I wanted to despite the little don’t-walk-on-the-grass sign at my foot, but not given to such transgression I stood there on the edge of the lawn, contemplating I don’t know what, as several rabbits looked over to me as though to say “Are you coming or not, because if you are we’re going to run away and if you aren’t we have to keep an eye on you, so make up your mind,” though my mind wasn’t indecisive at that moment, merely pleased, at peace, contemplative and somewhat lonesome for the touch of fur, unless that latter was my heart.

Yes, I did want to touch the rabbits, but I was nevertheless deeply satisfied just standing there, where I felt privy to a communion with nature in Paris on a grey, drizzly day, and perhaps it was that that I was contemplating on the edge of the rabbits’ lawn, that nature, that communion, that satisfaction, that peace, though contemplating may not be the right word for it since I felt, above all, a deep, still satisfaction. I was there, and so were the rabbits. And as though to compare my connection with the wild rabbits with my connection with the history of the military complex they inhabited, I went inside the courtyard of the Invalides, of the Army Museum, and took in the view of its vast orderly space, where Napoleon stood in the shadow on the balcony at the far end and where the gilt dome of Saint Louis beneath which he lay rose beyond, and while I still had in mind the lush green lawn and the hearty grey-brown rabbits, I also now had in mind the expansive and restrained emotion of the courtyard of the Invalides, its pride, its ambitions, its history and ceremonies (Dreyfus, Afghanistan, Saint Barbe), its grandeur.

Between the rabbits and the courtyard, I’d been in the Invalides complex for less than 10 minutes and might have gone home then but I first wanted to use its rest room since I will sometimes decide that I’m going home then not arrive for several hours, either because that’s the way I am or because that’s the way great cities are. There were rest rooms, I knew, near the gift shop, but the museum had closed and I wasn’t sure to get in, but when, after crossing the courtyard, I asked the guard by the entrance to that portion of the building if the rest rooms were still open, he said “Go ahead, downstairs” with a surprising lack of obstruction and I realized that he thought I was on the premises for an event rather than as a straggling museum-goer. Indeed, when I came up the stairs from the rest room the guard pointed to my right, so I followed the direction of his finger and came upon a small crowd of well-dressed men and women entering a hallway outside of which a sign indicated an exhibition entitled Eisenhower – de Gaulle Alliance and Friendship in War and Peace.

A woman with a guest list stood by a desk by the entrance and asked my name, which I gave, and as I did I noticed someone waving in my direction from a few yards down the hallway, and even though he wasn’t waving to me, I waved back, leading the woman to not look at the guest list but rather to say “Oh, OK, I see, welcome” to which I replied “Thanks,” and entered the hallway gathering. I now felt obliged to walk up to the fellow who waved. He was a slight man with kind droopy eyes wearing a uniform the color of wet sand whom I recognized as General Alexandre d’Andoque de Sériège, director of the Army Museum. I introduced myself while shaking his small, warm hand and he said “Thanks for coming.” “My pleasure,” I said, leaving him to greet the person he had actually waved to, and as I turned I nearly bumped into General Christian Baptiste, former director of the Army Museum, wearing plain clothes, nice plain clothes, a suit actually. “Good evening, my general,” I said, and we shook a firm shake.

I looked around at the gathering crowd then down at my blue polo shirt and black pants and brown pleather jacket, clothes I hadn’t given much thought to when leaving home to visit the rabbits, and realized that I was conspicuously the only person present without a uniform, a suit, a skirt or a dress, yet I’d just shaken hands with two generals I’d recognized, so perhaps I did belong. In any case I played it cool and scholarly and began to read the panels of the Eisenhower-de Gaulle exhibition in the long corridor leading to the Museum of the Order of the Liberation. Though I knew a few things about Dwight Eisenhower and Charles de Gaulle and about their relationship concerning plans for D-Day and the Battle of Normandy and the Liberation of Paris, I hadn’t previously thought much about the parallels in their lives: they were born six weeks apart to religious and patriotic families; both were frustrated by their distance from the front during the First World War; both wrote texts promoting the importance and development of tank divisions at a time when both chomped at the bit of their hierarchy; both became generals; each approached the other warily while developing mutual respect after their first encounter in Algiers when de Gaulle began to form the French Committee of National Liberation (Comité Français de Libération Nationale) and sought American recognition.

I read some of the panels in English and others in French, depending on whether I could stand unobstructed closer to the left or the right, and, while the texts appeared to be equal in content, when I read in English I saw de Gaulle as a pompous Frenchman trying to represent in exile a defeated nation and who wanted to be considered its savior whereas Eisenhower was clearly the man of the moment, whereas when I read in French I appreciated de Gaulle’s ambition, his desire to exert Free French control so as to quickly return France to the role of a nation among nations, making him, too, a man of the moment.

I stopped reading when General Alexandre d’Andoque de Sériège, as the museum’s director, walked up to the small podium set up toward the end of the hallway in front of the flags of France, Europe and the United States and began welcoming distinguished guests—a government official, French generals, American military attachés, foundation presidents—who in protocolar order went up to the podium to speak about French-American bonds, the Eisenhower-de Gaulle bond, D-Day and its 75th anniversary. When last the government official spoke she told of a man named Jacques Lewis, a military liaison who was the rare Frenchman to land on Utah Beach, and of his various deeds in favor of French-American military relations and the cause of victory. She said that he was now 100 years old and lived at the Invalides, and I realized that he was present though I couldn’t see him because I was five yards back and we were all standing while he must have been seated. A certificate given to him by the United States Army Europe was read in English and translated in French, and after the applause died down and General d’Andoque de Sériège invited the assembly to a reception, I made my way to the side of the podium until I stood before a handsome, well-dress, decorated man in a wheelchair, Jacques Lewis, who wore the Legion of Honor and other medals and had on his lap a large framed “certificate of appreciation.”

While Mr. Lewis looked to someone to his left I leaned forward to read to myself the certificate whose text I only half heard when it was twice read aloud about the United States Army Europe recognizing Major Jacques Lewis for his contributions on Utah Beach on 6 June 1945 as a liaison officer with the 2d Armored Division, at the start of a long march through France, and, surprised to read 1945 instead of 1944, I bent closer to be sure that I’d read it right, and when I looked up I again I was nose to nose with Mr. Lewis who offered a smile that said “I’m honored, moved, but overwhelmed, so many people fawning over me, I’m tired” and I replied with a smile that said “I came looking for rabbits and don’t really belong here be here but I’ve been to Utah Beach dozens of times and given dozens of lectures about touring Normandy and you’re 100 years old and landed on Utah Beach(even though your certificate mentions 1945) and are now a resident of the Invalides, meaning that you’re at once a living monument to Allied victory and heir to nearly 350 years of pensionnaires at the Invalides, so you represent the entire military history of a place that is now also home to wild rabbits, and since I know all this then I do belong here and would like to shake your hand,” and I did, a large, gentle, human hand that I then covered with my other hand as though to keep it warm.

When finally I let go and straightened up a woman reached her arm out to hand me her phone and asked if I’d take her picture with Mr. Lewis, and I saw from her gracious height and steady coif and the way in which she put her hand gently on the veteran’s shoulder and looked for him to look to her (or to me, the cameraman) that she must be somebody, and as I was backing up to take the picture she was briefly distracted by someone who called out “Mrs. Eisenhower, when you have a moment…” and she responded “Just a moment” and I realized that I was taking the picture of Ike’s granddaughter, Susan Eisenhower, so after taking a few shots and after I handed back her phone and she said “Thank you” I asked if she would be kind enough to allow me to take her and Mr. Lewis with my own camera, and she obliged. “Thank you, Mrs. Eisenhower,” I said. “You must have had a busy week with all these ceremonies,” to which she responded, “Exhausting,” and we then talked briefly about the series of ceremonies and events (75th anniversary of D-Day, 50th anniversary of her grandfather’s death, etc.) that she’d been to and that I hadn’t, other than this, which anyway covered the essential. I seemed to remember reading someplace that she now lived in Europe and asked her as much, to which she replied “No, I live in Washington, D.C.,” to which I said, “I must be confusing you with someone else’s granddaughter,” and without skipping a beat she says, “Helen Patton,” to which I said, “Sorry about that,” and we both laughed as though it were an inside joke, though many people know that the two are as unalike as, well, Eisenhower and Patton. A woman then called out “Susan” and Mrs. Eisenhower said to me, “Excuse me” and I shook her hand, which was sincere and long and warm if not as fuzzy as a rabbit’s head.

As people walked away I finished reading the panels of the exhibition—Eisenhower and de Gaulle both became presidents; they had their differences but maintained mutual respect, they visited to each other; Mamie and Yvonne died one week apart; Charles and Ike died 18 months apart—then slowly followed this beau monde of generals and military attachés and foundation presidents and Mrs. Eisenhower into one of the Invalides’s refectory/reception rooms, where, after a glass of white wine and several canapés, I asked a woman with a star-spangled scarf who was momentarily standing alone if she could point out to me the president of The First Alliance Foundation, which was a partner in the exhibition and which I’d never heard of, and she could not only point out Carole Brookins, the foundation’s founder and chairman, but also Dorothea de la Houssaye, founder and director of The Normandy Institute, another recent organization, along with many of the French generals and American military attachés present, and when I told her that I was impressed that she knew everyone she said, “Don’t be, that’s what generals’ wives do in Washington.”

The French generals and American military attachés and foundation presidents were as numerous as rabbits on the lawn, yet more approachable I found as I shook their hands and talked their talk, and even if their palms weren’t fleecy they were genuinely warm and frank.

At the first hint of the gathering breaking up I took my jacket and umbrella from the rack and left.

The courtyard was quiet except for the sound of a gentle rain.

The lawns were empty, as the rabbits had gone into their burrows, yet I stopped there for a moment, beneath my umbrella, to silently thank them for my good fortune.

© 2019, Gary Lee Kraut

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The 75th anniversary of D-Day is the occasion to commemorate the lives and actions and deaths of those involved in “the greatest sea invasion of military history” as well as the opportunity to reflect on how the events of 1944 relate to us, individually and collectively, today. We would be remiss to do one without the other.

Through movies, documentaries, books, speeches, visits and the stories of veterans, we have many memories and visions of D-Day and the ensuing 10-week Battle of Normandy. And we are moved, in a generic sense, by the view of the imaculate lawns and orderly Crosses and occasional Star of David at the American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach. But moved to do what, exactly? To take pictures? To shout “We’re number one”? To jump from a parachute? To open a B&B near the coast? To read deeper? To fight for world peace? To learn about the experiences of veterans of other foreign wars? To visit other war cemeteries? To wonder why we aren’t equally “moved” by the thought of soldiers who died in Vietnam or Iraq? To honor The Four Freedoms?

Each head of state who speaks at a major ceremony seeks to interpret D-Day and the events leading to it and flowing from it in such a way that it presents a lesson or thread that fits with his or her vision of the world today. Each of them attempts to articulate his or her nations ambitions relative to the past. Passing time and evolving circumstances require that, at the risk of losing the thread altogether or twisting it to tie up an otherwise unrelated vision.

Museums, memorials, exhibitions and events throughout the former battle zone of Normandy have also evolved over time as they, too, seek to present the connection between then and now. And each major commemorative year brings with it new ways of informing, guiding, entertaining and profiting from visitors drawn to the region’s war history. Those developments are telling in their own way.

Beyond the commemorative ceremonies that accompany the 75th anniversary of D-Day and of the liberation of Norman villages and towns that followed, here are five ways in which organizations and businesses are using, (re)interpreting or inspired by Normandy’s wartime memory in 2019.

1. Normandy’s International Forum for Peace

The Peacemakers: That’s the theme of Normandy’s second annual International Forum for Peace, held in Caen June 4 and 5, i.e. immediately prior to the 75th anniversary commemorations. The forum was created in the context of Normandy’s memory of war but is focused on dealing with present wars and future conflicts rather than on the past. This year’s discussions and debates will concern tensions in Cameroon, the impact of Brexit on Irish Peace Accords, the post-peace process in Colombia, Chinese diplomacy in the new world order, conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the civil war in Syria, among other conflicts. Forum participants will be invited to sign the Normandy Peace Manifesto to be presented by four Nobel Peace Prize recipients—Jody Williams (American; involved in the fight against anti-personnel mines), Mohamed El Baradei (Egyptian; former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency), Leymah Gbowee (Liberian; leader of the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace) and José Romos Horta (East Timorese; former president who worked for a peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timora)—and other recognized and would-be peacemakers. The prevailing view of participants, if not by leaders of the world’s most powerful militaries, will undoubtedly be that of multilateralism and the sense of an international community are the central tenets of making peace.

2. Rockwell, Roosevelt & The Four Freedoms at the Caen Memorial Museum

In January 1941, eleven months before the United States declared war on Japan then on Germany, Franklin Roosevelt articulated in his State of the Union speech the four fundamental freedoms that he said should be enjoyed by people everywhere: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear. For its exhibition in this 75th anniversary year, the Caen Memorial Museum, in partnership with the Norman Rockwell Museum, is presenting an exhibition of Rockwell’s work with his iconic paintings of the Four Freedoms as its centerpiece. The Rockwell paintings were first published in The Saturday Evening post in early 1943, by which time the United States was well into its engagement in the war. Needless to say, such a speech would not be given today, and today the paintings themselves might be misinterpreted as honoring nostalgia rather than freedom. Other famous and lesser-known works by Rockwell and his contemporaries give necessary context to those freedoms and those paintings. The exhibition runs from June 10 to October 27, 2019. Here’s the trailer:

3. Great Women During the War at the Juno Beach Centre

Canada is not a bellicose nation, so it’s no surprise that the Juno Beach Centre, situated just off the beach where Canadian forces landed on June 6, 1944, is the least militaristic of the museums in the Landing Zone, not to mention the one with the friendliest staff. The Centre is at once a memorial, a museum and a cultural center dedicated not only to the Canadian role in the Second World War but to broader cultural issues, then and now. The current exhibition, running through December 2019, speaks of the contributions of women during the war. It examines their courage, anguish, fear and mourning as well as the ways in which they led the way to changes in society.

4. Dinner with veterans at La Chenevière

La Chenevière, a 5-star chateau-hotel with restaurant just inland from the port of Port-en-Bessin on the route to Bayeux, is collaborating with The Greatest Generation Foundation to host a series of 17 dinner events featuring the presence of American veterans who took part in the Battle of Normandy 1944. The evening begins with a brief lecture that is then followed by a gastronomic meal during which participants have the opportunity to converse with one of the veterans. These dinners, which began in April, take place every other Thursday until Nov. 28, 2019. 190€ per person, reservation required. It isn’t necessary to spend the night at the hotel to attend.

5. Expansion of the Overlord Museum at Colleville-sur-Mer

The Overlord Museum opened in 2014 in time for the 70th anniversary by the roundabout to the entrance to the American Cemetery. It’s a private museum created by Nicolas Leloup, the son of a collector of WWII military vehicles and other military artefacts. The staging of this large collection of war material follows a tendency on the part of certain museums, especially private museums, to dramatize displays in order to appeal to a public that might otherwise be bored or lost with a straightforward or explanatory presentation. The 75th anniversary year brings with it an extension to the museum that includes a scene about the Mortrain counterattack and a section dedicated to the role of the aviation. But the drama isn’t always staged. Sometimes it’s naturally present yet removed from war, as in the presentation of Ian Patrick’s photographs from his book Anonymous Heroes, showing veterans who returned to the Landing Beaches for D-Day commemorations 45 to 60 years later.

See Taps in the Normandy American Cemetery, A France Revisited Minute.

© 2019, Gary Lee Kraut

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