Thoughts For The Day From Papa ‘a

Good Morning All!

Happy Anniversary to my cousin, Carol, and her husband, Ron, who celebrated their wedding day yesterday.  Here’s to you two!  And Happy Birthday to my esteemed business partner and friend, Marcus Jackson, who celebrates his birthday on June 5th.  Here’s to you, Marcus, and thanks for being such a terrific partner and friend over the years!

Don’t forget that June 6th marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day…when the pride of our nation landed on Normandy to bring freedom to Europe after many years of Nazi tyranny.  Here’s to everyone who was involved in what General Eisenhower called “The Great Crusade”.

Here’s more from my recent World War II-related trip through Europe…

While having an espresso (I forgot to order a “long” coffee!) at a little café in Sarre-Union, I noticed a group of campaign signs for the upcoming European Union election.  One political poster especially caught my eye…it was for the “Animaliste Party”, a party whose primary mission is to ensure animal rights.  As Arte Johnson used to say on the 1960s hit comedy TV show, “Laugh-In”, “very interesting…”  They seem to have a political party for just about every issue one could think of…the “Green Party”…the “Centrist Party”, etc….kind of like every ice cream flavor known to man…I must admit, while I am a huge fan of dogs and many other kinds of animals, I don’t quite understand why a political party would be created to cater to the interests of animals rather than focus it’s efforts on promoting the well-being of humans…what do you think?

We’ve been traveling the countryside of the The Ardennes region…as Roland describes it, it was once a huge dense forest that went on for miles and miles.  Then man decided to start clearing parts of it to create farms…so what we see today is a patchwork of farmland separated by groves of trees throughout The Ardennes.  Can you imagine how hard it must have been to clear these forests to make way for farms back in the 11th & 12th centuries?  In America, we think of 200 years as a long time.  Here in Europe, a long time is 1,000 years!  The combination of farm land and forests makes for a beautiful topography.  The contrast between farm land and forest is visually appealing, for sure!

We are spending some time today in the Alsace region, an area that has been disputed by France & Germany for centuries.  It’s not unusual to hear people in this area speaking primarily German even though it is in France.  We came upon the village of Oermingen (sounds German doesn’t it?) in Alsace.  This village, like many others along the border in Alsace have mixed allegiances…a lot of German style architecture even though we’re still in France.  Just prior to entering Oermingen, we saw a monument on the top of a hill honoring a World War I flight crew of an airship (dirigible) that crashed along a river bank just outside of town in 1915.  All of the crew members perished.  They were on a bombing mission when the airship lost power and fell to the earth suddenly.  Having all that ordinance on board doomed the crew.  I guess I wasn’t aware that they used dirigibles for bombing runs back in the Great War!  We passed an older couple (at least 80 years old by my first guess) who were on a bicycle camping adventure.  There bikes were loaded for bear.  They looked to me to be in great shape and were pedaling like crazy.  We stopped in the next village of Domfessel for directions and Roland engaged an older woman who was planting geraniums in her front flower boxes.  During Roland’s conversation with her, she told Roland that she thought my friend Harold had served in World War II!!!  How funny!  Harold must look well preserved for a World War II veteran!

The next village we came upon, Rimsdorf, suffered terrible damage during the war.  Almost all of the buildings in that village reflect newer construction due to the fact that the village was literally destroyed during the war.  Roland told us that the villages that were heavily destroyed during World War II benefited greatly from The Marshall Plan, the program put in place by the United States to help rebuild Europe.  The U.S. Congress allocated some $14 billion to this effort….now that’s a lot of money for 1946…it would be the equivalent of probably $150-$200 billion in today’s dollars or even more, for that matter (I’m no financial wizard).

After getting directions from the older lady planting geraniums, we sort of went around in a circle so that by the time we got back to Domfessel the lady we spoke with previously had finished planting her geraniums that she just started planting when we drove by her place the first time and had called it a day!  Too funny!!!

As in America, Roland said that the business landscape has changed noticeably in the last 20 years.  Many small shops have disappeared…they used to be located near the church or the train station in a small village.  Now it’s hard to find any.

Our next stop was Singling, the scene of a major tank battle as the 4th Armored Division and 3rd Army was making its way toward Bastogne to relieve it from being surrounded by the German army.  It’s hard to find evidence of what happened here on December 6, 1944.  Harold’s Dad was here that day.  Roland was able to seek out a lady who was planting potatoes in her garden and she was able to tell us which houses survived the battle—all had holes in the walls from gunfire of various sorts…machine guns, bazookas, tank shells & rifle fire.  Not much of Singling survived that horrific street battle between tank, artillery and infantry that day.  A beautiful memorial plaque is placed on the front wall of the village’s church, honoring the sacrifices of the 4th Armored Division at the battle of Singling.  The thing that’s somewhat remarkable is that it is a fairly new memorial made out of beautiful granite & beautifully inscribed.  Lt. Ferese and his tank were lost in the this battle.  He came through the orchard on the hill below Singling and was hit by artillery and tank fire from Germans occupying the higher ground where the village was located.  The Americans came into this battle “blind” as they didn’t have any aerial reconnaissance of the area before approaching it.  They just knew that they had to take this village as it commanded the roads leading toward Bastogne and it was there objective to get to Bastogne as quickly as possible to relieve the surrounded 101st Airborne.  Lots of our soldiers were killed or wounded taking these little villages that had some strategic/tactical significance in the war.  Most of the battles in this region were fought in little crossroad towns, as all the roads ended up coming together at the town squares of these villages/towns…

A special thing happened to us after our visit to Singling & Bining…we came upon the Maginot Line, the grand fortifications that the French built all along the border with Germany with the idea that it would stop any land invasion attempted by the Germans.  The French must have felt that something was going to happen, because they worked feverishly to build these fortifications connected by underground tunnels for miles.  We came upon this place too late to take the regular tour, but Roland was able to get one of the guides to consent to give us a shortened, one hour tour.  We got to travel some 70 feet under the ground in to this wondrous array of tunnels that featured an impressive power plant, a huge kitchen facility, an infirmary, quarters for the 180-200 solders that manned this particular fortification for 8 months at a time and rooms to store ammunition for the gun emplacements that were positioned all along the section of the Maginot Line we visited.  It was a magnificent and impressive structure built well beneath the earth.  It took four years to build with 1,400 workers on the project.  It really was something to see!  It’s amazing to me that the French spent so much time & resources to built these fortifications for miles, only to have the Germans do “an end around them” and attack them by going through Belgium to the north.  Oh well…but it does make for a fascinating tour!  The French civil engineer who designed these remarkable fortifications was a gentleman by the name of Lt. Casso (for which this particular fortress along the Maginot Line is named).  He went on to become the Fire Chief of Paris after the war!  If you ever come near Rohrbach-les-Bitche (near Singling & Bining), you’ll want to take time to visit this fascinating place!  Our guide Roland got so excited about this place that he started to speak French to Harold instead of the guide!  He forgot he was doing the translating for us!

Here is the silly question for the day:

Q:  What do you call a nose without a body?

A:  No body nose.

Here are some thoughts for the day:

“I think most of the people involved in any art always secretly wonder whether they are really there because they’re good or there because they’re lucky.”

—Katharine Hepburn, multi-Oscar winning actress

“Without discipline, there’s no life at all.”

—Katharine Hepburn

“Do not dare not to dare.”

—C.S. Lewis, “The Horse and His Boy”, quoted in “C.S. Lewis’ Little Book of Wisdom:  Meditations On Faith, Life, Love & Literature”

Here’s to a great Monday and lots of love always!

Press on,

Papa ‘a (Dad, Uncle Mark, etc.)