For those collision repairers with your noses constantly to the grind wheel, I’d like to depart from my regular format and point out that there is more to life than that found in the shop. Left to me, my wife and I would probably never have spent a month touring France by car. But Bobbi never lost her “wanderlust” as a military brat of a career Marine and so we were off to France, Rick Steves’ handy travel guides in hand. Here are some impressions of our trip to the motherland of the Impressionist Movement. 

Dick Strom at Mont Saint-Michel

   We’ve all heard that the French hate Americans (and sometimes vice versa). Though we occasionally noted a muted undertone of irritation, we found them to be hurried and not that conversationally outgoing—not antagonistic against us. Despite the language barrier, many folks went out of their way to help us find ours.
    At one restaurant the waitress was kind enough to point out that what Bobbi was planning to order was raw meat, a delicacy not to our liking. Totally lost trying to navigate our way out of Paris, a motorcyclist personally led us through a maze of streets onto the freeway we couldn’t find.
    Part of the language barrier appears to be that although basic English is taught in French schools, they don’t want to be laughed at for their halting English – which is generally far superior to our French. We found that opening a conversation with “Parlez-vous anglais?” (“Do you speak English?”) is usually answered with a squeezing together of their thumb and first finger, indicating “only a little.” From there on, they tend to warm up and give English their best shot.
    One blessing of not knowing the language is never knowing if someone is cursing at you. At a sale of local art in one French city, as I attempted to inquire of the artist what materials he had melded together, a man standing nearby interpreted for us. He later explained that he was born and raised in a nearby village until moving to America for college.
    Having returned to France for the funeral of an aunt, and knowing the French language intimately, he could not understand the resentment many of the younger to middle-aged French harbored against Americans, especially after all we did along with England, Canada, and Australia to free France in both World Wars.

Inhaling history
Later, as we contemplatively walked among the nearly 10,000 white crosses and Stars of David that marked the final resting place of many thousands of Americans who gave their lives for France’s freedom on Normandy’s beaches and beyond. An older woman reverently laid two large bouquets of beautiful flowers on the steps of the memorial’s centerpiece. It was obvious that this French woman remembered, and was thankful for our sacrifices on their behalf.
    Normandy’s beaches and shoreline are still littered with the enormous hulks of concrete barges that transported Allied supplies from England and then doubled as ramps between ships off-shore and the beachhead. And the land above the beach, especially above Omaha and Utah Beaches where Americans stormed German fortifications, are still deeply scarred from the hellish impact of fierce Allied fire from ships off the coast.
    One strategic German strong point was so decimated by ship fire that not an inch of it is not still cratered with holes up to 40 feet across and 20 feet deep. After a few wild shots to find their range, allied ships from miles out at sea had so accurately honed in on German gun emplacements above the Normandy shore that they were lobbing shells directly into the ammunition magazines of each German gun emplacement, blowing them sky high.
    We also visited a couple places on the Alsace borderland between Germany and France where the French and her allies, including America, fought to the last man to stop Germany’s land grabbing. This region is still heavily rutted with defensive dirt fortifications, now covered with moss and grass under a covering of trees.
    Occasionally still, someone who strays into the woods is crippled or killed by landmines that have evaded detection over the past 90+ years. I bought two well used military helmets from that war, one French and one Belgian, which now line our recreation room walls, along with the American WW1 helmet and gas mask I already had – mute symbols of “the war to end all wars.”