For me, the tour started at 7:30 a.m. in Chicago. It was the usual teeming crowded cheap seat experience, until I got to JFK. Then I started to feel that something special was afoot. By the time I was in the line at Singapore Airlines at 6:00 pm and saw the orange MilSpec tags on other suitcases, I was very excited. The tour had begun!

Our passports stamped, our luggage gathered, we proceeded to the bus, but Liz and I were painfully thirsty by this point and we were torn between losing the group on a quest for a bottle of water or being thirsty for three or four more hours. We reached the bus and asked about finding some water. Luckily for us the intrepid Shep Rilovick had joined the group at the Frankfurt airport; he volunteered to get us water as the bus got packed up.

We traveled through the countryside, admiring the bright yellow rapeseed fields, until we reached a rest stop still in Germany--this was our first major realization that we were in foreign lands--we could barely navigate the complexities! The Damen was under construction and the shower room that we could use had incomprehensible hardware. An attendant with a key had to come let some of us out. We didn't know how much to tip the attendant or exactly what we were tipping her for. Then we couldn't even figure out how to get take out with lids that stayed on. We also discovered that the cashier was wonderfully nice to us bumbling Americans after soup went flying all over the checkout.

Shep had been in the area before exploring on his own, so he warned us as we neared Bitche to look out the window as we approached Bitche. The Citadel filled the windshield! The town shrank out of sight around it.

We arrived at the Relais des Chateaux Forts (6, quai Branly, 57230 Bitche) around 5:00 in the afternoon and checked in to our home for the week. Even this proved tricky, since the first floor is the second in France. It took us awhile to figure out we had to get our heavy suitcases to the second floor.

Liz and I arrive.

We discovered that we had a balcony with a spectacular view of the Citadel looming over Bitche.

It was cold, gloomy, and damp--in fact someone said that it was the coldest wettest spring since 1945, which was entirely fitting.

Reservations had been made for us at the Auberge de la Tour in town. It felt good to walk through the town after all the sitting. But in our jet lagged state, the menu made us realize that we were definitely in France--none of us could read it well and only one of the waiters there spoke English. We were in separate rooms, so one room had assistance from Lise Pommois, the French historian, while our room was inventive! Our table had truly wonderful seafood stew (though even that was unexpected when the shrimp looked back at us).

At the back table: John Alcorn, Armer Alcorn, and John Day. In the foreground, Virgina Gattinella.

The restaurant is decorated as Belle Epoque--beautiful lace and wood panelling and linen. The food was excellent.

Back table: Liz and Nat Gattinella. At the front table: BobHamer, Helen Hamer, Elaine Dunn, Bill McNutt with his back to the camera.

We returned to the hotel and couldn't get over the view--or the fact that it was still light out hours later than back home. The church bell was chiming for prayers at 10.

Background from the Stars and Stripes pamphlet, The Story of the Century (1945):

The entire division hit the line again Dec. 3 with one of the toughest missions any division had been assigned. Relieving the 44th Inf. Div. of part of its sector, the 100th was to drive northeast and breach the Maginot Line near Bitche, heart of the entire fortifications system.

With the 398th jumping off towards Puberg and Wingen, the division launched its new offensive. The regiment's 2nd Bn. wheeled into Puberg that day, but 1st Bn. ran into stiff opposition at strongly-held Wingen.

Artillery softened up Wingen with heavy shelling while the 398th occupied Rosteig against moderate opposition. The regiment finally smashed into Wingen Dec. 5, occupying both the town and the surrounding high ground. The 397th Inf. and 100th Recon Troop, both attached to the 45th Div., were ordered to fight to the division sector. On the way back, they captured Rothbach, Reipertswiller Lichtenberg and Wimmeneau.

OCCUPYING Wingen, 3rd Bn., 399th, passed through the 398th and carried the division's advance to the north astride the Wingen-Lemberg road. Meeting no enemy resistance, the advance roared forward. Next day, by 0930 Goetzenbruck and Sarreinsberg had been taken.

Wingen sur Moder

The next morning, we discovered our breakfast for the week would be fresh baked croissants, chocolate croissants, and baguettes still warm from the bakery, whole grain and seeded baguettes, yogurt, granola, cereal, cheeses, cold cuts, orange and grapefruit juice, fruit, and wonderful coffee (with heated milk). I really enjoyed getting up every morning and getting to talk to different members of the tour over breakfast.

This first day, Liz and I were sitting there munching, when Bob Heller steps up, whom we hadn't met yet. He said, "was your father in the Engineers?" Yeap. "Was his name Moose?" Yeap! It was so exciting to meet someone who was not only in the Engineers, not only in Company C, but knew Dad. He remembered that Dad had made it to one of the reunions, and the buzz had gone out, "Moose is here." "Moose is here."

After breakfast, we gathered at the bus in the cold clammy weather. Our first stop was the bank for Euros. The teller didn't speak English and wasn't at all used to changing money and calculating the rates, so we created a long daunting line for her first thing Monday morning. I was at the end of the line, so I wandered out to check the ATM again, and luckily it had opened up, so we ducked out and used that with great success.

Our first full day in France took us first to Wingen, where we were to meet another veteran of the Century Division, Cal Norman, traveling through Europe with his sons. He and his company had been captured during the fighting in Wingen.

We arrived in Wingen before they did, so we went to visit a local family's private collection of things found in the woods and fields all around the town. Their main business was a motorcycle shop, which faced the street.

Behind the shop, is their bed and breakfast, with their collection in the front room--complete with pictures of Wingen from both the German and the American sides. Her husband took some of our tour to see some other things he'd found that he had stored in the garage.

Their bed and breakfast is Relais Nature. Considering how warm and welcoming they were, I'm sure it would be a nice place to stay.

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Cal Norman's Story

Cal Norman arrived and guided us to the spot where the fighting had happened and where his company--Company A--had been captured. He told their story in his book--Whatever Happened to Company A.

We got out of the bus to see the area. This is one of the houses in the story--with Bob Heller posing. Bill Glazier is walking up the road that leads to the stream and hill beyond.

All the houses are neat as a pin, lovely small gardens, lush nicely painted stucco. It's so hard to get an inkling of what it was like 60 years ago.

John and Armer Alcorn, John Day, and Liz and I go down the road to see the hill where the fighting started.

Cal's story was that they were up on that ridge--Kirschberg(?)--on the nose of the ridge in the late afternoon after marching all day. They could see the town, which was their objective. They didn't move until the Regimental commander insisted. They'd had no food, it was late in the day, they were exhausted. The 1st Battalion commander refused until there was a direct order to move. As Cal said, "the bastard just wanted to sleep in town." So they came down off the ridge to move across the pasture--but there were no scouts, not enough security.

The company crossed the creek in the pasture, which is the Moder River, when the Germans opened up with mortars, artillery, 20 mm cannon, and machine guns. The first group was decimated, 1 killed, 16 wounded. They ran forward to the rise.

They spotted the backs of the three houses on the edge of town and dove into the cellars without taking any precautions. The Germans knew it and fired into the buildings. Then threw a concussion grenade into the basement where they'd dove in. Others saw it happening but couldn't shoot or they'd hit their own men.

Cal was unconscious. When he came to, he couldn't walk. His buddies put him on a door and carried him out to a German aide station. He waited there until he was transported to a hospital south of Berlin.

In February, the Russians were closing in and they evacuated the prison hospital to a railroad car. The car was going further south and east to a POW camp. It stopped in Dresden, weeks after the bombing. The guard said to them, "don't show yourselves. The train might be attacked." Even though it was falling apart, the German bureaucracy still worked. They were counting materiel, stacking things up, even though the Russions were coming. They followed discipline to the bitter end. Mindless records and order.

The camp was liberated by the 3rd Ukraine Division. But they wouldn't let the Americans go. So they heard rumors that there were Americans in range, so they commandeered a baby carriage one night and snuck out through a hold in the camp fence and started walking west. A Russian truck actually gave them a lift along the road to where some Americans were holding the remnants of a bridge. They wheeled their babby carriage over teh bridge, safe to teh American sector. That was May 9. . Finally they stumbled into the 69th Division holding a bridge on May 9.

Wingen Ceremony

Near Left: Lois Glazier, Bob Alcorn, Bill Glazier. Back row: Cal Norman's family, Helen and Bob Hamer, Shep, John, Mike and Isabelle Escalera, George Byrnes, Harriet Carrell, Mayor Fischbach, Ed Carrell, Bill McNutt, Bob Heller (behind), Liz, Bill Moseley, Lise Pommois talking to Cal Norman

Our next stop was the Wingen Town Hall for a wreath laying. They flew the Stars and Stripes along with the French flag on the village hall in honor of V-E Day.

Mayor Fischbach graciously welcomed us with some wine in the reception room. He read a wonderful speech in English (which I hope to transcribe some of).

Lois and Bill Glazier, Mayor Fischbach, his son, and a son of Cal Norman on the far right.

We went outside for the wreath laying ceremony at the war memorial

Bob Alcorn, Bill Glazier, Mayor Fischbach, and Armer, with Mike Escalera on the right.

The monument, of the local red sandstone, listed the names of Wingen citizens who had died for France, with a different war on each face.

The mayor told us that when the Germans had occupied the area and declared that Alsace Lorraine was once more German soil, they had destroyed all the monuments such as this, defacing it and throwing it off in the woods.

This region had been declared part of Germany--anyone with French names had to change it, the town names were Germanified, and the young men were conscripted as "German citizens." I believe someone said that 30,000 were conscripted for the Russian front and only 500 returned.

Lunch in Wingen

We had lunch in Wingen at the Relais des Chateaux (1, Rue Principale, 67290 Wingen sur Moder). It dawns on us that meals take three hours in France! But also that they are wonderful.

We shared the room with a troop of foresters. Since we're in the middle of le Parc Naturel Regional des Vosges du Nord, I guess that makes sense, but it was fun to see them in their uniforms taking their three hour lunch. On the map of Wingen it shows several forestry buildings. All their little green forest cars are lined up in the picture above.

There was much crystal, linen, and silverware and many courses of wonderful food. The soup had little balls in it--I'd swear they were matzoh balls. We shared giant tureens of soup and relish trays of a variety of salads, beef, and ice cream with a raspberry (?) sauce. Their ad says that they serve Alsatian specialties.

And then the TV crew shows up! They wanted to interview Cal Norman by the memorial across the street from the restaurant. They also interviewed Nat for quite some time.

Armer, Lise, and Bob Heller observe from the stairs. Nat, Cal Norman, Bill Glazier, and Mike study the plaque while the TV crew focuses.

One slight problem with their carefully posed picture is that the plaque that they are studying is dedicated to regiments in the 70th Infantry Division, who were here for the second liberation of Wingen after Nordwind had pushed the front back the other way.

GOETZENBRUCK

On the way back to Bitche, we passed through Goetzenbruck. Since there was quite a contingent of people interested in the 325th Engineers, Company C, they stopped the bus and let us out to look around.

Bob Heller was in the third platoon of company C, Wendy Smith's father had been the driver of the commander of Company C, Captain Bagley, and of course Liz and I were interested in the second platoon.

Bob said that the schoolyard at the top of the hill was where the kitchen for Company C was located.

Standing in the same spot, we turned and looked down the valley--but I can't remember what was down there now. I hope I have it on tape! Bob talks to Diane Byrnes.

We went up the side street, looking for the church, when Bob spotted the house where he'd been billeted.

Across the street was the church where Bob saw a little girl killed by artillery, and her father carrying her away.

Wendy Smith and Bob are walking on the sidewalk.

Background from the Stars and Stripes pamphlet, The Story of the Century (1945):

ON March 15, 1945, the division launched a history-shattering operation which ended its three-month non-offensive stand. As part of the Seventh Army, Centurymen jumped off on the drive which was synchronized with Third Army action to wipe out all German resistance in the Rhineland south of the Moselle. The 100th now returned to the work it left unfinished in December — the task of taking the tough Maginot Line fort city of Bitche.

In a three-regiment operation, the move was rapid, complete. Artillery was withheld and all was quiet when the Century began its surge at 0500.

The 397th steamed ahead to capture the high ground north of the fortress and grabbed Schorbach by noon. The 399th, at the same time, attacked Reyersviller Ridge to the southwest. In this fast action, Germans on the western side of the elevation were trapped and open for other 399th elements which kicked off 25 minutes later.

The frontal assault against the once impregnable line was made by the 398th which sneaked forward to seize Freudenberg Farms, Fort Freudenberg and Fort Schiesseck on the high ground northeast of Bitche. The engineers had done their demolition work well in December and only small resistance was met at temporary Schiesseck trenches outside the blasted cement pillboxes. Mines were numerous but most of these had been emplaced in the winter months and were not buried. Engineers cleared heavy road blocks and filled in huge craters along the approach routes.

Next day, the 398th climaxed the "powerhouse" play by marching into the city, with 2nd Bn. leading the advance, as 1st Bn. assaulted Fort Otterbiel. Seventy-five PWs were taken in house-to-house scouring. CPs were set up in short order. First U.S. flag to fly over the city was given Capt. Thomas Garrahan, Brooklyn, N.Y., Co. E CO, by a former American resident living in Bitche.

In the closing round of the two-day fray, elements of the 398th and 399th — which had been moving east upon Camp Bitche — joined the 781st Tank Bn. to clear pillboxes and rout 70 Germans.

With the entrance of these troops in Bitche, some 200 years of military defensive history was shattered. The city first assumed strategic importance in the middle 1600's when King Louis XIV ordered the French engineer Vauban to erect a citadel on the city's central hill as part of a defense series. In the closing days of the War of 1870, this bastion held off the German assault up to the French capitulation. After the last war, France built the $500,000,000 Maginot Line and, at Bitche, constructed the strongest layout its the southern chain of the system. This fortress held off the German invaders in 1940 until the French armistice.

THE Century Division's occupation of Bitche was the first in the bastion's history. Leading up to it was the terrific December siege and the preparation immediately before the March undertaking. For the latter operation an outstanding contribution was the XII TAC blasting of the targets in close support of troops. Artillery also played a major role in firing counter-battery rounds just after the take-off, German artillery and mortar positions on Otterbiel were silenced almost immediately after the move began.

In its brief stay at Bitche, the division received the gratitude of residents in a formal ceremony at which Gen. Burress became the first Citizen of Honor in the town's history. Following a unanimous vote of the town council, Mayor Paul Fischer presented the general with a document entitling him to the honor in "testimony of gratitude in behalf of citizens of Bitche" for the American division's freeing of the city.

Ceremony at Bitche

Our last adventure of V-E Day was to attend the military ceremonies at Bitche, where the Camp de Bitche outside town houses an artillery unit of the French army.

It was all a bit mysterious to the uninitiated. First the rank and file were awarded medals as flag bearers lined the upper terrace--including Nat with the Century Division flag and John Day with the American flag.

There were two bands--so there were lots of fanfares.

Then there was the wreath laying and renditions of the Marseillaise and the Star-Spangled Banner.

The rank and file marched out and the officers (?) in grey sauntered in for some more medals.

The wreathes were placed before a striking war memorial in the center of town, which represented the military and the civilian casualties of the three big conflicts to sweep through the town--the Franco-Prussian War, World War I, and World War II.

In the center are three comrades, lowering the mortally wounded soldier to the ground. To the left is the wife and family, mourning the soldier but also a symbol that life and the native village will live on. On the far left, is France liberated from her chains, a symbol of World War II, and next to her is Lorraine liberated during World War I. On the right, out of sight, are symbols of the Citadel resisting during the 1870-71 seige.

Everyone involved--soldiers, officers, men in suits, us--were then invited to a champagne reception in the town hall. There were a lot of suits and spiffy uniforms, and some others dressed more like we were.

Dinner on the second night was at the hotel--another wonderful and long meal filled with mysteries--pork loin that turned out to be ham hocks and alcoholic sundaes.

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