Today we got to ride in a 1944 Army jeep.
But before I get to that, let me explain the title of today’s blog. We left Bayeux quite early, because we had a long day of driving before us. When we left, the fog was so thick that you couldn’t see more than 200 or so feet in front of you. As we drove away from the coast, the fog started to burn off, and soon we were able to see the farm fields we were driving past. Out of the haze we noticed figures walking around, and it looked to us as if those figures were carrying guns. As it turns out, they were, because once the haze lifted even further, we were treated to a sight very common in our neck of the woods, guys carrying rifles and dressed in blaze orange.
That’s right—those figures we saw outlined in the fog? Hunters, possibly going after duck or wabbit, but more than likely going after pheasant. We saw quite a few of them today, along with another sight you usually DON’T see in our neck of the woods...men relieving themselves along the side of the road.
C’est la vie en France, I guess!
Now, our primary task today (aside from driving 400 or so kilometers to Ducey, our home for the next few days) was to visit the town of Marolles les Braults and accomplish two things—meet some nice people and visit the site where Joseph “Cherry” Roberts (he grew up on Cherry Street in Negaunee) was killed in a tank battle in August of 1944. And both of those tasks were accomplished well beyond our wildest dreams.
In Marolles, we actually met up with a group of people, including an old friend from last year, Jean-Paul Pitou and his wife Christiane. But we were glad to meet a local historian by the name of Fabrice Avoie, who’s about our age and has written a book on the battle. Along with his wife and several neighbors, he took us out to the field where the battle occurred, the field where Joseph “Cherry” Roberts of Negaunee was killed—
Fabrice and several local citizens got together to put up a monument to all the Americans killed there, including Roberts—
After talking about that for a bit, we were then treated by another of the people we met, a farmer named Pierre, to take a ride in his pride and joy, a fully restored (and fully working) 1944 Army jeep named after George Patton’s daughter Helen—
It’s part of a collection he has of stuff from that battle. He was 6 when it occurred, and he’s never forgotten the sacrifices that the Americans made while liberating his parents’ farm (and the entire town of Marolles), as was evidenced by the fact that while driving us around in the jeep, he had a young man riding along in the back seat holding a giant American flag.
No, really. I’m not kidding.
Loraine and I both really wish we could’ve spent more time in Marolles—we had even been invited out to lunch—but because we still had a long drive ahead of us, we had to sadly say “au revoir” (although we sure hope to return in the future!) and hit the road. Although, you know, if you have to hit a road, it’s not bad hitting one with views like this—
That was typical of what we saw on the drive to Ducey this afternoon. Ducey is our home base for the next four days. It’s a town about the size of Munising, and it looks just like this—
Like Munising, it sits on water (in Ducey’s case, La Selune, a small river). But unlike Munising, one of Ducey’s big tourist attractions is this manor, built in the 1600s.
Tomorrow, we visit a few new places and a couple of towns we went to last year, including Mortain, which sits high atop a hill and has some of the most gorgeous views in Europe. I’m thinking we won’t get to ride in a jeep again, though.
(jim@wmqt.com)
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