From the Archives: German Bunkers and Reinforced Concrete
At this time last year, My Own True Love and I took a D-Day tour put on by the fabulous National World War II Museum in New Orleans. With the 75th anniversary of D-Day marching toward us, it seemed like a good time to re-run the blog posts I wrote about the trip. Settle in: for the next few weeks it’s going to be D-Day in the Margins.
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At dinner on our first night in Normandy, My Own True Love and I ended up in conversation with two men at a neighboring table, a pair of British history buggs who were also touring D-Day sites in Normandy. They had already spend several days looking at the remains of the battles over Normandy, and one of them made a comment that stuck with me for the rest of our time in Normandy: “The Germans sure loved reinforced concrete.”
We soon found he was right. The remains of German bunkers and gun batteries bite into the landscape of Normandy: squat ugly concrete constructions with none of the grace of ruins from earlier ages.(1)
In our first day of touring alone we saw two fine examples: The Grand Bunker Atlantic Wall Museum at Ouistreham and the German gun battery at Longues-sur-Mer.
I must admit, the gun battery at Longues-sur-Mer was of only passing interest to me. It was the site of a key incident in The Longest Day.(3) Seeing it gave me a sense of physical place, but did not change my understanding of the event. The serious D-Day buffs on the tour were more enthralled, and spent a bit of time quoting their favorite lines from The Longest Day to each other in situ.
The Grand Bunker Atlantic Wall Museum, also the site of a memorable incident in The Longest Day, was a different experience altogether. The concrete tower was the German headquarters in charge of gun batteries that covered the entrance to the river Orne. The top floor was a 360-degree observation post overlooking “Sword Beach”, where the British landed on D-Day. On D-Day, the tower housed two officers and fifty men, who formed the last pocket of resistance after the British landed. For three days the German garrison held off Allied attempts to take the tower with heavy machine gun fire and grenades thrown from the roof of the Bunker. On June 9, the German garrison surrendered to Lieutenant Bob Orrell and three other members of of the Royal Engineers, who blew open the armored door of the bunker. (A four-hour process.)
Today, the fully restored tower is a museum that gives visitors an understanding of the cramped and claustrophobic experience of life in a bunker. The interior of the bunker is a multi-story corkscrew of small rooms on uneven levels that house a radio transmission room, an electrical generator, ammunition storage, bunk rooms, the original range finder in the observation post, and a medical bay that makes a Civil War hospital look like a modern surgical theater by comparison. In addition to German artifacts, the museum includes exhibits about the creation of the German system of coastal defenses and fortifications known as the Atlantic Wall. (4)
An illuminating stop by any history buff standard.
(1)The Romans loved their concrete, too. They used it to build temples and coliseums and the renowned Roman roads throughout an empire that stretched from Persia to Britain. And while I suspect the people they conquered hated their Roman invaders as much as the people of Normandy hated the Germans,(2) the concrete constructions they left behind them are beautiful.
(2)Based on the regular revolts against Roman rule from one end of the empire to the other.
(3)Both the book by Cornelius Ryan and the 1962 movie based on the book–a three hour blockbuster with an ensemble cast that included virtually every male star in Hollywood.
(4)Built between 1942 and 1944 using conscripted French labor. By June 1944 the Atlantic Wall extended eight hundred miles with some nine thousand fortified positions. Not that it did the Germans any good.
From the Archives: Lest We Forget
At this time last year, My Own True Love and I took a D-Day tour put on by the fabulous National World War II Museum in New Orleans. With the 75th anniversary of D-Day marching toward us, it seemed like a good time to re-run the blog posts I wrote about the trip. Settle in: for the next few weeks it’s going to be D-Day in the Margins.
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On Memorial Day, My Own True Love and I make sure we attend a service in honor of the fallen. This year we were in Normandy on Memorial Day, enjoying a D-Day tour. In some ways, the entire tour was an extended Memorial Day experience, defined by General John Logan, the holiday’s founder, as “cherishing tenderly the memory of our heroic dead, who made their breasts a barricade between our country and its foe.”
My Own True Love and I expected the Sunday before Memorial Day to be a gut-wrenching experience. The schedule included attending the official D-Day memorial service at the American Cemetery near Omaha Beach.* It soon became clear that the official service was too distant to have much impact. Instead our guide led us through the cemetery, telling us stories about fallen soldiers, love, loss, and heroism. The National World War II Museum, which organized the tour, had provided a flower arrangement and a large number of white roses. The members of the tour improvised a small service of our own. One member suggested that we leave the arrangement on the grave of an unknown soldier. Another suggested that the veterans in our group present the arrangement. It was a powerful moment. Tears were shed. (In fact, I am tearing up typing this after the fact.) As a ceremony, it had all the impact that the official celebration did not.(Leading me to suspect that intimacy is an essential ingredient in a Memorial Day service.) Afterwards, we scattered to place individual white roses on graves.**
As I walked back to the bus, I heard the sound of a lone bugle playing “Taps”–the end of the official celebration. I stopped to listen with a lump in my throat and an ache in my chest.
Remember the fallen. Thank the living. Pray for peace.
*Not the first time we’ve visited an official American cemetery abroad. It is always a moving experience. The Visitors’ Center at the cemetery in Normandy was closed due to the ceremony. Rumor has it that the exhibits are excellent. Quite frankly, I don’t think I could have handled any more.
**I would have liked to place mine on the grave of one of the four women buried in the cemetery. (I am pleased to say that one of the male members of the tour asked where they were buried before I could.) Unfortunately, they were all buried in a portion of the cemetery that was roped off to protect the ground due to recent weather conditions. While I am perfectly willing to kick open a door when there is a good reason, this didn’t seem to be one of these times.
Road Trip Through History: Eureka Springs, Arkansas
If I were smarter, I’d have written this blog post last week and invited you to attend Books in Bloom, a literary festival in Eureka Springs at which I was a guest speaker on Sunday. Put on by the local library foundation, Books in Bloom is held the third Sunday in May and is a great event for authors and readers alike. Put it on your calendar for next year. I won’t be one of the speakers,* but I have no doubt that there will be someone on the program that you will be eager to hear.
I was on the flight home when it occurred to me that I should introduce you to Eureka Springs, which is one of my favorite places in the world. Here goes:
Eureka Springs, Arkansas, has been a tourist destination from the day it was founded in 1879.
The limestone hills on which Eureka Springs is built are riddled with caves, sinkholes, and natural mineral springs. Long before Europeans arrived, the Native American peoples of the area believed in the healing powers of the springs, especially the large spring that became the center of town, known as Basin Spring.
Eureka Springs’ development as a spa town began when Dr. Alvah Jackson discovered the medicinal properties of Basin Spring on a hunting trip in 1858. For years Jackson used water from the spring in his medical practice, selling bottles of it as “Dr. Jackson’s Eye Water”. In the spring of 1879, Jackson brought Judge L.B. Saunders to the spring. Saunders had a painful skin disease that several doctors had been unable to cure. The waters improved the judge’s condition so dramatically that he moved his family to a camp by the spring in May, 1879.
Others soon followed. By summer, hundreds of people had come to the camp town around Basin Spring, drawn by reports of miraculous cures. Named on the 4th of July and incorporated in August, the newly formed town grew quickly. Within a year, Eureka Springs had 4,000 permanent residents (twice the current population) and as many as 15,000 transient visitors.
Retired Civil War general and former Arkansas governor Powell Clayton saw the potential for an elegant resort in the rough boomtown. A civil engineer by training, he founded the Eureka Springs Improvement Company, the Eureka Springs and North Arkansas Railway, and the Crescent Hotel, which was considered America’s most luxurious resort hotel at the time. By the 1890s, Eureka Springs had a permanent population of 10,000. More than 35 luxury hotels, as well as boarding houses, and cottages, were built to house the thousands of visitors who came to take the waters each year.Between 1888 and 1904, several trains each day brought visitors from across the country to take the waters of the sixty-three mineral springs from which the town takes its name. Hundreds reported cures, thanks to the benefits of fresh mountain air, clean spring water, and a regimen that included walking several miles each day up and down the hills of the town.
Around 1910, Americans lost their belief in spa cures and Eureka Springs entered a long period of economic decline. Eureka Springs became a tourist attraction again on a small scale in the 1950s when American families embraced the road trip. Motorists who came to see natural attractions like Blue Springs and the newly opened Pea Ridge battlefield enjoyed Eureka Springs’ eccentric Victorian style.
Today, tourists come to enjoy the charm of Victorian houses built into the side of a mountain, the strong arts community, and what innkeeper Faryl Kaye describes as the town’s “wackiness”.
The elegant spa town of the 1890’s is now a quirky arts colony, defined in large part by its unusual mix of architecture and topography.
*Authors enjoy themselves so much that the festival organizers do not allow speakers to return two years in a row.