Living in the Footsteps of War

In Rennes, I live in the Quartier Patton – so named for the American general whose army marched down its principal boulevard in 1944. Agnès points out the houses that are lovely along that boulevard are those spared by the devastation of battle; the others were rebuilt in the immediate post-war period with minimal architectural beauty, an unimaginable luxury.


On the bluff overlooking the Val André there is a concrete bunker set into the hillside beside the national walking trail. The Breton coast is pock marked with them, ridiculously expensive to remove, so a silent reminder of what to some must be a recent past. Indeed, every village has a central monument, usually a towering statue of a soldier or a saint, with a long list of the parishioners who died in the Great War. Beneath is added a shorter list of the dead from 1939-45.




In the little parish church of Saint Pois, Agnès and I puzzled over the plaque on the church wall that listed victims of the war of 1939, a list of mostly women. Saint Pois is just inland of Avranches and south of Saint Lô, a heavily battled terrain in early June 1944. We wonder if these non-combatants died in the bombing of the region, in the field by field fighting to gain a foothold in occupied Europe, or as resistants or reprisals. I almost find the courage to stop an elderly woman after Mass to ask the story behind the list, but for once, decide to research quietly. Today I read in the history of the 4th Infantry Division, “The battle for St. Pois dragged on for five days before the division overcame the stubborn enemy opposition. The surrender of St. Pois coincided with a major German counterattack westward toward Avranches in an effort to split the advancing Americans. The 4th, still near St. Pois, reinforced and stabilized the center of the American line. The enemy offensive, though initially overwhelming, eventually deteriorated.”



On our way home from Saint Pois, Agnès’ friend Marie directs her through twisting country roads to a small village, outside of which we find the Brittany American cemetery, one of many sprinkled across this land.


The wounds of war may heal, but a land is marked and scarred by the ravages of battle. For those whose homeland has not born the burden of such agony, it is sobering to walk in a world that remembers the whine of warplanes and the thunder of tanks, the scream of machine guns, and of men. My Papa’s generation carries the scars of a youth marred by the blood of friends spilled in the fields and orchards of home. It is an urgent obligation of each generation to clearly impart the truth of that reality to the next, and to remember that there are new graves dug every hour of every day as war continues to harvest the youth of a new generation in lands far from home, lands whose homes even now are burning.