Audie Murphy Memorial *Verdun Battle Sites*Notre Dame
We took a longer than necessary drive today from Alsace to Paris so we could enjoy some WWI and WWII history. Our first stop just outside Colmar was the Audie Murphy memorial my Mom told me to look for. Audie Murphy single handed held up several German troops from advancing into Paris protecting his company and saving their lives. He even survived the war to be honored. It made things real seeing these tiny French villages that were caught in the middle of the cross fire.
Also on our way to Paris we stopped by the WWI Verdun battle sites. Verdun was a battle that lasted for 300 days and killed more than 300,000 German and French soldiers. This year is the 100th anniversary of the battle - there were many remembrances all over in honor of this anniversary- remembrances to both German and French soldiers. It was sobering looking at the crater marked landscape where thousands of artillery shells decimated the land. Craters as big as cars EVERYWHERE. We saw the trenches where the soldiers hunkered down and the cement bunkers which protected them when they used their automatic weapons. There was also a cemetery to honor the many solder's whose graves were the battlefields.
We rolled in Paris around 7:00 at night, just in time to grab some groceries, eat a gallate (a savory crepe) and walk to Notre-Dame.
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| Audie Murphy Memorial |
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| Verdun Cemetary |
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