Albert

Albert, France, is smaller than Cambrai, and the town square offers one of the loveliest cathedrals with a gold statue of Mary holding up the baby Jesus. As the War Historian Gordon put it when he gave us directions to this particular cathedral, you can’t not see it – you will simply spot it because even on a dreary day the gold is bright on the tall steeple in the center of town. But the sun was shining the day we arrived.

Inside, I saw pictures and a model of how desperately damaged the church was during the war, with the lovely statue hanging nearly upside down by wires in the most precarious position. To look at it today you’d think it was never in harms way. Since the Germans were paying for the reconstruction, the townspeople demanded everything be restored to its original beauty. A stiff penalty, I know, but it’s hard not to want things back to the way they had been.

The tunnels beneath the cathedral offered extensive information and artifacts from the war, complete with galleries of the trenches. The halls echoed with sound of constantly running pumps to remove water collecting on duckboards. I guess you’d get used to it and occasionally sleep through the clamor of that and the guns and the cannon fire, but what an adjustment. And if the size of the rats depicted in these recreated scenes was accurate (the size of a small cat) you’d be grateful these were only models of the way men were forced to live, not the real thing.

We picnicked on sandwiches we bought at a local grocer. Did you know in France they have the patrons pack their own bags? You can bring your own bags or they’ll sell (plastic) bags, but the checker just sits there watching you pack your things and won’t touch the items belonging to the next person until you’ve cleared all your purchases away. Basically everyone is staring at you, waiting for you to finish so they can move on. For an introvert this is highly stressful. 🙂 I didn’t see any “Express” lines, so I guess people are in less of a hurry over there.

Anyway, our picnic location for the day was under a bright sun beside a huge crater left by British sappers (those who dug the tunnels) where they detonated an area beneath a line of German trenches. This was part of the bombardment leading up to the Battle of the Somme, which plays an important part in the ending of my book. So that’s a hint at which of the three options I’ll be going with (of those I mentioned yesterday). For more details I guess you’ll just have to read the book when it comes out next fall. 🙂
My husband and I were amazed at the size of this crater, left by bombs that, compared to today’s firepower, would have seemed primitive. But after seeing the size of this, it’s little wonder so many men died. Bullets, grenades, cannon fire were just as deadly even then.
The red you see at the base of the cross, above, are more poppy wreaths, left by descendants or loved ones of those who were lost in battle in the area.
That afternoon we visited an American memorial. Although it’s hard to tell from the picture, that’s an American flag flying right there in Northern France, amid so many graves of fallen Americans. It seemed so amazing to me that Americans came here, far from home, to defend land that didn’t belong to us. I won’t go on any political rants, except to say it seems to me that our country is and always has been more than generous when it comes to defending the cause of freedom. It reminded me how proud I am to be an American.