doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Places I Should have Visited

Making a documentary on our Air Division in 1957, I got my first look at Verdun from 20,000 feet when the pilot of our Shooting Star (T-33) said at the end of a shoot over Germany, We've got fuel to burn off, how'd you like to see Verdun? Spring had made the countryside a verdant green but underneath as visible as traffic lights were cheek-to-jowl craters as far as I could see. Cure for anyone with notions of glory of combat.

Ian, those would be great places to visit as well and are on my list for places I want to walk though and on and, again, "feel" the place. And although I have made driven up and down the east coast a few times, as Humpty so accurately points, sometime discretion is the better part of valor when road trips and family members are involved. LOL

Haunting is what I felt at Verdun. It was like each of those crater is an open grave and many of them are today as men buried by shell blast have been exposed by time and weather.

I could not decide if I could feel them or was just feeling the scale of carnage. Think of miles of shell holes, miles fought for over and over again with no end of the war in sight. I understand why the French refused to attack at one point. Defend yes, attack no more. They were used up as a combat force and had not rotation system to get them back into shape as a fighting force.

Dunkirk was inspiring because you knew they got out and lived to fight another day. The D-Day invasion sites were sobering because you knew the cost to gain that foothold was steep and had been paid for by men in blood. But the trench warfare type of field works and the shell holes a hundred years later at Verdun was just haunting. There are areas of France still closed to humans because there is just too much un-exploded ordinance in and on the ground.

Sometimes going out of your way pays and sometimes it cost. I'd rather see it for myself. History, in books, does not give you a scale for events. Think about a system of trenches from Boston to DC with men fighting in them for years. Not all over, all the time but in spurts, in waves and in floods of men. Never mind the great battles with thousands killed in hours for no real gains.

There are a few places that are long gone like woods and fishing holes that I've thought I should've poked around in when the chance was still there. There are also a few folks that I've figured I shouldn't have just passed by, but slowed down to spend a little time with.

Man, isn't that the truth!

I've been fortunate to spend time, shoot, hunt etc with a few folks here. Supported a number of gunsmiths and gun dealers. Others I'd like to spend time with . . .others, spend money with if my disposable income didn't have limits.

As for places connected to war: I'm especially glad I visited Gettysburg. You stand at the high water mark of the Confederacy, where Pickett led his charge, and you're either struck by the raw courage of it, or the folly, or both. I've been on the beach at Dieppe, where so many brave Canadians died. I've also seen the D-Day beaches and Ste Mere-Eglise, the first town liberated in France (where Red Buttons hung from the church steeple in "The Longest Day").

My service in the UK was mostly at a place called RAF Molesworth, which was a WWII US bomber base. (The Joint Analysis Center is now located there.) Reminded me of "Twelve O'clock High". Right next to the base is a church missing most of its steeple. Crippled bomber came in too low. I was over there during the 50th anniversary of WWII years. The JAC is a secure facility, so everyone enters through the same door. And every morning as we walked through that door, there was a sign posted about the mission flown by the Molesworth squadron that day 50 years ago. Target, how many aircraft, etc. And how many planes and men were lost. You see that day after day for a couple weeks, it pretty much imprints the sacrifices we made for freedom in WWII.

Larry, if the memorial celebration was of Bomber Command in London, on the same day I attended with my wife and oldest daughter a memorial unveiling of a tablet on a pedestal in a Dutch village where the bomber my father piloted was shot down early in the war, my father only survivor.

Finally visited Val Trompia a few years ago and wangled a visit thru the Beretta museum thanks to an acquaintance I'd made at my previous employment (which had NOTHING to do with firearms, except the police kind). Also visited the Fausti sisters' showroom and factory. Did I see anything I wanted? You bet I did! Cost me a few well-spent $Ks when I got back to the US....

Hitchhiked to Stonehenge w/my wife from Salisbury one summer morning in 1968. Nobody there at dawn; you could walk right in. But the damn Russians invaded Czechoslovakia that same morning and we mostly got an airshow--Canberras, Lightnings, ugly ole Phantom IIs dragging a cloud of smog, RB-66s, BUFFs, even Meteor NFs! The Russian air defense radar must have looked like there was a very high wall over to the West! I got a sore neck from ducking every time a Canberra or B-57 went over at 0'!

My West Pointer brother walked me over Antietam/Sharpsburg over one long Autumn day a few years ago and explained what happened there one summer day. My "take away" was, no matter how hot and heavy the political rhetoric gets here, let's NOT EVER do THAT again!

Gettysburg is beautiful and on PCN every July they televise Battle Walks where federal rangers guide and explain to a whole host of people from all over the country what specifically happened at this part of the battle field on a specific day. The programs are excellent and they give you a type of 3D type of vision and awareness. Its amazing how just a small wrinkle in the ground can block your field of vision and a field of fire.

My trips to Europe have always been special as Europe is beautiful and filled with great people. My only regret is and a very big regret I never got over to see England. Been to Spain, Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, France, Tunisia, Greece, but never England.

Mike A, we're as close now as ever before to "doing that again". I'm with you. We have to guard against "doing it again". As we have found out, both in the sixties and in the last week, it isn't going to be the traditional warmongers that will be responsible. I live little more than a short walk from Antietam and Gettysburg, but none of the libs today have taken that walk.