US War Memorials Overseas

My summer trip to France was a great success, visiting many sites connected with Operation Dragoon, Napoleon's return, Burgundy, and Paris with friends.

US War Memorials Overseas was one of the main research sites I used to map out my trip. France is notable in that the country as a whole continues to celebrate heroes and events of the two world wars that took such a terrible toll. The history is complicated of course, but it is heartening to see how many memorials are in place, especially for US forces and people. With no world war battles taking place on mainland USA, there are very few artifacts around, for example New York. Yet throughout France, there are not only memorials in place, but memorials that are actively cared for by French volunteers.

So, for my trip, visiting the memorials was a way to gain insight into the locations and people involved in the battles, a way to remember and call out their names, and a way to thank France for their commitment to maintaining the memorials.

For example, the trip started with an overnight flight to Nice - and the first memorial was a plaque at the airport dedicated to six US engineer infantrymen who died de-mining the harbor of Nazi explosives.

Amazingly, we happened to run across a memorial not in the database. During the Allied liberation of Southern France, Operation Rugby was the parachute drop part of Dragoon with some 9,000 troops landing about 5 miles inland from the CAMEL beachhead. This was led by General Robert Frederick, original leader of the famed Devil's Brigade. Upon landing and gathering his forces (as in Normandy, the troops missed the drop zones by wide margins), General Frederick set up his headquarters in a farmhouse in La Motte. Seeing this plaque on the outside wall of the house as we drove by on the narrow country road, we slammed on the brakes and were able to take some pictures.  Once back home I contacted the US War Memorial Overseas site manager and as you can see, the additional memorial is now live.

Very happy to have added to the memorial database.