Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Main art sculpture at cemetery

One of the things the United States Government does extremely well is designing, creating and maintaining its military cemeteries overseas. The one at Normandy is no exception. It is beautiful, the graves were dress-right-dressed and the landscaping is awesome. Throughout the grounds there were crews at work, keeping everything meticulously groomed.

It takes a cemetery to really grasp how many soldiers were killed in the early stage of WW2. When I think of increments of soldiers I think in terms of platoons, companies, battalions etc. I have see these sorts of numbers march by in parades and used the recollection as a frame of reference . Looking out across the vista of Crosses and Stars of David, the sheer volume was mind-boggeling and staggered the imagination. Keep in mind that these are soldiers buried overseas and only a portion of the ones lost early in the war.

When I was assigned in Germany we liked to like to go to Metz, in Northern France. They have a flea market that we loved to visit. One Saturday afternoon, on our way back to Kaiserslautern, my wife and daughters had to find a Restroom. We had gone to a rest-stop on the way down and the "WC" was primitive with a slat wall separating the male and female portions. If that wasn’t enough the facility had holes in the floor, with footprints, where the user was expected to squat.

Anyway a rest-stop was not an option for my girls and they began complaining. As we passed St Avold I noticed a sign for a military cemetery and pulled in there. As my family went into the American standard facilities, I decided to look around and wondered where the graves were. The snow was falling and as I walked around a high hedge, the panorama exploded in front of me. On rolling hills, for over a mile stretched the perfectly aligned markers. On a carpet of snow I could hear only the squish of flakes breaking the deathly silence. The effect was a profoundly moving experience. I liked the cemetery at Normandy, however my favorite will always be the one at St Avold.