Sharpe's Excellent Adventure

PART II   MRS. SHARPE’S DETOUR

    After a night in the hotel (chosen for convenience and price, not comfort), Mrs. Sharpe had enough.  Delaying our trip to the military museum, we boarded the train to IKEA in the Paris suburbs.  In an hour, Mrs. Sharpe was able to obtain enough home furnishings to satisfy her desire for basic bathroom safety, plus a couple of pillows for comfort.  We hit an electronics store on the way back to the hotel for fans.  Now, I can read enough French to get by, but my vocabulary isn’t all that large.  This leads to wonderful situations like standing in a store saying “Je voudrais acheter un …“ and then moving my head from side to side while blowing and twirling my finger in front of my nose.  Two minutes of charades finally led to the sales crew’s jumping up and down while screaming, “Ventilateur!  Ventilateur!”  Of course, no one bothers to tell me that the store works like the old Service Merchandise where you write down a number and then pay.  So, after not finding any boxes, I’m finally reduced to carrying around a fan until an employee pantomimes how to buy it.

    Eventually, we make our way out to the Hotel des Invalides, an old army hospital which is now a museum.  On the way, we spot the rear side of a statue.

    “That’s Vauban!,” I shout.  
    “Who?,” replies Mrs. Sharpe.
    “Sebastian le Prestre de Vauban, the famous siege expert,” I explain.
    “Are you sure?  It looks like the back of a fat musketeer.”

    Since it wasn’t in front of the Virgin Megastore, the Sons of Sharpe didn’t care.  Anyway, here’s Sharpe in front of a statue of his hero.



    Nearby is the Hotel.  This is a great destination for anyone interested in military history.  The very long section (it took us over three hours to complete) on the world wars is incredible.  It presents the conflicts as a continuum from 1870-1945, a format that I had never seen in a museum.  Besides artifacts (Arisaka, Panzerschreck, Goliath), there are a number of films and hundreds of photographs.  The museum has an equally impressive display on the French army of the 17th through 19th centuries.

    The north side of the Invalides.



    Artillery



    Renault FT-17



    Mannequin with uniform (one of hundreds)



    The dome over Napoleon's tomb



    Napoleon's tomb



NEXT--MRS. SHARPE PUTS HER FOOT DOWN

ROCK AND ROLL INTERLUDE

    The Sons of Sharpe reminded me that I forgot the most important part of the trip, our visit to Pere LaChaise cemetery.  Scads of famous people rest here:  Oscar Wilde; Edith Piaf; Jean de Brunhoff; Chopin; Rossini; and about half of Napoleon's marshals.  Not that my wretched offspring have any interest in them.  They only cared about seeing one particular grave.

    Now, when I think of cemeteries, I picture neat rows of headstones on a huge lawn.  Not Pere LaChaise, buddy.  The graves, crypts, sarcophagi, etc are stuck in there all chock-a-block, facing every direction.  Past the front entrance, there's not a single blade of grass in the place, just tomb after tomb after tomb with a few paths dividing them up into groups.  On top of this, when you enter the way we did, it's all up hill.  A steep hill.

     Nevertheless, we checked the map of famous tombs (which did not mention any of the marshals, by the way) and started climbing.  Eventually, we reached grave #30 in section 6.

PART V   IF IT’S TUESDAY, WE MUST BE UNDERGROUND IN BELGIUM

    One indicator that Europeans might be smarter than Americans is that they can drive in Europe.  I wouldn’t make it thirty yards without totaling whatever vehicle I was steering.  On some roads, there is opposing traffic on both sides of you along with special lanes for busses, special lanes for bikes, special lanes for motorcycles, special lanes for pedestrians, special lanes for wheelchairs, mopeds, pets, people on crutches and Belgians.  The road out of Maastricht was only one lane wide, but traffic ran in both directions.  Supposedly, the signs explained what to do, but instead of the normal sort of self-explanatory signs I’m used to, Europeans use Norse runes to direct traffic.  All I could figure out was that they have an inordinate concern for hydroplaning and zillions of animals cross the roads daily.

    That being said, we loaded into AoD's Volvo 460 (Vehicle-Car; Speed 5; Defense 1/1; TRANSPORT; SUPERIOR ARMOR 2; HIGH GEAR 2; IT’S A VOLVO!—If unit receives a face-up Destroyed marker, roll one die.  On 5-6, passengers dismount safely.) and headed off to Belgium.

    AoD’s Wheels



    The Belgian fortress of Eben-Emael lies just outside Maastricht, overlooking the Albert Canal.  Looking backwards at Verdun, the Belgians designed these linked pillboxes in the 1920's and built the installation in the 1930's.  The centerpiece of the fortress was a retractable cupola housing a pair of 120mm guns.  Several 75mm guns complemented them and the whole thing had a number of antitank guns and machine guns for close defense.  The point was to dominate the bridges across the Meuse and the Albert Canal.

    Even after questioning the guide, I still don't understand how anyone expected only two guns to interdict movement over seven bridges.  If you're going to spend millions to build a fortress covering acres of ground, why not put a couple of battleship turrets up there?  Or spend the money on several batteries of French Schneiders and proper transport?

    Anyway, the fortress was considered impenetrable, but the designers never considered the possibility of an airborne assault which is exactly what the Germans did.  Right at the beginning of the battle, a shell hit a bunch of welding tanks near an exposed telephone line.  Even though the fight went on for another 31 hours, the lack of communications doomed the defenders.  Shaped charges and flamethrowers took care of the fort's offensive weapons while the fallschirmjagers forced their way inside.

    AoD arranged for a guided tour that was very informative.  We spent three and a half hours trooping through the miles (excuse me, kilometers [excuse me, kilometres for ND]) of tunnels and looking at the museum exhibits.  The fortress had a garrison of 200 service troops and two battalions of 500 soldiers each.  The service troops stayed all the time while the battalions rotated each week.  The volunteer group that maintains Eben-Emael has furnished every room as it was historically besides providing glass cases of artifacts.

    Entrance to Eben-Emael



   25 pdr near entrance



    One of the many tunnels



   Full-scale model of a glider; very different than Allied



    One interesting aspect of the museum was the mannequins.  Now, unlike the US, every museum in Europe uses mannequins to display uniforms.  The Hotel des Invalides has purpose-built models.  The volunteers at Eben-Emael, with a fraction of the budget, seem to have acquired theirs wherever they could.  One particular German paratrooper had a distinctly feminine face and a noticeable swelling under the upper part of its harness.  I told AoD that this must have been one popular fallschirmjager.

    After the tour, we headed to a restaurant since AoD had now gone several hours without a french fry.  His mother, absolutely the sweetest lady I've ever met, treated us to lunch.  AoD convinced me to try a Dutch pancake, which believe me, is never going to grace the menu at IHOP.  There also seems to be some sort of hostile boycott against Canada since the syrup had not a trace of maple and the waitress was singularly unapologetic.

    One minor reason we came to Maastricht was because D'Artagnan, the famous musketeer died there in 1673.  The younger Son of Sharpe attends Xavier University in Cincinnati.  Their nickname is the Musketeers and the center of the campus has a big statue of D'Artagnan.  The little tyke figured that a photo of him next to the statue of D'Artagnan in Maastricht would get "Picture of the Week" on the college website.  So, in the afternoon, AoD drove us down to the statue to get a picture.  SOMEBODY STOLE THE DAMN STATUE!  All that was left was a pedestal and a bit of cable.  No one litters in Holland.  They all say "Thank You" at least three times.  You can't get through a door because all the Dutch wait for someone else to go first.  Who's to expect that they stole the most famous statue in the whole country and there's not even a bit of police tape?  Or an apology stuck to the pedestal.

    Picture we got instead



NEXT--SHARPE FORGETS THE BREAD CRUMBS

PART VII   THE BATTLING BASTARDS DRIVE TO BASTOGNE

    In a clear example of friendship trumping common sense, AoD did not fire Sharpe as navigator the next day.  Fortunately, Bastogne is about the easiest small town to find in Europe other than Waterloo.  We drove down the interstate (intercountry?) to Liege and then followed the signs to Bastogne.  In Europe, there aren’t any gas stations at the exits.  Instead, there are rest stops every few kilometers that sell gasoline and french fries.

    Bastogne is a very small town whose citizens seem to live alongside its role in WW2 without having it affect their lives much.  I was expecting something like Gettysburg, I suppose, where dozens of shops selling Civil War crap flank Charley Weaver’s wax museum and every motel or restaurant takes its name from some aspect of the battle.

    The church in Bastogne featured in Band of Brothers.



    One museum sits at the top of main street, but having dropped enough euros at the "sandwicherie" on paninis and fries, we decided to just visit the official museum and memorial.  Now, the memorial is about two kilometers outside town.  You can see it from where we parked the car.  We got lost.  Not in the twisty, narrow streets of Bastogne, mind you, but we drove right past the whacking, big sign and were headed for St. Vith before we recognized our mistake.  If the two of us had been in charge of Wacht am Rhein, it would be remembered today as a ferocious armored assault on Denmark.

    The Bastogne Historical Center



    A tank destroyer



    The American monument.  The names of the states are inscribed along the top and the Army units are on the columns.  You can climb to the top.



    AoD and Sharpe by the 101st Airborne inscription, probably waiting for an airdrop of a GPS.



    The inside has a zillion uniforms, weapons and maps.  The huge failing is that the English translations seem to have been done by a slow third grader with a severe eye disorder.  I'm not talking an occasional misspelling, but incredibly poor grammar, confusing syntax and really bad spelling.  If you are going to have an institution that honors courage and sacrifice, you really should be more professional about it.

    After another stop for rations, (AoD was a quart low on saturated fat) we headed off for the village of La Gleize.  For you non-Francophones, that translates as The Gleize.  Pieper used this mountain hamlet as his HQ during the assault on Bastogne.  AoD's buddy had recommended the museum there and boy was he right.

    The museum at La Gleize



    Urban legend (well, it's technically too small to be urban) has it that the villagers traded a few quarts of liquid refreshment to some GI's for possession of a broken-down King Tiger that the Germans had abandoned there.  (The booze part rings true.)



    This unassuming building is a real gem.  The owner of the museum has hundreds of unpublished photographs of the Battle of the Bulge displayed.  I've looked at thousands of pictures on the Web (I mean WW2 pictures, guys) and have never seen 90% of these.  We couldn't communicate well enough with him to discover the origin of the photos, but the villagers must have taken some themselves or gotten them from the Wehrmacht somehow.  We weren't allowed to photograph the pictures, but AoD bought a CD that he promised to share.

    The second part of the museum was more mannequins in uniforms.  These were not as creepy.





    On the second floor, were models and weapons.





NEXT--THE NORMAN INVASION

PART IX  OBAMA WON’T LET US BE THE BOYS OF POINTE DU HOC

    Many people remember June 6, 2009 as the 65th anniversary of D-Day.  Sharpe and AoD remember it as the one day that they didn’t get lost.  The fact that AoD wasn’t driving and Sharpe wasn’t navigating might have had something to do with that.  

    General Hoth had ordered us to form ranks in front of his restaurant at 0630.  Despite oversleeping a bit, we ingested a dozen croissants and stumbled across sleepy Rouen to the rendezvous (note clever use of French words).  We were there, the van was there, le pere du General Hoth (monsieur Dominique Cauvin) was there and so was the driver.  No sign of le General, however.  Monsieur Cauvin, recognizing an opportunity when he saw it, invited us into his restaurant for coffee.  Normally, I don’t drink coffee, but this stuff was good.  I have no idea why Starbuck’s is selling the crap it does, because European coffee is great!  We had Turkish coffee in Paris, cappuccino in Holland and a couple hundred cups of café in Rouen and it was all better than any coffee I’ve had here.

    General Hoth’s father is a very intelligent and hospitable man with a good command of English.  I really enjoyed conversing with him.  He was very kind to give up his Saturday to escort us around the beaches and give us all the advantages of his expertise.  The driver, Jean, was a character straight out of Bob Le Flambeur or Le Samourai or some other French gangster movie.  This guy is one of the great drivers of all time.  There aren’t a hundred yards of straight road anywhere near the beaches in Normandy and half the corners are blind turns.  Due to the hedgerows, you can’t see the intersections until you’re right on top of them.  Jean drove like a magician, never missing a gear, dodging the big tour busses and making all the correct turns.  He parked the van in spaces that shouldn’t have fit a motorcycle.  General Hoth said Jean didn’t speak English, but I think Jean was holding back.  He knew an amazing amount about Normandy and the invasion which le General kindly interpreted.

    Monsieur Cauvin, Jean, General Hoth



    Bad picture of a hedgerow



    (AoD, if you've got a better one, please post it.)

    Particular mention should be made of Jean's flair for music.  He sang, whistled or hummed throughout the entire trip and had a very good voice.  It was much nicer, for example, than that crap my kids listen to.

    Well, Monsieur Cauvin and Jean finally rousted le General out of bed, explaining that he had been working until 2 am.  We set off for the beaches.  I expected this to be a long trip with a lot of traffic, Disneyland traffic, real bumper-to-bumper stuff.  Surprisingly, we breezed right through Caen (got there a lot faster than Monty did, although we were coming from the opposite direction and there weren’t so many Germans).  We did, however, run into trouble of another sort.  About twenty miles from the beaches, we started seeing police pickets:  just a cop or two at first, but soon whole squads at major intersections.  (If you looked closely into the vans, you could see bottles of wine sticking out of their backpacks.)

    If I recall the sequence of events correctly, President Obama had initially decided not to attend the anniversary.  At the beginning of May, he changed his mind and decided to stop on the way back from Egypt.  According to the French press, Obama brought along a 500 strong security contingent and demanded a lockdown for miles in every direction from the American cemetery.  I’m not sure what he was so afraid of.  Three million people showed up for the inauguration without this kind of security and the Europeans are supposed to love him.  Two things come to my mind:  one, his speech in Egypt might have pissed some people off or two, there were thousands of fake (I assume) weapons in Normandy that weekend.  Checking all of them would have been impossible.  I just hope that there was some way the US veterans were able to get to Omaha and Utah because we didn’t.

    The other big SNAFU was Sarcozy's not inviting Queen Elizabeth.  Rumor had it that he didn't want to share Obama's spotlight.  Unfortunately for him, Queen Elizabeth is one of the last two major world figures who served in uniform in WW2, and she was on the winning side.  I think she deserved to be there.

    When we tried to turn west towards Omaha, les gendarmes stopped the van.  Jean tried to convince them that we were important American visitors who had to see Obama.  I suggested telling them that I was General De Gaulle.  Neither plan worked.  Jean tried a couple of other ways, but the police had outsmarted him.

    Jean trolls for advice on sneaking past the roadblocks.



    In may ways, Obama did us a favor.  We headed over to Gold Beach where Jean let us off at the British official observance.  

    Gold Beach museum



    Veteran at ceremony



    Banner of Normandy Veterans Association



    This religious service was the last solemn moment of the day.  While you heard plenty of toasts to "Absent Friends" coming out of the bars and cafes, the veterans did not come to mourn.  They came to celebrate, I believe, to celebrate survival and accomplishment and comradeship.  The primary emotion I sensed was pride.  I think the passing of the years made them realize just how important that the invasion was.  The original D-Day was nothing to celebrate.  It was filled with fear and anger and sadness.  Sixty-five years later, it's a time to be happy and I don't blame them.

    One of the weird things about the day was the response of the vets when I thanked them.  They thanked me for caring enough to come and bring my kids.  A lot of them felt like the world was forgetting.  I assured them that I knew a whole bunch of people who knew all about what they had done.

    Scottish vet behind Gold Beach



    Even though we were at Gold, we saw tons of people dressed in American WW2 uniforms.  Most were driving Jeeps (we saw hundreds of vintage Jeeps) and a few had trucks.  These vehicles were in sweet condition, too.  I imagine they only come out once or twice a year.  When I tried to talk to them, it turned out they were French!  No wonder this country has parking problems.  Jeeps are taking up all the good spots.  The French re-enactors seemed to be in their own world, just sort of driving around without much interest in conversing.

    Amphibious truck



    Even if we had made it to Omaha, I can't imagine that it would have had the same relaxed atmosphere that reigned behind the British and Canadian beaches.  Once I told people that my kids had a great-uncle at Gold and a cousin at Sword, we were family.  We never had time to tour any museums that day, but seeing the vets made it all worthwhile.

NEXT--SHARPE TAKES THE KING'S SHILLING AND EATS LUNCH

PART XI    ENTER MADAME GENERAL HOTH

    I knew she was special from the moment I saw her.  Carrying that many shopping bags would have buckled Mrs. Sharpe’s knees, but Madame General Hoth [Soldier-Commander; Speed 1; Defense 3/3;  MAGNIFICENT HOSTESS—All friendly units in town hexes ignore face-up Disrupted markers.  CHARMING INQUISITOR—Opponent always sets up first.  This unit’s army never loses Initiative.]  wafted into the bar like the bouquet of a fine wine.  She seated herself at the table and my attention never wavered.

    To backtrack a bit, Jean dropped us off at the hotel and took le General to return the van.  We put the camera on to charge and went to meet General Hoth at his brother’s bar.  (Evidently, his family owns half of the establishments in Rouen.  It’s not all easy, though.  There is some sort of restaurant civil war going on about how to cook duck.  General Hoth’s father leads one faction.  In Rouen, the first step is to smother the duck, pluck it, then press it.  After that, the fighting part starts.  The bad guys add a ton of butter while General Hoth’s father’s faction doesn’t, as I understand it.  Jean is probably some sort of enforcer.)

    We chatted for several hours, fueled by Mojitos, Orangina and Coca-Cola Light (Yuck!).  It turns out that Madame General is a lawyer, something about buildings and construction.  (Never, never, never commit a crime against a building in France.  You do not want to face this woman in court.)  Her family is from Dallas and she has the nerves of a gunslinger plus a great sense of humor.  She looks directly into your eyes and demands the truth in an incredibly charming way.  We talked about France and America, perceptions and misconceptions.  You could study culture for years and not learn as much as from one long, tremendously enjoyable conversation.  Le General and la Madame Hoth have such an incredible gift for putting people at ease.  

    After the sun set, we headed for le General’s apartment.  AoD bought pizza for everyone.  After a tour of the apartment, we settled in for one of General Hoth’s scenarios.  The elder Son of Sharpe and I played the Germans while GH and AoD played the British attacking Hill 112 in Normandy.  They invited the younger Son of Sharpe to be on their side.  This was not good.  The little scamp doesn’t play AAM anymore, but he did at one time and still remembers all the rules, special abilities and everything.  (His memory is unnaturally good.  He started studying classical languages at university when he was 14.)  Strategy and tactics are not his forte.  He spent the whole night reminding his teammates of a lot of little rules that I would have preferred they forgot.  I almost disinherited the little jerk.  Shame that his ipod went missing the next morning.

    Anyway, the Germans opted for a forward defense and took a terrible toll on the attacking infantry.  The defense began crumbling when a Croc rolled 8 of 11 against the Vet Tiger that was shutting down the UK assault.  Reinforcements finished it off while the Brits poured around the flanks of the German main position.  Turn Four was an out and out disaster for the Jugend.  The stupid little fanatics missed every shot.  A Humber and an AVRE drove for the key bridge.  On Turn Five, the Pz IVG whiffed on a pointblank shot and the game was over.

    Now, I’m not one to make excuses, but one thing still baffles me.  According to GH and AoD, the European Union (the guys who argue about how much curve is allowed in a pickle), have mandated that European dice are now numbered 1,4,5,5,6,6 and only EU citizens can use them.  Has anyone else heard this?

    Madame General Hoth spent the evening refilling our drinks and bringing more pizza and just generally being amused by our antics.  We appointed her our official rules lawyer and kept asking her for rulings.  My only regret of the day was having to say no when la Madame General invited us for tea the next day at her mother’s country house.  It was so generous of her and I would have loved to go.  It was very difficult to turn her down, especially in person, but we had already planned on trying for Omaha Beach on Sunday in AoD’s car.  If I had accepted, AoD would have lived up to his name and cut my heart out while I was sleeping.

    We said good-bye after one in the morning.  June 7 was Mother’s Day in France so the Hoths were headed for the country.  It was very hard to leave.

Author’s Note—I just wanted to make it perfectly clear, before I go on, that none of this adventure after Paris would have been possible without Angel of Death and General Hoth.  I probably write far too much about myself and I don’t want anyone to assume that I contributed in any way to the planning or execution of the trip.  They did all the work and deserve all the credit.  Their only mistake was to trust me with a map far more than my intelligence warranted.  Unfortunately, at many key points in the adventure, I was too wrapped up in the moment to see what they were doing.  If I had foreseen how this report was going to evolve, I would have paid more attention.  This is their story as much as mine.  I wish I could tell their part better.  (Any remaining credit should go to Mrs. Sharpe.  She insists on it.)

NEXT—RANGERS LEAD THE WAY, AS LONG AS SHARPE’S NOT NAVIGATING

Originally posted by Sharpe - continued

PART XIII SHARPE RETURNS TO HIS DRAB, WRETCHED LIFE



    As dawn broke over Rouen on 8 June, another dozen croissants disappeared down the ravenous maws of Sharpe & Company.  We had coffee outside the hotel.  It comes in tiny cups, but Angel of Death still manages to use a kilo of sugar every morning.  After breakfast, AoD, Sharpe and the elder Son of Sharpe took the Dutchman’s luggage across town to his car while the younger scion shopped for lunch.  When we got back, the Sons of Sharpe hauled the luggage down from the second floor of the hotel while Sharpe and AoD had more coffee.



    AoD shoved off around 10:30, hoping to get to the Belgian border before he lost consciousness from lack of french fries.  (“Sharpe!  They are not french fries.  They were invented in Belgium, thus they should be called belgian fries.  Except for General Hoth’s, there’s not a fry worth eating in France.  I’ve got to get across the border by lunch!)  We wished him Godspeed and sent him on his way.  His chances of getting lost were a lot less since Sharpe wasn’t navigating, but I still pinned his address to the back of his shirt just in case.



    Originally, we had intended to walk up to the train station since it was only one metro stop away, but the night before we had hiked out there and found it was two miles (3.2 km) straight uphill.  Fortunately, Sharpe is very flexible and realized that the only advantage of walking was that the Sons of Sharpe could easily roll him downhill to the emergency room after his heart attack.  The train left Rouen at noon for Paris.  We had to go into Paris, change stations via the metro, then catch a local train out to the airport.  I’ll go anywhere on a train.  Flying seems to violate the few laws of physics I remember from high school.  Driving is OK except for leg fatigue and the part where Mrs. Sharpe constantly tells me what to do.  Trains offer all the scientific security lacking in planes, yet have better scenery and complete relaxation, especially since Mrs. Sharpe would be up in the engine telling the guy how to drive.



    Now, when you ride the intercity trains in France, you get a big ticket, about the size of those old computer punch cards.  This is all well and good until you get to Paris and have to have some little billet to get on the local train to the airport.  It’s all automated, nobody in a train company uniform happened to take English in night school, and the big ticket didn’t fit in the little billet slot no matter how many times I folded it.  Fortunately, I had a couple of Metro billets still in my wallet and quickly bought a third one.  We caught the airport train barely on time and dropped into our seats facing one last seemingly insurmountable problem.  Well, at least insurmountable in the sense that I would have to pay $40 to solve it.  You see, it is necessary to feed your little Metro billet into the turnstile to exit the station.  “Ah Sharpe, you say, you have the billets you used to board the train.  Use those.”  Not so simple as you might think, since those are for local tickets and it costs seven times as much to ride to the airport.  I did still have the whacking big tickets so I planned to find some railway type and wave the big tickets under his nose until he got so sick of my mewling that he let us exit.  Well, that was Plan B.  Plan A was to ask nicely.



    We get to the airport station which also serves the town of Roissy.  Sharpe finds someone who by his uniform is either a railroad employee or an admiral in the Sultan’s navy.  He approaches meekly and asks in bad French how to get out of the platform with big tickets.  Of course, the guy answers in some rapid torrent of vowel sounds punctuated by an occasional consonant.  Sharpe asks him to repeat it more slowly.  Sharpe is almost certain that the admiral says to walk over to the last gate, press the button and step through.  Sharpe immediately thinks that this is impossible for two reasons.  One, Sharpe’s French sucks.  Two, nothing in the whole, wide, bloody world is ever that freakin’ simple.  So, Sharpe asks him to repeat it again.  And again.  And again.  After the admiral walks away in disgust, I figure I’ve got nothing to lose.  I would have bet my house that that gate wasn’t going to open because nothing in the whole, wide, bloody world is ever that freakin’ simple.  Two seconds later, standing on the other side, I’m wondering why I bothered to buy a ticket at all.



    Back in the States, when I made my reservations for the hotel near the airport, I asked for an American-style hotel.  I wasn’t being culturally insensitive; I just wanted people who understood concepts like shuttle bus and wake-up call, because I knew I couldn’t explain it in French.  Well, AAA put me into the Holiday Inn in Roissy near Charles De Gaulle airport and quoted me $150 per night for a triple.  I figured this was pretty reasonable and never got that “too good to be true” feeling until I walked into lobby of the Holiday Inn and found it had a marble floor.  The shop in the lobby sold Rolex watches and Hermes scarfs and all the desk clerks were undiscovered supermodels.  The little voice said, “Something’s wrong” just about the time Michelle’s pouty lips told me it was 150 euros for the room, not dollars.  It was too late to find another place so Sharpe had to ride the special elevator up to the “Executive Floor” to stay in his room with refrigerator, free bathrobe, slippers, big screen TV, marble bathroom and stacks and stacks and stacks of giant fluffy towels.  Throw in the ICE MACHINE on every floor and it was heaven.  You could even choose between five different types of pillows.  What a steal.



    Unfortunately, the menu for the restaurant indicated that Sharpe was going to be paying over $100/person if he wanted to have any meal more substantial than stealing the olives out of empty martini glasses.  Pretending to be going on a stroll, we walked around the group of hotels into the village of Roissy, home of Parc Asterix.  (If I had known this, I would have flown out a day later.)  Finding the town square, we pillaged the local grocery store for milk, Coca-Cola Light (YUCK!), sushi and cookies, then found a place offering BOGO on pizzas.  I swear that this was the only restaurant I ever saw in Europe that had any sort of special offer.  Having saved over $250 on dinner, we proudly marched over the marble floor of the lobby, past the Rolexes, and into our special elevator loaded down with groceries like a bunch of hillbillies heading to a picnic.  MTV was the only channel where we understood anything, so we watched that until bedtime.



    My fellow Foruminians, I cannot urge you strongly enough to find your way to the great sites of WW2.  Take your wives, take your girlfriends, but not at the same time.  Take your children and your friends.  All the reading, all the movies, all the TV shows and all the games will come together in great moments of understanding when you see the real thing.  Be sure to contact our good friends in Europe before you go.  Why, I imagine that General Hoth and Angel of Death would be glad to help you, as long as you promise to include their side of the story once you get home.



Thanks to all my friends.



THE END