Those who have gone before us………

Pam and I visited northern France over the weekend.  We have been making regular trips to France for some time.  This weekend we were enticed by a stay in a French Chateaux and some excellent French food.  We had been asked to join a friend and his wife on what for them was a fact collecting trip so that he could begin a book on a WW1 subject.  I had agreed to photograph the areas of interest.  We visited several sites where fighting had taken place, it’s hard not to find battlefields in this part of France.

Towards the end of the day we literally stumbled on a WW1 American cemetery.  This is a land defined by its cemeteries marking the final resting place of millions of French, English, and German soldiers.  It was unusual to find one that was American from the WW1 era, not hard at all to find graves of fallen Americans from WW II though.

It was one of those moments in life when you have to stop and acknowledge a significant debt to the thousands of men who fought what they thought would be the “war to end all wars”.  It was a humbling experience, one I will never forget.