In Devastated Northern France, the French Flag Flies Again

Much of the discussion about this war is about causes and which countries were at fault. A better consideration is to understand the circumstances that made the war happen. America's entry into the war one hundred years ago was to effect a circumstance in which future wars could not happen. The Europeans failed and so did we, eventually.

And the world thinks the French will buckle because a few religious fanatics turn to terror. Vive La France. The only nation I would fight to defend.

My Wife's maternal Grandfather was killed at the 2nd Battle of the Marnes in 1918, Samuel Sinclair, of Detroit, Michigan, is buried in France.

Several years ago, my wife and I rode our bicycles through much of the Somme battlefield and on through Noyon. There were still bullet holes in buildings in the centre of Noyon - possibly left as a reminder of what war can bring.

One of the best sights we saw during that cycle four was in Peronne (close to Noyon) where the British, French and Germans had "repurposed" an old fortress as a museum in honour of the soldiers who had fought in the region. The museum had very tasteful displays of the hardships of war without the "triumphalism" of many war memorials.

My thought, at the time, was that the three nations had finally shaken off the worst nationalistic effects of WW I.

Of course, that was before the "Brexit" vote and before this weekend's French election. It remains to be seen if the worst aspects of nationalism are really dead and buried in Europe.

The soil in this area (and others) continues to cough up ordinance from WWI--some of it still lethal. The farmers call it "la recolte en fer".

My grandfather, Frank P. Lazarony, served in WWI. Frank was born in Sicily and emigrated with his family at age 3 to the Western NY. He enlisted as a whole person, and endured the trenches, and lost his hearing there. Frank was not a citizen when he served.

Frank lived well into his 90s. On each Memorial Day the VFW would organize Frank and the other vets in town to walk the Memorial Day parade. After many years had passed, Frank was the sole surviving WWI vet, and put him in the back of a convertible to ride in the parade in Fredonia, NY ... every year to honor his service....

During his entire life Frank never, ever voted in any election, local, state, or national... He was afraid that they would ask for proof of citizenship, discover that he was not a citizen, and deport him.

In our town, Memorial Day was celebrated with a parade. I still remember when I was a child over 50 years ago when WWI veterans marched while veterans of the Spanish American War rode in open cars.

So many of the problems that have vexed the world since can be traced to WWI: the bitterness of the German loss and the terms of the subsequent peace would help propel the rise of Adolph Hitler, the carving up and appropriation of the Ottoman Empire by France and Britain abetted by an American-shared interest in oil has led directly to the failed warring states in the mideast today, and the failure of Wilson's dream of a League of Nations to adjudicate disputes between nations has left the entire world vulnerable to the same anachronistic medieval impulses that threaten to ratchet up destruction to apocalyptic levels in this nuclear age.

So few Americans know anything about World War I. These photographs are a wonderful contribution to our knowledge. I hope the Times finds a venue for displaying these to the general public. For myself, they bring a sense of great sadness at the harm done to so many for so little reason. Most of all, they bring me a closeness to both of my grandfathers, who each enlisted shortly after the US entered the war and not surprisingly, though they did not know each other, served not far from each other in that terrible border of France and Germany. I never knew my maternal grandfather, who died of pneumonia in the early 30s, his lungs damaged by a gas attack in the war. These photos allow me to begin to see what they saw.

In April 2016, I spent four days touring the battlefields around Ypres Belgium, generally known as Flanders Fields. Ypres, also known as leper, was subject to destruction three separate times as the battle lines moved back and forth. It was rebuilt with German reparations money by 1930.

Tall buildings of all kinds were subject to bombardment because they represented artillery spotting locations on a generally flat topography. Thus, the destruction was tactical, not spiteful.

One cannot really appreciate the horrors of WW One without touring its battle sites. A hundred years later, there are still large craters, some now filled with water, from the war. Men who were miners in civilian life built tunnels under the enemies lines, and placed high explosives there. When the explosives were detonated, the earth, including the men on it, were blown hundreds of feet into the air.

There are cemeteries and memorials everywhere. After the war ended, the German cemeteries were consolidated. At one, there is a pit that contains the remains of about 30,000 soldiers. The British placed cemeteries, conveniently, outside field hospitals.

World War One was a war where technology exceeded the military tactics to use those technologies efficiently. The result was unimaginable death and carnage. Its a sight to see.