Chasing the Phantoms of the First World War

For the last two weeks, I have been poring over a WWI tour for a truly special group of clients. These guys are/were at the peak of their respective fields, are avid travelers, voracious readers, and know their food and wine as well as anyone I've ever been around.

The process has been insane, marrying various locations and historical events into a coherent, linear fashion. This is very difficult for a war that, unlike the Americans in Europe in WWII, does not follow a sequential, moving front from a landing beach to a final site of conquest.

At any given point, I had upwards of 30 tabs open, for the search for one memorial or history behind one location or monument would lead to three more... and each of them doing the same.

But every detail is critical, as is the vigilant management of time spent in the seat of a van versus walking through a bunker complex, the halls of a museum, or sitting at a café in front of a plate of steaming mussels with a beer in your hand...

When I put together a tour, I "drive" it on Google maps and walk through every minute of the day, gauging how much time each stop will take - as well as how much energy will be expended. That is beyond vital and yields far better results and lasting memories than so many of these nonsense "bucket list" tours I see being put together for the American traveler. There is an overload point, make no mistake. I have been on such tours, and there is little you can retain from a trip with too many stops and a revolving door of hotel check-ins and check-outs.

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I ended up submitting three changes to Google maps for monuments that were not correctly located, which is why I combed so very carefully over some areas where I have less familiarity. You cannot be on a remote forest road in the Vosges Mountains of France with no signal and expect to "figure it out."

One was for one of my favorite monuments of them all, “Les Fantômes,” located on a hill of farmland only 60 short miles from Paris. It was in this very region that the Germans were stopped in the first year of World War One, as they attempted to knock France out of the war... and it was here that the final French offensive, the Second Battle of the Marne, saw the Germans in retreat for good in 1918. The sculptor is world famous for his Christ the Redeemer statue that towers over Rio de Janiero. But he actually served in the French Army in the Great War and won the Croix de Guerre, the French equivalent of the Medal of Honor.

The sculpture represents seven soldiers with different weapons and, in their midst, a naked youth, a martyred hero, rising up into the air. He symbolises the suffering of mankind plunged into war.

Paul Landowski, the sculptor, spent four years fighting for France in that war, and when he returned to civilian life, he could not shake the memory of the thousands of dead he saw firsthand. He was haunted by them, as were the countless widows, parents, and children of his dead comrades who had to move on with life, ever reminded by the empty chair by the fireplace, the old photograph in the hallway, or an empty pair of boots in the closet.

World War I cost France 1,357,800 dead, 4,266,000 wounded (of whom 1.5 million were permanently maimed) and 537,000 made prisoner or missing — exactly 73% of the 8,410,000 men mobilized, according to William Shirer in The Collapse of the Third Republic. For comparison, in the much bigger and bloodier World War II, the United States, fighting in Europe and the Pacific, suffered 418,500 military and civilian deaths.  Less than a third, given that the “missing” continue turning up in the dirt of old battlefields.

So yes, you had better believe this monument should be part of the tour... and I hope Google makes the changes for others to find it.

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Yesterday evening, I finally finished this masterpiece. I have never worked so hard and intently on a trip... It has more information than I've ever put into a proposal, but as they are repeat clients and great friends, I didn't have the slightest hesitation about sending it to them for their review.

I look forward to sharing the photos of that tour next June...

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For those of you who have recommended me to others, I cannot thank you enough. Anyone who has given me business has a friend and travel planner for life - or certainly well past the value of whatever I received. I find it odd that people will spend plenty of money to go on a trip and not spend the money to have a guide help them put it together. In every case where I have been hired to do such, I have ended up saving my clients what they would have paid me, while ensuring that their trip is free of surprises, confusion, and mistakes.

I don't post a lot of public tour offerings, because it is vastly easier for me to get a call or email from the lead person of a group, however big or small, with a general tour idea they have and a working budget.

It is my favorite job to get to know my clients, ascertain their interest levels and subject matter, agree upon the style of food and lodging they want, and then go to work on it. Each one is, to me, a symphony of sorts... blending in all of the various aspects that go into a proper trip.

You don’t do this for a living to make money in it. Yes, that comes over time, but you’d never endure the first three years of building up a reputation. No, you do it because it is in the blood and a vital part of your intellectual DNA. For the bulk of my previous adult years, I waged war with myself over my love of academia and my enjoyment of the restaurant and hospitality industry. They seemed to be at complete odds with one another, until a dear, late friend and favorite client sat me down, held up a mirror, and pointed me down this path...

I never intend to leave it.