THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 32 … Leaving Leningrad.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 32 … Leaving Leningrad.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

(Thirty-second in a series chronicling my travel year 1985)

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In St. Petersburg, there is a building originally constructed by the Singer Sewing Machine Company, For more than a century it has stood on Nevsky Prospekt, opposite the stately Kazan Cathedral. An architectural landmark, it has survived revolution, bombardment and socialism.

During Soviet times the former Singer headquarters was known as Dom Knigi (House of Books), the USSR’s official state-run bookstore. For me and many others, the undisputed highlight of Dom Knigi was its poster shop.

Posters in all shapes and sizes were printed by the tens of millions in the USSR, comprising a sprawling graphic arts genre all its own, even if subject to denigration by Westerners as mere propaganda.

Most were, but it’s ironic that those visiting capitalists observed to laugh loudest usually waited until no one was looking, then snatched up propaganda posters by the dozen for the bargain price of pennies apiece, to be transported home and flaunted as exotic, chic décor in their dens and rec rooms.

I was not at all immune to this urge. In fact, I was completely overwhelmed and later even obsessed by it.

One of the posters I bought in 1985 celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Great Patriotic War’s victorious conclusion. Westerners know this bloody conflict as World War II, but whatever its name, the poster prompted a point constantly reinforced during our tour: The Soviet Union bore the brunt of human and material sacrifice in defeating Nazi Germany.

It is estimated that upwards of 20 million Soviet men, women and children lost their lives during the war. The city of Leningrad itself was a major battleground. For more than 900 days, it was besieged, starved and shelled by the Germans.

Down the street from Dom Knigi, a wartime inscription on a building’s wall had been preserved. It reminded citizens which side of the street was safer when the artillery rounds started falling. 1980s-era Leningrad was crowded with plaques and monuments to the war, as well as living reminders in the form of older men proudly wearing their service medals in public.

Leningrad never fell, but the cost was immense, as my tour group learned when were taken by bus to the Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery.

About 420,000 civilians and 50,000 soldiers of the Leningrad Front were buried in 186 mass graves. Near the entrance an eternal flame is located. A marble plate affirms that from September 4, 1941 to January 22, 1944 107,158 air bombs were dropped on the city, 148,478 shells were fired, 16,744 men died, 33,782 were wounded and 641,803 died of starvation.

These improbably precise yet grim numbers are sufficiently eloquent, but while visiting the cemetery on a Saturday afternoon, we were fortunate to witness an instance of remembrance’s unfeigned dignity.

A wedding party arrived in a convoy of Lada passenger cars, and the bride and groom were photographed with seemingly endless rows of mass graves as a backdrop to their special day. The Soviet government didn’t require them to do it. They just did.

Are they still, now?

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Looking back on it, Leningrad was a collage of surreal occurrences. I remember standing in the middle of the vast open space called Palace Square, with the huge green Winter Palace on one side and the even larger gold-painted Admiralty on the other, imagining the revolutionary crowds of 1917.

The Internationale was on heavy rotation in my head, along with scenes from Warren Beatty’s classic film Reds. These imaginings wore me out, and it was time for a break.

Near the closest wing of the Winter Palace were benches beneath shade trees, and what appeared to be a vending machine. Hesitantly, I walked toward the sooty gray box until I could make out a word stenciled in Cyrillic: Вода́.

Water … apparently drinking water.

There was a coin slot, and a posted price of one or two kopecks, at 100 kopecks to a ruble. Our tour escort Ari later explained that the two choices were still (uncarbonated) or sparkling water. Three public drinking glasses were available for use – merely select the cleanest, place it in the recess, deposit coins, push button, drink liquid and set the glass back on the ledge for the next user.

My water wasn’t fizzy. The glass was returned to its place. Now the remarkable absence of litter made sense.

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On Sunday morning, luggage and hangovers in equal measure were hauled to the motor coach for the return trip to Finland. It was a sunny summer’s day, but the mood on the bus was somber. In the end, perhaps the visceral experience of a world so very different from ours was more exhausting than we imagined.

Border controls on both sides were perfunctory, and most group members debarked in Helsinki, including Mark the Australian. He’d been a great pal, and so we embraced and promised to stay in touch.

So it goes. I’ve never seen him since.

A half dozen of us rode the bus an hour further to the Finnish port of Turku, where the overnight ferry was sailing back to Sweden. The sands in my hourglass were becoming scarce, and the highway segment from Leningrad was only the beginning of an epic three-day, non-stop public transit journey waged across six European nations, all the way back to Luxembourg.

As it transpired, two fellow tour members were to be my shipmates to Stockholm. I’ve long forgotten their real names, so for the purpose of this narrative, they’ll be known as Jeff and Robert, who were 1985 high school graduates from Somewhereville, Mississippi, both 18 years of age and bound that autumn for some variety of collegiate military school to be trained as cannon fodder.

But seriously: Jeff and Robert looked, spoke and acted the part of future soldiers, personality traits fully evident in the USSR, where we’d aired opposing points of view on more than one occasion. Mark had been openly disdainful amid their frequent references to the glories of the Bible and Reaganism. I tended to agree with the Aussie.

Periodic prayers testified to Jeff’s and Robert’s fundamentalist upbringing, and any mention of Soviet history produced a rote response, as though Pavlov himself had trained these two super-patriots to salivate and squawk “dirty stinking Commie” upon activation of the electrodes. Even the provocative Swiss schoolteacher Phil had quickly grown weary of their ideological edge.

“It’s hard enough fighting the Communist disinformation without having to fight the anti-Communist disinformation, too.”

But it hadn’t stopped these youthful Falangists from buying armloads of posters at Dom Knigi, and no matter how heated the discussion, Jeff and Robert kept coming back for more. I’ve never understood this. Maybe they wanted to “save” me.

As we waited by the docks in Turku for the gangplank chain to fall, they plied me with questions. Having flown directly into Helsinki for the Leningrad tour, this would be their first ever ferry ride.

It was a teaching opportunity, so I sketched the boating routine, which immediately sent Jeff and Robert running to the nearby train station. They hadn’t bothered activating their Eurail passes, and the cardinal rule of passage is that one must have a ticket.

I told them that unless there was a deck passengers’ padded lounge on this vessel (it turns out there wasn’t), we’d all be looking for a place on the floor to nap during the nighttime hours.

As for food, I noted the existence of a duty-free shop, a less expensive cafeteria-style eatery, and the Silja Line’s wonderful, reasonably priced seafood buffet in the ship’s ritzier restaurant. I explained my methodology of bringing a plastic “doggie” bag for the next day’s breakfast.

Jeff and Robert were intrigued by the seafood, but hesitant. Would it be too much for their burger and fries upbringing? Would they feel out of place in a nice space? Would Jesus have approved?

Would I go to dinner with them, just to make sure – their treat?

Yes, it would be my pleasure. I can tolerate almost anything for a free meal, even teenaged militaristic evangelicals from the Deep South. That night, at the seafood buffet, we were nearing the end of the meal when Jeff and Robert each produced huge plastic bags of the sort used to wrap booze at the duty-free, and began animatedly filling them with food.

Before I had the chance to helpfully suggest that discretion is an integral part of any pilferage equation, they had been spotted, and shortly a restaurant worker appeared. As the dressing-down commenced. I shrugged. After all, everyone knows that carry-outs aren't allowed at a buffet.

Soon Jeff and Robert were marched off to the cash register to settle their tabs and pay a fine for intemperance. I’d been entirely forgotten, and the whole dining room’s attention was centered on them, so I shrugged again and filled my own freezer bag with selected morsels for morning, secreted it in my coat, and left the scene.

On the way out, I thanked Jeff and Robert for their generosity. They were very unhappy, but I felt pretty good. It may have taken three months, but at least I’d learned some of the many budget travel ropes.

The last time I ever saw Jeff and Robert was on Monday morning in the subway station near the Silja mooring in Stockholm. They were standing forlornly by the turnstiles, crumpled dollars in hand, unable to determine how they’d be able to get the Swedish kroner necessary to buy tickets to the central station.

Having passed through Sweden a week earlier, I’d reserved a handful of coins for just such a contingency. There was enough for the three of us. It was the least I could do for a morning’s delicious smoked salmon.

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Previously:

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 31 … Leningrad in three vignettes.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 30 … Or, as it was called at the time, Leningrad.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 29 … Helsinki beneath my feet, but Leningrad on my mind.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 28 … A Finnish detour to Tampere for beer and sausages.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 27 … Stockholm's blonde ambition, with or without mead-balls.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 26 … The Hansa brewery tour, and a farewell to Norway.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 25 … Frantic pickled Norway.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 24 … An aspiring “beer hunter” amid Carlsberg’s considerable charms.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 23 … A fleeting first glimpse of Copenhagen.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 22 … It's how the tulips were relegated.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 21 … A long day in Normandy, though not "The Longest Day."

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 20 … War stories, from neutral Ireland to Omaha Beach.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 19 … Sligo, Knocknarea, Guinness and Freddie.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 18 … Irish history with a musical chaser.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 17 ... A first glimpse of Ireland.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 16 … Lizard King in the City of Light.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 15 … The traveler at 55, and a strange interlude.

The PC: We pause Euro '85 to remember the Mathäser Bierstadt in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 14 … Beers and breakfast in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 13 … Tears of overdue joy at Salzburg's Augustiner.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 12 … Stefan Zweig and his world of yesterday.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 11: My Franz Ferdinand obsession takes root.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 10: Habsburgs, history and sausages in Vienna.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 9 … Milan, Venice and a farewell to Northern Italy.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 8 … Pecetto idyll, with a Parisian chaser.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 7 … An eventful detour to Pecetto.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 6 … When in Rome, critical mass.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 5 … From Istanbul to Rome, with Greece in between.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 4 … With Hassan in Pithion.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 3 … Growing up in Greece.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 2 ... Hitting the ground crawling in Luxembourg.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 1 … Where it all began.

_

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 21 … A long day in Normandy, though not "The Longest Day."

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 21 … A long day in Normandy, though not The Longest Day.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

(Twenty-first in a series chronicling my travel year 1985)

On July 16, 1985, it transpired that six youthful travelers were inserted into speedily improvised dorm space on the toasty top floor of the Family Home hostel in Bayeux, and in spite of a rocky first meeting, they coalesced on French soil, becoming a tightly knit band of brothers.

Actually, what helped achieve harmony among these strangers more than any other single factor was the hostel manager’s grudging acknowledgment that the more mattresses were stuffed into the attic, the fewer francs each occupant would pay. We were unknown to each other, and yet bound by a shared interest in saving money.

It made good fiscal sense. Introductions were made, and we set about getting to know one another.

From the start, two of my new roommates stood out. Fred was a tall and mustachioed Floridian with a gift of gab, and his traveling partner Bruce, who hailed from Canada, was blonde, sparsely bearded, quiet and more analytical.

This is not to say Bruce wasn’t capable of being opinionated, as I learned later when I offhandedly remarked that Keith Moon of The Who was rock’s greatest drummer.

Bruce quickly became red-faced, proceeding not only to make a convincing and fully detailed case that Rush’s Neil Peart was far better as a drummer, but adding that Peart wrote challenging lyrics, and besides that, Canadians in general were key contributors to the history of rock and roll all across the board in spite of what perpetually clueless Yanks AND Brits insisted on thinking.

Canadians were not supposed to be chauvinists, were they? I didn’t think so, either, but here was an example of one. But Bruce was passionate, bright and articulate, and I learned much from him during the coming days -- while choosing my comments very carefully.

As for Fred, he was divorced, a tad embittered yet funny, incurably garrulous, and absolutely delighted to report the intimate details of an amorous conquest experienced while in Greece, where he and Bruce had struck up an acquaintance by means of their shared interest in Hellenic nude beaches, during which Fred had gotten lucky with a fellow American tourist.

She didn’t stick around, but Fred and Bruce had been traveling together ever since. They seemed temperamentally well paired, although Bruce’s eyes often rolled when Fred got rolling. The Floridian was harmless, and in truth, highly entertaining.

As for the other three other loft roommates, their names unfortunately are lost to history. For mysterious and arcane reasons, I’d decided that precious film must not be wasted on ephemeral matters like documenting images of people, as opposed to buildings, so no photos of them exist.

There was a fallback, because throughout the 1985 trip, I diligently recorded the names and addresses of new friends I met in an old-fashioned little blue book.

This blue book returned to Europe with me in 1987 -- only to fall out of my pocket somewhere in Vienna, and be lost forever.

The important point is that I was absorbed into the Bruce/Fred tandem, and we became a triumvirate for two days in Bayeux, and serendipitously, two more in Brussels.

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The morning after my arrival in Bayeux, all six of us boarded a local bus for the coast.

Fred had concluded that hitchhiking in the vicinity of the D-Day historical sites was the very best way to see them, explaining that Americans would be adored in such a locale (not altogether untrue, by the way) such that we’d have our pick of passing cars.

Obviously, hitching a ride would be unlikely for so large a group. It wasn’t clear if Fred intended to explore the vicinity alone, and I kept my eyes open for bus route signs just in case.

After misty beginnings, a lovely summer’s day emerged. I was keen on the idea of walking the coastline for as much of it as possible. The area proved to be well signposted. We had maps, and there’d always be another bus, right?

My skepticism undoubtedly owed to memories of transport antics in Pecetto and Pithion.

Knowing that that the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944 comprised the biggest amphibious invasion in military history proved to be inadequate preparation for viewing the ocean from the high ground, then trading places at water’s edge to look back inland, and being overwhelmed by what it must have felt like waist-deep in salt water, having nowhere to go except forward.

Most of the invading force came from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, assigned landing beaches code-named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword (from west to east). However, troops also were present from Australia and New Zealand, as well as in small numbers from occupied European countries: Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Greece, Netherlands, Norway and Poland.

There had been a great disinformation campaign on the part of the Allies, one designered to confuse the Germans as to the landing site. It worked to a significant degree, but perhaps the single biggest hindrance to an effective coastal defense stemmed from the larger strategic picture, because German wartime strength was waning.

Guns and ammo were less of an issue. Contrary to popular belief, Germany was able to keep up its war production in material terms in spite of relentless bombing, which Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe was unable to impede. War production went underground, literally and figuratively, but Allied control of the skies proved vital as the Normandy invasion unfolded.

More importantly, Germany’s two-sided war was in the process of bleeding manpower to the breaking point. By 1944, the Germans were in retreat across the entirety of the Eastern Front, where the Red Army’s seemingly limitless numbers and escalating tactical abilities gained traction in proportion with the increasing exhaustion of the Germans.

Indeed, then as now, Americans need to understand that the outcome of the Great Patriotic War – as WWII was called in the Soviet Union – hinged on horrifically costly combat in the East. Tens of millions died there. US forces bore the brunt in the Pacific, while in Europe, the Soviets punished Adolf Hitler.

Consequently, Germany was weakened, and France’s coastal defenses were only partially completed and inadequately manned. Hitler’s constant military meddling added a further level of dysfunction; the perfectly capable general Erwin Rommel was on the job, and yet the dictator insisted on moving chess pieces from Berlin.

In spite of these many advantages, Operation Overlord was far from a sure thing. The Allies aimed to shift 150,000 soldiers across an unpredictable ocean, albeit over a relatively short distance from England. Even a slight shift in the weather might have wreaked havoc.

Not only were fighting men in route on small transports. Big naval ships had to be positioned for shelling, and parachutists had to be dropped behind enemy lines. There were supplies to be landed, too, primarily by means of an improvisational device called the Mulberry, which was a floating harbor to be assembled where natural contours were lacking.

As almost always is the case in war, it came down to the heroism and tenacity of the foot soldiers. On the Allied side, casualties during the first day alone exceeded 10,000, one of whom was my old friend Barrie’s father, who received a Purple Heart. More than 4,000 of his comrades died.

June 6 ended with five contested, bumpy bridgeheads for the Allies, and yet these lines held and were expanded during the remainder of June. By the end of the month, close to 900,000 troops had poured into this continental foothold.

You know the rest of the story.

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Our own beach-combing sextet held together for a little while. Looking at the satellite images today, I have little clear idea of where the bus took us. My best guess is Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, located near the Omaha Beach monument and the American cemetery.

I recall a stretch of shoreline displaying wreckage, perhaps of landing craft, although it doesn’t seem possible that we could have started as far to the east as Arromanches, where remnants of Mulberry Harbor can be viewed, and still had time to walk to Pointe du Hoc, a heavily fortified headland between Omaha and Utah beaches.

U.S. Army Rangers famously attacked Pointe du Hoc by climbing the cliffs with ladders, ropes and hooks. The site remains pockmarked with shell craters and the ruins of German defense installations.

Throughout the day, buses occasionally trundled past, and one of us would hop on and wave goodbye. By afternoon, it came down to Bruce, Fred and me, and we began looking for ways to get back to Bayeux.

After hiking inland a short way past neatly groomed fields, gnarly hedgerows and stone walls, we found a small country café at a crossing of two lanes, shaded by a copse of trees near a cluster of farmhouses. A few languid cows observed our arrival from across the narrow road.

The posted bus schedule seemed to indicate a final afternoon pickup for Bayeux. Inconveniently, we would have almost two hours to wait, which in reality would have been more than sufficient time to walk all the way home – except there was inexpensive Kanterbrau golden lager on tap.

Let’s be clear: The beer was underwhelming. Bruce immediately began comparing it unfavorably to Labatt’s, and on a subsequent trip, Barrie dubbed it “Cancerbrau.” Perhaps because we were tired and hungry from having skipped lunch, the beer went straight to our heads, and after the third round, Fred belatedly decided to test his theory and uncork his thumb.

His mangled efforts were futile and hilarious, and even the otherwise humorless café owner laughed when the American he decided to explain his hitchhiking tactics to the bored cattle.

As we waited, a group of bicyclists stopped for a drink. Surely by then I’d seen hundreds of Europeans riding bikes without thinking much about it, and it would be another 15 years before the riding bug finally bit. Still, I can remember drinking my beer at the bar following our day at the D-Day beaches, and thinking how much fun biking appeared to be.

In retrospect, renting a bicycle in Bayeux would have been the best and most practical course, but if I knew then what I know now, the entire trip would have been far different from the one I’ve described.

The bus eventually arrived, and we returned somewhat giddily to Bayeux just in time for the optional evening meal at the Family Home. It was a communal affair at a huge table, accompanied with cheap wine, and utterly delicious.

Tales were spun and schemes were hatched. The next stop would be Brussels, and we decided to travel by rail as a group -- no hitchhiking.

Little did I know that a roomy bathtub awaited.

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Previously:

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 20 … War stories, from neutral Ireland to Omaha Beach.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 19 … Sligo, Knocknarea, Guinness and Freddie.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 18 … Irish history with a musical chaser.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 17 ... A first glimpse of Ireland.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 16 … Lizard King in the City of Light.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 15 … The traveler at 55, and a strange interlude.

The PC: We pause Euro '85 to remember the Mathäser Bierstadt in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 14 … Beers and breakfast in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 13 … Tears of overdue joy at Salzburg's Augustiner.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 12 … Stefan Zweig and his world of yesterday.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 11: My Franz Ferdinand obsession takes root.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 10: Habsburgs, history and sausages in Vienna.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 9 … Milan, Venice and a farewell to Northern Italy.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 8 … Pecetto idyll, with a Parisian chaser.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 7 … An eventful detour to Pecetto.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 6 … When in Rome, critical mass.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 5 … From Istanbul to Rome, with Greece in between.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 4 … With Hassan in Pithion.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 3 … Growing up in Greece.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 2 ... Hitting the ground crawling in Luxembourg.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 1 … Where it all began.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 20 … War stories, from neutral Ireland to Omaha Beach.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 20 … War stories, from neutral Ireland to Omaha Beach.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

(Twentieth in a series chronicling my travel year 1985)

The “craic” in Sligo had been excellent, but European time was running out.

(For the uninitiated, the Gaelic word “craic” means the quality of conviviality, discourse and entertainment on hand – often, though by no means exclusively, as applicable to pub culture.)

I’d covered a ridiculous amount of ground up to this point – Luxembourg through Italy and Greece to Istanbul, then back through Italy, Austria, Germany and France to Ireland. It’s what you do when you’re young, and you think it might be your only chance.

It’s what you do when the Eurailpass keeps paying for trains, and occasionally boats.

For the remaining three weeks I’d be pushing myself ever greater distances in order to touch a few scattered Scandinavian urban high points prior to the single most anticipated weekend of the trip: August 1 – 4 in Leningrad, USSR.

But first things first. There’d be a train ride back to Rosslare, a ferry boat to France, and a pilgrimage to the D-Day beaches in Normandy.

I wanted to pay my respects.

As noted throughout this narrative, World War II was a constant presence during my childhood, and it remained quite the active memory for people of my father’s age, whether they were living in Georgetown, Indiana or Gessopalena, Italy.

My dad, a Marine Corps veteran of the Pacific Theater, was only 60 years old in 1985 (he died in 2001). Newsman Tom Brokaw had yet to coin the phrase “Greatest Generation,” but during the 1980s, the ubiquity of Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” certainly set the stage for later celebrations of American patriotism with regard to remembrances of the war, and the generation that fought it.

Even then, I knew this was overly simplistic, and yet it exercised a strong hold. My dad didn’t like talking about “his” war, and probably sublimated these experiences into a fascination with the Nazis, Soviets and "their" war. He never made it to Europe, and regretted it. I took seriously my responsibility to provide reports to the home front.

Ironically, after a week spent in Ireland, there seemed to have been very little in Dublin or Sligo to suggest a war had ever been fought at all, and in fact, that’s because it had not – at least insofar as “official” Irish history regarded it.

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'Twas in the year of 'thirty-nine when the sky was full of lead, when Hitler was heading for Poland, and Paddy for Holyhead

Holyhead is the Welsh ferry port directly across the Irish Sea from Dublin. “Paddy” is longstanding slang for an Irishman, and the song refers to the curious fact that with nary an interruption, the Irish diaspora originally prompted by the 19th-century potato famine continued, according to its traditionally sad cadence, throughout the horrendous international conflict officially known within the fledgling Irish Republic not as a “war,” but as the “emergency.”

These semantics point to the anomaly that the Republic of Ireland, minus its Ulster flashpoint (then as now tied to the Brits), maintained a strict neutrality throughout World War II. The resulting situation was surreal at best, and for some, it symbolized a typically Irish response to calamity.

Now forgotten by Americans, the controversies engendered were extreme matters of life and death, especially for Britain during the Blitz. Irish independence was new, untested and in all respects a work in progress, and ties with the mother country still were painfully palpable.

I've worked till the sweat it has had me beat
With Russian, Czech, and Pole
On shuttering jams up in the hydro-dams
Or underneath the Thames in a hole
I've grafted hard and I've got my cards
And many a ganger's fist across my ears
If you pride your life don't join, by Christ!
With McAlpine's fusiliers

The song is called “McAlpine's Fusiliers,” written by Dominic Behan, multi-talented brother of the more boisterous and notorious writer Brendan. The lyrics, arguably Dominic’s most famous, considers the experience of migrant Irish laborers in Britain during the war.

The chief unintended consequence of neutrality’s chosen isolation was the near complete collapse of an already weak economy, as vast numbers of male citizens migrated to an active belligerent (Britain), either by choice or circumstance, and became de facto combatants through war-related work or military service.

Back in Ireland, diplomatic representatives of all warring nations were posted to Dublin in close proximity, Irish newspapers were censored to achieve fairness and balance for all warring nations, and life became even tougher for the long suffering rural poor, who were enlisted into make-work schemes like a bizarre program calling for escalating quotas of peat to be cut (it was customarily burned for fuel).

All the while, Ireland’s hotels and resorts remained packed, catering to a wealthy British clientele traveling to an otherwise impoverished country to eat and drink extravagantly, avoiding the inconvenience of dinnertime bombing at a time when rationing and austerity were norms back home.

Meanwhile, Catholic priests railed against the depravity of Europe, holding out a mystical vision of an autonomous, corporatist Ireland, one making good on the model of Salazar in neutral Portugal. The church feared the immoral contagion of condom-carrying American GI’s temporarily billeted in Northern Ireland prior to the climactic Normandy invasion.

Rigorous censorship was damaging to Ireland's writers and artists, who were cut off from previously fecund streams of continental inspiration.

Even stranger, Ireland even had its own hardscrabble fascist cadres, although comparisons with the Marx Brothers in "Duck Soup" are more appropriate than the actual dimensions of the threat posed to civil order by these confused and disorganized elements.

When the war was over, the questions arose: Had Ireland's leader, Eamon de Valera, heroically preserved its shaky independence by adhering to neutrality, or had his hedging retarded the country's standing in the post-war community of nations?

Were the Irish being traitorous to their acquired Anglo heritage by embracing neutrality, or were they as yet crafty Gaels, taking the only truly sane position in an utterly insane world?

---

The return path was familiar, from Sligo to Dublin by rail, a change of trains to Rosslare, and from the sleepy port overnight by boat to France.

Looking back, I’m continually fascinated by how very little I remember. There was a full Sunday in Sligo to recover from Saturday’s Live Aid concert-watching in the pubs. What did I do? What did I eat and drink? The memory is lost.

Much of Monday was taken up in transit. What was I thinking? It’s a blur, or more accurately, a blank, although Guinness may have been involved.

There is a faint recollection of boarding the ferry and putting my name on the waiting list for a room. Perhaps I’d grown fond of beds rather than floors. My name was called, and fortunately, the Irish Continental Line took plastic, though the debit card came another $25 closer to evaporating.

The return ferry debarked at Cherbourg instead of Le Havre, and I stepped onto French soil on Tuesday, July 16, 1985. From Cherbourg, it’s an hour by rail to the town of Bayeux, which is mildly famous for a tapestry depicting the Norman conquest of England in 1066, and boasts a beautiful cathedral called Notre-Dame de Bayeux.

Bayeux lies a few miles south of the English Channel coast, and the beaches chosen by the Allies for the D-Day landing. The beaches face northward, toward England.

For the invasion, from west to east, they were given the names Utah and Omaha (American troops) and Gold, Juno and Sword (British, Canadian, Commonwealth and Free French). The nearby towns of Sainte-Mère-Église and Caen were heavily damaged during the fighting, but Bayeux largely spared.

During the short train ride, I talked with a sharply outfitted American backpacker from Los Angeles, who said he was 50-something years old and had only recently quit his job in the film industry (or perhaps it had quit him), cleaned out his savings account and booked a flight to Europe.

We both got off the train at Bayeux. He was planning on staying at a hotel most backpackers couldn’t afford, and I was looking for a much cheaper hostel called the Family Home.

The woman at the Family Home said there was no available space – unless maybe there was, so could I wait?

At least she spoke English. After earnest consultations with co-workers and negotiations with another tourist who’d entered the building at the same time as me, it became clear that a room formerly dubbed as a dorm for four persons was being filled with mattresses, and henceforth would house six. We were the lucky two.

Unfortunately, no one told the original quartet, who came back from their grocery foraging expedition just after the newcomers had claimed their mattresses. The most vocally annoyed was Fred, a garrulous Floridian. However, a Canadian named Bruce quietly calmed Fred, and an adult conversation ensued.

The following morning, we hopped a bus together to Omaha Beach, the six of us, and another round of temporary friendships began.

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Previously:

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 19 … Sligo, Knocknarea, Guinness and Freddie.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 18 … Irish history with a musical chaser.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 17 ... A first glimpse of Ireland.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 16 … Lizard King in the City of Light.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 15 … The traveler at 55, and a strange interlude.

The PC: We pause Euro '85 to remember the Mathäser Bierstadt in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 14 … Beers and breakfast in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 13 … Tears of overdue joy at Salzburg's Augustiner.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 12 … Stefan Zweig and his world of yesterday.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 11: My Franz Ferdinand obsession takes root.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 10: Habsburgs, history and sausages in Vienna.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 9 … Milan, Venice and a farewell to Northern Italy.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 8 … Pecetto idyll, with a Parisian chaser.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 7 … An eventful detour to Pecetto.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 6 … When in Rome, critical mass.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 5 … From Istanbul to Rome, with Greece in between.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 4 … With Hassan in Pithion.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 3 … Growing up in Greece.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 2 ... Hitting the ground crawling in Luxembourg.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 1 … Where it all began.