Timelines

     Astronomy was a passion of mine as a boy.  I built my own reflecting telescope from scratch, grinding the mirror in the cold basement of our house, and spent mosquito-ridden hours outside at night looking at the stars.  So naturally, while in London,I took the short boat ride to Greenwich to see the Royal Observatory.  When Britannia ruled the waves, her sailing ships needed a precise way of determining longitude.  Doing so requires accurate clocks on a ship and tables showing when certain stars should be directly overhead at various longitudes.  The Royal Observatory was established to service this need.  Its location became the zero meridian, and time all around the world, or at least all around the British empire upon which the sun never set, was measured from Greenwich Mean Time.  Tourists visiting the Observatory today pay 16 pounds for the privilege of entering the gates and standing with feet on each side of the zero meridian.  The importance of bestriding an invisible, artificial line escapes me.  So I asked an attendant about this.  He dismissed me at first by saying that if I wanted to see the meridian, I could bloody well pay the 16 pounds.  But when I pointed out that the zero meridian runs from the South Pole, through the Observatory in Greenwich, to the North Pole and that there are infinite points along the line where one can bestride it, he allowed as how the weather vane on top of the Observatory also had an arrow pointing north and so I could indeed stand astride the meridian outside the gates without charge.

The town of Greenwich and the Old Royal Naval College from the Observatory

     William Herschel constructed a very large reflecting telescope with a mirror that was 48 inches in diameter.  (Mine was six inches).  So when I saw a remaining fragment of the tube on the grounds of the Observatory, I naturally had to have my picture taken with it.

Video of my return to Cheppy

     Now that I'm back in the United States, I have access to a computer and plan to add a few more details.  I will begin with this video of the drive into Cheppy on September 26.  I uploaded to YouTube.  The video is taken from the same direction as Dad would have gone from Buzemont, from west to east.  It begins at the Missouri Memorial outside Cheppy.  The fact that the memorial was put in this spot in 1922 by men who fought there tends to confirm that this division's route into Cheppy.  My guess is that this road was there in 1918 although the mayor told me that the Germans had built a small railroad track here to supply munitions to the fortifications on Butte Vauquois.  About 10 seconds into the video, you will see a bridge on the road.  The mayor said this is the ravine that Dad and Truman referred to.  Again, my guess is that elements of the 35th Division, not just Dad's machine gun company, must have camped along the ravine where they might get water to bathe (not drink) from the small stream.  As the video continues, you see the sign "Cheppy" at the outskirts of the village.  Next is the German kitchen, and the camera pans to it behind the house of the woman who showed it to us. Then left into the village and another left to "downtown" Cheppy and la mairie, the mayor's office.
Returning to Cheppy on September 26

 

     We walked through most of central Paris Friday. We estimated we covered at least ten
miles. Afternoon found us on the Champs Elysees, and we decided to stop for coffee. By
random chance, we picked the chic Fourquet, where two glasses of champagne, two patisseries,
and a bottle of mineral water ran to 64 Euros. Seated next to us was a distinguished man--imagine Charles De Gaulle, wonderfully dressed in a tweedy sports coat, red sweater, starched
white shirt, and red, striped tie. I asked him what the thin red thread on this lapel signified. It
was the Legion of Honor, awarded since the time of Napoleon to military and civil service for
distinguished service. In his case it was his years as ambassador to a former French colony in
Africa. Ever so slowly, I elicited his story. He lives near Metz in eastern France and is in Paris
visiting his adult children. Since retiring, he stays busy overseeing the family’s castle and a
thousand acres of land. He doesn’t live in the castle because, although an historic site, it’s run
down with a leaking roof. During WWII, it was a headquarters for both German and American
armies, at different times of course. There was much more to his story, but those parts were too
personal for telling on the Internet. We tarried, talking to him, before setting off for another two
hours of walking and dinner.