Blog Posts tagged with "Paris"

I was deep in the heart of France yesterday during Memorial Day as I'm on my way to provide support for the events scheduled in commemoration of the 66th anniversary of D-Day. I left out from our U.S. European Command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany and stopped at the halfway point on the way to the beaches of Normandy.

After nearly 19 years in the Navy, I've spent my share of Memorial Days honoring the sacrifices of those who gave their lives to the greater good. I've placed flags at cemeteries and saluted color guards that passed before and after ceremonies on this important day. I spent the majority of this Memorial Day packing up the car and getting on the road to join up with the other military members supporting the D-Day events this year.

Reims (pronounced like "rance"), France was my halfway point on this wet and congested Memorial Day. This city, located about 80 miles to the northeast of Paris, was meticulously reconstructed after both WWI and WWII. After reading the short write up about the town in my travel guide, the thing that popped out to me the most was a date 65 years ago.

On May 7th, 1945 at 2:41a.m., Nazi Germany signed an unconditional surrender bringing an end to six years of war in Europe. The surrender was signed in U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower's war room of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in Reims. Media that covered the event in the days that followed called the headquarters "the little red schoolhouse" for its simple red-brick look and resemblance to a schoolhouse (the majority of the building is a technical university today).

I arrived in Reims with no idea where to go. I headed close to the center of town down winding French streets blindly turning down any road that had a sign that pointed toward a hotel. Luckily I'm equipped with GPS or I would struggle with getting out of town. When I arrived at one that had potential, I stopped, checked in and dropped off my bags.

The Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force or "little red schoolhouse."

Heading back out of the hotel for dinner while conferring with the front desk free map, I looked across the street about a half a block and there was a building of red-brick schoolhouse motif with the flags of France, UK, USA, Russia and Germany in front. A city of a couple hundred thousand spread out over 18 square miles and I land at the hotel across the street from the site of the end of World War II in Europe. What luck!

LCDR Taylor Clark
Chief of Media