Chapter 36. Champagne

Back home again I joined all the others with eyes and ears on what was happening farther north in what we thought of as a race between the Russians and the Allies to get to the final steps of the ETO war.  But also we Red Crossers now had heard we might get sent to the Pacific Theatre.  There the need was thought to be great for our sort of work.  What would I decide if I had an option?

Georgana Tucker, our supervising social worker had replaced Margaret Stewart who, as she had requested, was reassigned to go back to England.  Georgana was due to go back to the US on rotation leave in May for a month.  She had been overseas about 2 ½ years.

In Liege my doctor brother, Neill, had been granted a few days’ leave to return to Bristol, England and I was delighted because I had hoped he would propose to Daisy Kay and had so advised him.  He did go, did propose and he and his special Bristol girl, discovered on a tennis court, had a British wedding and came home after the war to join our family—no longer as “Daisy” but as “Kay.”

We Recreation Workers still had plenty to do to care for injured GIs, as before, but not under as much pressure after the Germans were defeated at the Battle of the Bulge.  Most of the patients had had a stop or two at the smaller military hospitals near the battlefields.  By the time they arrived at the 95^th many spent days or a few weeks and then were well enough to return to their outfits.  Others were at our General Hospital to heal briefly en route to more specialized care at military hospitals stateside.

In the spring and early summer I had a chance to look around, taking rides with personnel on military business to nearby cities and villages.  As I wrote in a letter home in April, ’45, “I’ve been having a pretty good time lately.  There’s a fellow at the Hospital Center—adjutant—Captain Dan Lynch, who’s been coming over about every night.  He’s very nice.  Sunday was my day off and it was a beautiful day.  We went to a large city (for France) in a Jeep and the countryside was beautiful.

“That night we attended a house-warming which Major Gahagan the chief nurse for the Center (the three general hospitals).  All the hospital CO’s were there, and her house is lovely—sorta like the houses in Georgetown in DC.  It was fun!”

Those weeks in the last half of 1945 allowed me to orient myself to my surroundings, the colorful region of Champagne, formerly a province of France.  The word Champagne was made famous by becoming the name for the luxurious white wine produced in the area.  As a province, Champagne once was famous for being where Kings were anointed.

From time to time, sight-seeing around Champagne as a free-riding Jeep passenger, I managed at least a drive through such charming villages or small cities as Douaumont, Chalons sur Marne, Domremy, Vouziers, Toul, Laon, Soissons, and most memorably Reims.  I loved visiting this large city in the north of France where a small church, built in 400 AD, through the centuries had been remodeled, destroyed, rebuilt and by 1945 enlarged into the awesome Gothic Cathedral of Reims.