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Normandy Memorial Tour In June, 2000, we traveled to France for a ceremonial dedication of a World War II memorial in the village of Periers. The memorial monument has statues of four American soldiers who were killed during the Normandy invasion in 1944. The man mostly responsible for the memorial is Henri Levaufre, a citizen of Periers. Henri was 13 years old when his town was liberated by the US Army 90th Division in 1944, and like so many French people, he has never forgotten the liberators. In an overwhelming example of a lifetime of charity he has dedicated his life to the memory of 90th Division veterans, fallen soldiers and their families. For the past 50 years, he has opened his home and his heart to thousands of people connected to the American forces who served in Normandy. He routinely visits the Omaha Beach cemetery with relatives of the United States soldiers buried there. He has painstakingly searched the Normandy countryside for the exact location a veteran was wounded, or where a relative was killed. Normandy 44 Project In 1999 I received a phone call from Henri. He told me that my brother Virgil, one of the thousands of men who died in Normandy invasion, had been selected as one of the four soldiers to be honored in the Periers memorial. I do not remember much about our conversation that day as I was nearly overcome with emotion, but I recall he wanted one of the four men to be a medic. He requested I send photos of Virgil so the sculptor could create a realistic likeness of him. Virgil Tangborn was a French horn player in the 90th Division Band (Virgil is in the back row, 6th from the left). Just before the Normandy invasion the band was dispersed into medical units attached to the 359th Infantry Regiment of the 90th Division. Virgil was killed while attempting to rescue a wounded truck driver during an artillery barrage. He was posthumously awarded the Silver Star for gallantry and is buried in the Omaha Beach Cemetery at Colville sur Mer. Bitter Experience Once Virgil left the small farm in Northern Minnesota where he grew up, we do not know much about the road he traveled to Omaha Beach. Letters he wrote to his parents from Camp Barkley, Texas, on maneuvers in Louisiana and California, and from England do not reveal much depth about the turmoil he must have experienced for those two years. Most of the concerns he expressed were those of a 21-year old away from home for the first time. When he tried out to join the division band as a French horn player he wrote a plaintive letter explaining why he was sure he had not been selected. (His lips were sore and chapped from the desert sun, he was exhausted and the temperature was over 100 degrees). However, in the next letter he joyfully informed us he was a member of the 90th Division Band!

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/normandy44-90div.us/usa/

http://www.hymet.com/docs/bitterexp.pdf

Virgil was an avid reader before being drafted. The he books borrowed from the state library tended toward philosophy, history and literature. In the journal he kept for 15 months before leaving home, he recorded his worries about the ordeal he knew he would face in the oncoming war. Intermixed with these personal anguishes he sought to formulate a philosophy of how life should be lived and to plan for his future, however uncertain it appeared at the time. Following is a brief photographic account of our journey in June, 2000, and of the tour we made with 90th Division veterans and their families.

90th Division

Memorial Tour

Periers, France

June 1-8, 2000

Wendell Tangborn and Andrea Lewis Seattle, Washington

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Two postcards of Periers, showing the layout of the town (pop. 2700) and the church. A mass was held in the church before the Dedication Ceremony on June 4. The church stands across from the Town Hall, where the 90th Division Memorial Monument now stands on the lawn. The Monument will be moved to its permanent location next year (2001).

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1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • Dedication

June 3, 2000 Saturday

Shortly after our arrival in Periers, we met four high school students who had "adopted" Virgil and put together a booklet and exhibit about him.

Top: Three of the students (Tobias, Valentin, and Jean-Francois) with Wendell after a ceremony at their school.

Center (left to right): Tobias, an unknown friend, Nicolas, and Valentin in the kitchen at Nicolas's house.

Bottom: Wendell at the exhibit put on by the students, which included a life-size poster of Virgil.


1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • Dedication

June 4, 2000 Sunday, The Dedication Ceremony for the Memorial Monument in Periers.

The two-hour ceremony featured speakers from France, Germany and USA, including mayors, veterans and US Army officers now serving in Europe.

Above: Wendell at the memorial statue with his hand on Virgil's shoulder. The four soldiers are Tullio Micaloni, Andrew Speese (kneeling), Virgil Tangborn and Richard Richtman. They are decorated with Hawaiian leis presented by Ann Speese, Andrew Speese's daughter.

Below: The dedicatory plaque in front of the statues.


June 4, 2000 Sunday, The Dedication Ceremony for the Memorial Monument in Periers.

Above: Wendell receives a commemorative medal from Major General David R. Bockel during the ceremony. The medal was awarded to relatives of fallen soldiers, veterans of the 90th Infantry Division, and relatives of civilians killed in Periers during the war.

Below: Wendell stands next to the beautiful wreath sent by Bemidji MN American Legion Post in honor of Virgil.

Patrick Cottencin, the sculptor who made the monument's statues, worked from old photos of the soldiers to create a likeness of each man.

Above: After the Dedication Ceremony, the people of Periers served lunch to the hundreds of visitors who came for the celebration. Henri Levaufre, shown above with his wife, Janete, is the driving force behind the Normandy-44 Association and the 90th Division Memorial Monument. He was 13 years old when Allied forces landed in Normandy. He has devoted much of his life to contacting US veterans and their families, piecing together official history and soldiers' personal memories, expressing appreciation to the 90th Division, and making sure people "never forget."

Below: The evening of June 5. A buffet dinner was held by the US visitors to thank their host families in Periers. Andrea and Wendell sat with Bernard Scarpa (right), a member of the Normandy-44 Association, the group formed in 1998 to raise funds to build the monument.

90th Division Monument Utah Beach

On June 6, our bus tour visited several WWII sites, including La Cambe (the German cemetery), Point du Hoc, Ste.-Mere-Eglise, and Arromanches. These photos were taken at Omaha Beach and the US cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer.

Above: Andrea with Mildred and Rich Elwell of Medina, OH. Rich is a highly-decorated 90th Division veteran who was also awarded France's Croix de Guerre.

Left: Walking on Omaha Beach.

Below: Henri Levaufre with Wendell at Virgil's cross in the US cemetery.

In Periers we stayed at a bed-and-breakfast called La Rochelle and were joined there by Wendell's son Andy and his family.

Above: Breakfast on the sun porch with Andy, his wife Sara, and their daughter Duan-Duan.

The 300-year-old main house of La Rochelle, from the front at sunset (left) and from the back (below), a beautiful setting with kitchen garden and green pastures for their Holsteins.

The 90th Division Memorial Tour took us to many other sites in Northern France and in Paris, including Versailles, the Bayeux Tapestry, the Louvre, and Fountainbleau.

Upper left: Mont St. Michel, an island abbey built in the 14th-15th centuries on the peak of a pyramid-shaped rock. The island stands in a bay with one of the biggest tides in the world.

Left: Near the Eiffel Tower on our first day in Paris.

Final Thoughts - Memorial Dedication

On June 4, 2000, a memorial was dedicated in Periers, France to honor the United States 90th Infantry Division. The statues in the memorial featured four soldiers, including my brother, Virgil, who died after the invasion of France. About the time that Virgil was killed in Normandy on June 14, 1944, another tragedy was unfolding 900 miles to the east. The Nazis had occupied Hungary on March 19 and began forcing all the Jewish people in Hungary into ghettos. In May they began transporting them in boxcars to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. One of these trains arrived at Auschwitz on July 1 (the day we received word of Virgil’s death). Most of the Hungarian Jews sent to Auschwitz were gassed soon after they arrived. Only a few survived. One was Marika Frank; she arrived on July 1 with her extended family but of all of them only Marika and her cousin, Vera, survived.

It is somehow reassuring to think that, miraculously, Marika made it through the Holocaust horror because of Virgil and the other gallant men we honored at the memorial dedication in Normandy. I realize the connection between them is tenuous – but it is still there. Marika made her way to the United States and eventually to Seattle. She married, raised a family and now is a highly-respected artist who lives on Mercer Island. Her paintings have appeared in art shows and galleries in Seattle and other cities for several decades.

Forty years later, in 1984, a young man appeared at her door announcing that he was 27 years old and did yard work, and was there any he could do for her? He was my oldest son, John, who seven years earlier had dropped out of college (where he was a promising cellist), alienated himself from his family and friends, and was unable to hold a job for more than a few weeks. After being homeless for a while, binge-drinking, attempting suicide, having several hospitalizations and brushes with the law, he was finally diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. He is now on a medication that alleviates some of the symptoms of this illness and is doing relatively well. He is still doing yard work for Marika. I was privileged to finally meet her and her family in 1992.

Marika stood by John steadfastly for these past sixteen years and undoubtedly is one of his best friends. I am convinced that he has so far made it through this terrible illness because of Marika, her husband, Sydney Abrams, and a few others who have helped him.

These selfless acts of bravery and kindness renew our faith in humanity. The men we honored in Periers, Andrew Speese, Tullio Micaloni, Richard Richtman and Virgil Tangborn, died so that others, like Marika, would live. Marika in turn opened her heart and home to an unknown person who was in obvious pain and distress. And Henri Levaufre of the 90th Division Association brought us all closer together, and for this we are profoundly grateful.

Wendell Tangborn Seattle, WA 206 262 9697

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