The Same Streets

I realized that I should have worn a coat. The cold spring air in the evening was not pleasant without a coat – I could see my breath, and the rum St. James was not doing enough to warm me. Ladies strolled past the café toward home, their hurried footsteps against the cobblestones echoing in the air, gripping their shawls close to their bodies to stay warm.

The kids now asleep in the hotel with Jenn, I’d walked down Rue du Marché in search of something. It’s hard to say what. The ‘spirit’ of the town maybe? A hallucination of G.I.’s long gone having drinks on a patio table? The building from that postcard sent years ago?

The hotel leaned; maybe its foundation had shifted over 700 years. It was charming. Added “character,” as I like to say – a euphemism I often use to rationalize not splurging for a nicer place. The Four Seasons would not have condoned the lean. I imagined it during the war. But then, what was 81 years in the life of a building that old? Except for the cheap modern furnishings and newly painted walls, there was probably not much difference – the old beams, the maze-like floor plan shaped by centuries of renovations – walls moved, buildings merged.

Obernai feels this way. Established for hundreds of years, but still cobbled together: red shutters against the white of half-timbered houses – a trademark of the Alsatian style, part French, part German. When you try to imagine a time in which any of this looked or felt new, your mind breaks a little – it seems it never could have been that way, much less 81 years ago, when a Grimes was last here.

Yet there is an enduring permanence to it all. The rough-hewn stone streets appear exactly as they have for centuries. The church of Saints-Pierre-et-Paul. The old town hall – frozen in time.

Pilgrims, centuries ago, making their way toward the monastery at Mont Sainte-Odile. Merchants in the market square, carts heavy with cloth, tools, and wine. Soldiers marching in from the north to reclaim Alsace for the Reich. These streets have known them all.

What is 81 years?

For two months, the 67th was stationed here at position WV 82-88 as reported by his unit records, a few miles north of town. I deciphered that these coordinates corresponded to the ‘Nord du Garre’ ETO map of the Allies used during the war breaking Europe into a detailed grid. Where he was is a parking lot now, bustling with the cars and people of a busy Leclerc hypermarket. But in the spring of 1945 the men of the anti-aircraft battery dug in as Nazi Germany tried desperately not to implode under the weight of the Allies’ final push. They must have thought it was over in the Ardennes that winter, but then Nordwind happened – the dying breath of the Reich, an attempt to recapture Strasbourg and disrupt the Allied push in the north.

In hindsight, it’s easy for us to see it this way: an all-but-victorious army knocking at the door of its vanquished enemy. But 81 years ago, in the fog of war, as a soldier on the ground, Pop spent his nights in that small tent, his M1 carbine close, not knowing any of this. The prospect of finally being at the gates of the enemy – the one that for five years they had been slowly edging toward – must have been terrifying. The unit began reporting jets that spring, flying high and fast and totally untouchable to the 67th’s cannons, designed to oppose slower-moving propeller aircraft at low altitudes. All they could do was gaze up at them in wonder. They had not trained for this. Was the Luftwaffe preparing to unleash an unstoppable weapon at just the right moment? Who knew.

But at 10:30 on April 9, 2026, Obernai was quiet. I imagined Pop at a similar table decades ago on a cold night, writing a letter home to Mary Lou, longing to be back in Kentucky with her. Most likely, he would have spent almost every night in his pup tent north of town, where that parking lot now was – if not on duty, then in bed early enough to wake at 4:00 a.m. and ready the chow line for the 200 men of his unit.

But tonight, I permitted my mind this fantasy – this chance to connect with him in some way. I was almost twice his age by now, with kids of my own just a few steps away. Yet Obernai was the same. The Willys Jeeps and smell of diesel gone, the Me 262s no longer flying overhead, the 67th long moved on – but what had not changed felt larger. And I know Pop left a piece of himself here, just as he did everywhere he went during those five years so long ago.

I paid the bill and stepped back onto the cobblestones, the cold still hanging in the air. Tomorrow, we’d head south, toward Burgundy.

Pop would have gone the other way – north, toward Germany, toward whatever waited for him there.

I tried to picture him on this same street, turning in that direction.

I couldn’t.