I own a King Tiger

So there was this guy.

He was running what I can comfortably call the least-developed historical site I’ve visited on this trip: the ‘Batterie de Grandcamp-Maisy’, or ‘Maisy battery’ to us.  Where every other place was tanks on plinths, epic walls or sweeping sculptures, this one was a demountable, a porta-potty and a cyclone wire fence in front of blackberries eight feet high. One of the Trip Adviser reviews says as much, the ‘reviewer’ doing a lap of the car park and leaving. It looked like this…

Blue thing is a Higgins boat, not a swimming pool. White thing is my VW Polo, not a carelessly abandoned roller skate.

Now it smelled pretty rough from the start. But take a look at those two guns. Both are German sFH18s, 15cm artillery pieces used throughout the war. The rusty one looks about right, if a little light-on for working parts. But the better-painted one has a muzzle brake. The Germans didn’t use muzzle brakes on these pieces; best I can make out this was some post-war Czech mod. There’s also a Bofors, a twin 37mm flak and a (I think) rare 7.5cm infantry gun, all in pretty bad shape. None of this suggested a particularly well thought out museum. But it DID have that unique smell of the frighteningly enthusiastic amateur…

So I paid my six euros to the not-even-slightly French chap in the demountable and headed out, laminated map in hand

Hello...

And it’s a pretty good site. It’s not like the other batteries in the area. Longue sur Mer was fully-built, and still looks menacing today with three of the four guns still ensconced in five hundred tons of concrete casemate (for the record, it’s ‘casemate’ A ‘casement’ is a different thing).

On the left is a caseMENT. On the right is a caseMATE. Not the same thing. Needless to say I was disappointed when my interior designer showed me her ideas for my window casemates.

 There’s a great observation and command bunker on the coast and a few defensive positions (based on what little I know, I’d wager there’s much more to be found there; you don’t defend a battery that size with a lone mortar and a single ‘Tobruk’).

One of the four guns at Longue sur Mer. In its casemate. 500 tons of OT concrete, 15cm of German firepower, forty kilos of French kid.

The battery at Pointe du Hoc of course is the big one. There’s been at least one movie made that involves it, starring at least one John Wayne, and about as many Richard Burtons. This thing sits on a spit of land that’s daunting from any angle, let alone from a heaving sea at the bottom of the two hundred foot cliffs. This is the place where two hundred US rangers fired grappling hooks up the cliffs, scaled them in the face of enemy fire and drove out the German defenders, only to discover the guns had been moved. Nonetheless it’s a well-mapped and well developed historical site, and the best-known in the area, largely because it was the site of a colossal American mistake. Of the two hundred-plus rangers who landed, two thirds were dead by nightfall, all to capture seven Germans and one gun. And, much as happened at Gallipoli and in the charge of the light brigade at Sevastopol, the participants were showered with medals and labelled American heroes.

Murderer's-eye view from the bunker covering Pointe du Hoc. Fifty Germans killed two thirds of the Americans who attacked.

To get back on track, Maisy battery is perhaps a little underwhelming by comparison. No huge casemates, the wrong guns, muddy trenches, no ‘interpretive plaques’, no shadowy steles of wistful veterans. Just concrete and steel and notes explaining what I was looking at. Of all the sites, it carried the least gravitas, the least majesty.

But what it DID convey was a sense of a place where a bunch of soldiers spent their days, firing their guns and ducking every time an aircraft flew overhead. It wasn’t hard to imagine a couple of blokes standing around chatting and smoking outside the personnel bunker in a quiet moment, or running hard to the ammo bunkers for more 37mm shells when the Marauders were overhead. It felt real, it felt recent, and it felt authentic in a way the monoliths I’d seen elsewhere didn’t.

"Damn French mud! We didn't have this at Kasserine!"

The site was only found in 2007. The operators were as curious as I’ve occasionally been about the Pointe du Hoc ranger mission, and why it’s so deep in World War 2 culture. They poked about a bit, found some documents, went to a field and stuck a shovel in the ground at a few places. One time they hit concrete, so they bought the field and stuck a lot more shovels in the ground.

To date they’ve uncovered five gun emplacements, three flak positions, a radar bunker, a command bunker, several personnel bunkers and ammunition bunkers aplenty. Two miles or so of trenches have been opened up, and they think they’re only half-done.

So after I finished my tour I thought I’d risk cracking open the anorak vault a bit by asking this guy a question:

“So who’s done the work?”  I said.

“Me and me dad.”

And that question was just about all I was able to get in. Off he went on a clearly oft-trod path, asking what I knew about Pointe du Hoc (a bit), which D-Day books I’d read (a few), and whether I ever wondered why P du H was so well-known despite being a disaster (I had).

And he told a hell of a tale. Searches of National archives, trips to New Orleans museum (apparently curated by the world’s premier authority on D-Day sites), conversations with ranger veterans and German soldiers, endless fact-finding and proselytising for his Pet Project. The conversation (well, the lecture to be honest) drifted and looped and paused for paying customers (“Bonjour! Deux? Oui, deuze euro s’il vous plait. Merci! Now, where was I? Oh, the rangers on June 7^th. Right, they had orders to find Maisy…”). His enthusiasm was infectious, and I happily let him ramble.

Now I’m not even sure how it came up. But at one point he mentioned owning a tank.

“Well, five tanks. Panzer IV, Panther, a couple of Shermans. And, um…”

At this point his expression shifted. It was like seeing a dad talking about his son. I wondered what was coming.

“…I may also have a King Tiger.”

Okay, back the hell up. There’s less than a dozen of these things left, anywhere. And this guy has one in his BACK YARD?

Most folks have a swing set and a rusty barbecue. This guy...?

“Yeah. I found it when I was looking for a Panther.”

Okey dokey then. Easy mistake to make. I’ve stumbled across many a Ferrari when I was drunkenly searching for my car in a pub car park at 3am.

So here’s the story he tells. Apparently the keenest tank collectors go to the lengths of searching World War 2 fighter pilots’ after-action reports, or AARs. These guys would come back from a sweep of Europe, grab a cuppa tea and a bacon and egg sarnie (cuppa joe and hash on a shingle for the Mustang-and Thunderbolt jockeys), then sit down to write about their jaunt. Just an A4 page telling where they went, what they saw, what they did to whom by way of flinging hot metal about. And these things would sometimes record details like “Spotted Panzer IV on Bayeux-Arromanches road near old church. Fired rockets, two hits. Came home for cuppa tea and sarnie.” Cut to 2005, keen tank collector reading this would go to the neighbourhood of Bayeux, find a church on the road in question and start quizzing the locals with the most wrinkles, asking whether they recalled seeing a rusty old tank thereabouts in the years after the yanks came by. This apparently is how old mate came to have a Panther and a Panzer IV in his back yard. And on this occasion, after scanning some FOUR THOUSAND of these AARs, he, found one that mentioned a Panther being knocked out on a road in Normandy.

Quick check with French civil works records from the area. Confirmation a tank was found and reported to the military. Details of the turret being blown off (to render it useless one assumes) after removing several 88mm shells. So old mate knows it ain’t a Panther, whatever it is. Off to this little town with his notebook and ground-penetrating radar kit(?)

Long story short. The village septuagenarians confirm there was a tank there until the ‘50s, after which it vanished. A little more probing, he’s got a location. Quick look with the ground-penetrating radar and viola. Tank! Apparently the next step is telling the German army, BUYING IT OFF THEM, then telling zee local Franch people he will be digging up their road to get HIS tank out thanks very much.

So he tells me he digs up the road. Cranes it out. Sticks it on his army surplus tank transporter and sends it back to England while his civil construction mate rebuilds the road. First thing I’m thinking at this point is exactly how, the HELL, this guy could afford to do all this. Seriously, he’s sitting in a donga, taking six euros off the maybe-four people who wandered in for the two hours I listened. I’m also wondering just how big a back yard he must have to store his five tanks, half-dozen halftracks and collection of WW2 Allied personal equipment so vast there are precisely 121 items he is yet to collect (number 122 was a recent find).

At this point he tells me he makes his money from war memorabilia. Shell case? Hundred bucks. 7.92 casing? Two bucks. Complete Wehrmacht uniform, any condition? Five hundred. Given he’s just dug up a hectare’s worth of battle site, and given I am at this point surrounded by casings, uniforms, helmets, gun parts, artillery pieces and assorted other paraphernalia, I’ll buy it.

So yeah. I just met a guy who tells me he owns a King Tiger, one of only nine (ten counting his) in the world apparently.

Do I believe him?

Well now, isn’t that an interesting question.

There are elements of the story that ring true. AARs were a thing, the locals would have some great leads (and his French sounded convincing enough), he didn’t trip up much on his subject knowledge, and he clearly has a deep involvement in the history of the conflict in the area. He showed me some pictures of what appeared to be a disassembled Panther, a 38(t), a PaK 36 and endless pictures of helmets and uniforms and piles of other paraphernalia. Some of these elements check out (there’s a YouTube video with his name showing some of these things). Others…?

He did show me a couple of black and white pictures of a King Tiger, purportedly after its turret had been blown off prior to burial. I’d never seen the pictures before (and I’ve seen a  LOT of picture of  tanks). There is indeed at least one King Tiger buried under a road in France. It’s been partly unearthed, but traffic disruption would be too severe to permit digging up the hull. He mentioned that one, and said it was his next target, but that he wouldn’t be able to keep it quiet.

On that subject. He claims to have dug up ‘his’ King Tiger and got it back to England. Apparently it cost him a total of five thousand pounds, including ferry fares and paying a local contractor to put the road back. Maybe, I dunno; the French roads I drove on were pretty primitive, but that seems really, REALLY cheap, given he’d have needed a crane capable of lifting sixty tons. Cranes that big don't come cheap. And the fact remains, these things are rare enough that  the nine existing specimens are listed by location and owner on Wikipedia. I guess someone has to be the first to find each one, but to find it, dig it up, get it out and back to England without anyone finding out is quite a feat of subterfuge (we’re talking seventy tons of military hardware here; you can’t tell me that gets you into the ‘nothing to declare’ queue at customs). And then to tell the whole story anyway to a random interested party who wanders in?

Add to this a couple of tall-ish tales he managed to cram in. One about a veteran punching a snooty historian who questioned his authority (okay, I’ll buy it). Another about starting up the only surviving Jagdtiger when he was given access to a Russian military base where it was stored (hm, alright, but…its battery was charged?) And then a tale from an AAR of a Mustang pilot who blew up a Panther so hard its turret flew into the air and knocked out his wingman…

So is it true? Is there a tenth King Tiger sitting in a back yard in northern England somewhere?

The one thing that troubled me most was that this fellow had all these stories to tell. He’d discovered this amazing place, unearthed it, written its story (he’s published a book)  and cast doubt over one of the enduring legends of D-Day. He’d seen the Russians’ secret tank museum, assembled a rare and precious troop of armoured vehicles of his own, collected enough uniforms and equipment to dress a battalion, and had plenty more gear coming (he mentioned a recently unearthed cache of 4,000 German helmets in Israel). Yet I found him sitting in a demountable with his sleepy labrador, collecting six euros apiece from occasional passers-by who squelched up to his propped-open door through the dreary Normandy rain. He’s clearly an eccentric of the first order, moving between the tiny, obsessed circle of global military collectors and the slightly larger but no less, um, focussed circles of D-Day historians. He’s a polemicist, a storyteller, a man with an argument to make and no qualms about the toes he steps on making it. And his desire to see the battery he discovered earn its place in the story of that day is both evident and inspiring. But the site makes a hundred thousand a year (he said), at which rate he could afford to spend the twenty thousand necessary to put a gum-chewing, phone-checking local teen on the counter while he digs up the rest of the 7^th Panzer Division.

Register girl at the Longue sur Mer battery. Yeah, I didn't bother asking about her tank collection.

Maybe he likes being on the site, sharing his tales, hearing what folks think or devising the dig plan for the next phase. It just seemed a strange way to be spending his days. I very much hope it was all true, and I’ll be trying to find out. If you’re into history, or just like tanks (and hey, who doesn’t, amirite!?), check this place out, www.maisybattery.com . He’s opening a museum soon, has plans to display his tanks, and is a long way from done with the story of D-Day. Hopefully he hires that teenager and gets out of that demountable soon. Get over there and catch him before he does.

Because me? You had better BELIEVE I’d be at home, sitting in my King Tiger.

Wanna little towel darl?

I was back in the air. Two years after starting The Late Traveller, I’d finally made it back on board a giant aircraft hurtling through emptiness to a foreign land. I was Dubai-bound of course; seems every plane that leaves Australia is contractually obligated to expose us to the shopping nightmare/dream that is Dubai International. So I had ten hours to prepare myself for one of the bleakest, emptiest, most artificial places I have ever encountered. I hate Dubai so much.

But a journey of a thousand miles starts with a something something. And mine had started months before, when I decided France was next.

So why France? Three reasons. Okay, about a hundred, but ninety seven of them were food. Touching on the non-food ones, the first was the prospect of sampling a little military history first-hand. The country has been the stomping ground for a variety of conquerors, despots, revolutionaries, invaders, counter-invaders, heroic defenders and embarrassing surrenders. I’d read a million of their stories, but never seen the ground they’d stood on when they variously changed the course of human history, vanished into irrelevance, or consigned themselves and their nation to a rep for squibbing the moment shit got real. Second reason was kinda related to the first: I’d been told in no uncertain terms that I was noooot to visit Germany without a select (and very strident) group of friends. There was a hint of menace behind that entreaty, so, yeah, Charles de Gaulle rather than Flughafen Frankfurt on this outing.

And third. Paris. I’ve never thought much about the place, but…yeah. Paris. I’m not really one for ‘collecting’ experiences or hitting the big monuments for the sake of it. But standing at the bottom of the Empire State and putting a hand on the stone I’d seen in endless pictures was like a waking dream. With the Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Notre Dame and the Pompidou within an hour’s walk of each other, there was too much opportunity for stunned gawping to miss.

Time to go. Train tickets, hotel reservations, maps, plans, guides, printed how-tos on getting from terrifyingly huge chrome-and-glass airports to the centre of thousand-year old cities. Also a picture of my very first Airbnb apartment. More on that later. House took a little prepping prior to departure, thanks largely to a pretty amazing weekend with what I may have referred to at least once as ‘my peeps’. With the wine bottles binned, the windows triple-checked and the wifi shut down (hell with you, neighbours; maybe I’d share more if your dogs, alarms, drunk girlfriends and bogan mates would stfu once in a while), it was taxi time.

Tired old Ford station wagon taxi. Driver from somewhere in the middle east? Epic beard, a smile that was visible through it and a gentle opinion on Perth traffic and Uber drivers. Terminal One, here I come.

Airports. In a kind moment I’d call them a necessary evil, but at other hours I’d call them well-catered hell-pits. Cranky kids, nervous adults, plodding seniors and queues queues queues. I made the intuitive leap that my ‘Qantas’ flight meant an Emirates check-in, and dropped into the seatbelt-bordered maze behind chatty Jewish family. They were fine, but behind me was an increasingly frazzled mother whose one child insisted on sitting on her trolleyed suitcases and wriggling until they fell off. Her threats to control little Dan started at ‘no food on the plane’, progressed through ‘a thump’, detoured briefly past ‘I’ll delete ‘Home Alone’’ (more of a kindness really) and eventually settled at ‘Right, that’s it. No more wifi.’ Respect to her; I would have toe-tagged that odious little goblin and checked him on as baggage. It was a relief to reach the counter. And to have no children.

“Dubai? Sweet. Got your passport there mister Dunn? Sweet. Okay, I’ve checked you right through. Here’s your boarding passes and a customs form. Super sweet!”

He sure liked that word. I don’t know if there was some misguided cultural familiarisation class behind it, but young Chester was misinformed of the right number of enthusiastic affirmations to use in a conversation. Frankly I couldn’t disagree; he had me out of there faster than the checker-inners at the minesite airstrips I frequent.

Customs. Green form. Having learned from my New York experience, I had three pens secreted about my person and luggage. Boxes ticked, name scribbled illegibly (and my occupation; the heck? Are they hoping someone will accidentally divulge they’re an international terrorist?), signature on back and past the fixed smile on the woman telling people no, she didn’t have a pen every six minutes

Queue for the passport guys was nice and short, and it was minutes before I got a gruff “Next ploise” calling me to the counter.

“Passport ploise.” Look, squint, scribble. “Thank yoi. Go through ploise.”

I always thought that was a joke accent, sort of a satire on squinting, suspicious old cops in Kings Cross. Kevin the Customs Guy showed me otherwoise. I went through as instructed and joined the throng in the weirdly small departure space.

The other humans there were tired and nervous, and balanced on that weird edge you see people on when their destiny isn’t entirely in their own hands. Not everyone; some folks were dozing full-stretch across three seats, oblivious to the glares of the stander-uppers with overworked plastic bags full of vodka and perfume. But others were three feet from the gate, checking their boarding passes and the time every six minutes. I was somewhere in between, and spent the half-hour or so pacing the gaps between sprawled bodies, uncomfortable seats, celebrity perfumes and mounded alcohol. With ten hours in an aluminium chair coming my way I wanted to keep moving as long as I could.

Final texts were sent by about halfway through the boarding march. Hosties with little signs saying which zone was boarding, a leisurely trickle from the Emirates lounge, all swirling around the tight-packed fear of the econoclass. I was heading into a space where a glass of water was a tricky request, while twelve feet above me a hostie was leading a chorus of apologies for not having a guest’s exact pyjama size. Which is fine; if I coughed up for first class I’d want the pilot’s home phone and my name on a plane somewhere.

Managed to miss my seat of course. Years of boarding teeny planes with a catflap hatch at the front trained me to think the first row I passed was number one. Turns out Airbuses stick a funnel in around row forty for the peasants, so I was way down around row seventy before I realised I’d overshot. A good thirty seconds of “Sorry, ‘scuse me, sorry, whoops, hey nice shoes, oh dear was that coffee hot?” and I made it back to 45A.

I was actually dozing when 45B gave me an elbow and uttered the words that named this entry. There was the usual moment of confusion while mister brain caught up on current events, recognised the interior of an aircraft and reconciled the stern sixty-something surgical nurse beside me pointing to a pretty Belgian-by-way-of-Tunisia hostie, smiling and dangling a steamy rag in tweezers before me. We hadn’t taken off yet (I sleep fast on planes) and I didn’t know who was whom yet (I learn fast, but I ain’t that good), but I knew I didn’t wanna little towel darl. Belgian-by-way-of-Tunisia handed ‘my’ towel to the next guy, and sixty-something surgical nurse got busy swiping at every inch of exposed skin with her little towel. Her skin, not mine.

I was awake through the takeoff, but managed to nod off again right around when we flew over where that Malaysia Airlines plane went down. The ‘too soon’ rule precludes elaboration here, so my apologies if you were expecting a gag. Suffice to say I can offer little to prove or disprove the theories regarding unsuccessful searches other than to say the ocean is big. And planes are probably quite sinky.

Okay, that was a good nap. I seem to be over France. Landing. More once I know whether they’ll deport me for mispronouncing ‘Bonjour’...

A journey of ten thousand miles begins with an expired passport

So I'm sitting in my recently redecorated study. There's a pile of gear behind me and a backpack ready to receive it all. Travel docs printed, destination-appropriate cash on hand, even a little pile of change for sampling random mysteries from vending machines. I know where and when I need to be, and all that remains is going there, then.

Planning a holiday is as big a journey as the one that involves planes and x-rays and snoring fellow passengers with personal hygiene shortcomings. At some point you think "It'd be noice to go see <wherever>." Fast forward a month, it occurs to you that your dream of treading the jewelled shores and/or shaded avenues of <wherever> is no closer to realisation. So that day you take a look at your work calendar, and you notice a neat gap between everyone else's leave, the big round of meetings for the Thing, you know, the One the CIO is keen on, and the start of the next season of <some TV show you like>. And you think "Yeah. I might go <wherever> then."
Another month. You've just been hit with council rates, school fees and the quarterly power bill, still suspiciously high despite the abolition of whatever that tax was that should have saved us five hundred bucks. You've got some work social thing planned for that nice gap in the work schedule, and you're thinking you don't reeeally want to miss the end of the current season of <some other TV show you like>. Maybe the trip to <wherever> can wait another year. Things'll be easier once you've sorted the last payment on the new kitchen anyway.

But then the Moment. You know the one. Someone at work says "Hey, when's your big trip to <wherever>? It's just after the end of that TV show you like isn't it? Are you ready to go?"

You're not. You'd forgotten about it. You'd slipped back into the easy comfort of routine, with no big expenses, no worries about getting someone to cover you at work, water your fruit trees or mind your pet axolotl. After all, it's not like <wherever> was going anywhere, right?

Wrong. And the Moment is when you realise it's getting further away every year (continental drift aside, I'm talking metaphorically here. Stay with me).

The Moment caught me one Thursday afternoon in August 2013. I'd talked about The Trip, savoured my friends' enthusiasm for the plan, even started thinking about the things I'd like to do there. But actually planning and doing? Nup. Nothing.
Fast forward to The Moment. For me it was when I looked at my appointments and realised the date was a week later than I originally said I planned to go. Four hours later I walked out of a travel agent with a ticket to New York and a booking in an overpriced hotel. And a promise to myself that I wouldn't wait for The Moment next time.

Yeah, this hotel. Million dollar lobby, hundred dollar rooms.

I'm a little more organised on this trip. There's a chronologically-arranged, highlighted-and-underlined wad of hotel confirmations, train tickets and tour maps to prove it. Attention to detail ain't my thing, but sometimes something just clicks and suddenly I'm printing annotated route maps from train stations to ferry terminals via notable landmarks. Having said that, there was one, ah, minor oversight: my passport expired mid-holiday. Frankly though, that was less of an issue than the (perhaps thoroughly deserved) ribbing I got from those in the know. Seriously, there was a phone call in which a travel agent was laughing at me in the background.

Anyway, passport was sorted in plenty of time, although an email address typo by the register biscuit at the post office meant I didn't actually get notified. Yeah, that was a fun wait. Never mind; it's good to go, along with all the other travel essentials:

No, the iPad doesn't have a cover. Yes, the bear flies with me. No, I won't describe the contents of the attractive leatherette zip pouch (it's not drugs. Well, it's not JUST drugs.)

There's a knot of clothes to go in with this lot, plus those docs I've wittered on about and a couple of other books. But that's pretty much it. I'm thinking seven kilos, tops. And before you ask how I can manage it, remember: no kids. Luggage required is inversely proportional to the size of the human, and with nobody to entertain but myself (and I can get by on a pen, a notepad and a clear recollection of the funnier moments of every episode of Hogan's Heroes), I'm travelling extra-light.

As to what this trip is all about? It's more than just fulfilling a 'promise' I made to myself to travel more, to see the world, to do something to my horizons or whatever. Life took a pretty amazing turn for me a few months back, and it's put much of what I do into a different perspective. I have a variety of instructions on what I should do, where I should go, and how I should act on this journey. There is however one thing (okay it's technically three) that's at the heart of this new adventure:

So far so good :-)

Oh yeah. I didn't say where I was going. Getting ahead of the narrative a bit here, but perhaps a clue:

See it?