Les Baux
On the outskirts of the small Provençal town of Draguignan, about half a mile from the shimmering six-laned alley of ancient plane trees (Allées d’Azémar) that is its heart, there is an American military cemetery where eight hundred of the ten thousand soldiers who dropped out of the sun – dazzled sky early one August morning in 1944 are buried. Even in this offtrack district, it is, like all our military cemeteries, wonderfully cared for, and — except for one of those banal great statues that seem to be a universal curse visited on this century’s dead soldiers —in admirable taste. Within the oval frame of a grey stone wall, the perfectly white crosses, varied here and there by the star of David, are a compelling pattern against the dark-green, fine, weedless grass.
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