From St. Jean Pied de Port in the far south of France there are two ways across the Pyrenees and both recall invasion. One is Napoleon’s route and the other is the Valcarlos road, and in this instance Carlos means Charlemagne, whose army came this way in the eighth century to battle with Islam and – when the opportunity arose – steal whatever treasure they found in their path.  Some decades before, Islam had come to Spain in the person of the Moors, and it may be noted that they too, like Charlemagne, were very far from home. The Basque people who lived in these mountains had no use for either.

St. Jean Pied de Port is well known as a starting point on the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrim’s road to the great cathedral of St James in the far northwest of Spain. In St. Jean there is an office where pilgrims may go to pick up the credencial, a passport that allows one to stay at any of the many pilgrim hostels along the way. My younger son David is with me, for he decided months ago that he would take leave from his military service and join me for the first week of my journey and see me safely over the mountains and on my way. Together we get our pilgrim passports and have them stamped – the first of many stamps that prove we have passed through the towns along the Camino. We are greeted by two gentlewomen, well into their seventies, who have done the journey themselves and they answer questions and give advice. They tell us most emphatically that we must not take Napoleon’s way, we must take the Valcarlos road, for the police say that even now in late April, Napoleon’s way is blocked with snow and far too dangerous. And the women add that just last month a pilgrim from Brazil tried this snow-bound way, could not see the waymarkings, lost the path and fell to his death. I hear their words and note the sad, anxious tone of voice, an elderly woman’s solicitude for a younger person about to take an ill-advised risk.

For so long I have daydreamed of this journey, and I have always wanted to take Napoleon’s way across the Pyrenees, and so despite this warning my first reaction is that we should do as I have long planned. But Dave asks more questions, goes into far more detail, and then he  insists we must go by the safer road, and after some thought I agree, for I know I am imprudent in so many things and have so very often misled myself. And besides, I’m happy to admit both my sons are wiser than I.

And so early in the morning we pass through the Spanish Gate and out of this ancient citadel and take Charlemagne’s road, but still my thoughts wander off to Napoleon’s soldiers and the terrible fate they met. My thoughts go back to 1808, when an army of 25,000, many of them young recruits from the Bordeaux region, crossed these mountains to invade Spain. All these men came to regret it and very few ever made it home.

Imagine with me, if you will, that we live in Bordeaux in 1808 and we know a young man in his teens, hardly more than a child. He has the vigor and strength of a Gironde farm boy, or perhaps he’s a tough young fellow from the streets of Bordeaux. The discerning eye of the recruiting sergeant sees the soldier within, and the sergeant knows that if this young man is strong enough to work the plow horse or press the grapes at harvest time, or if he has the strength to manhandle the great wine casks, then surely he is strong enough to shoulder a musket for his Emperor, and tough enough so that he will not hesitate to use the bayonet. The sergeant speaks to the young man, promises adventure, glory, easy plunder on the battlefield, and he whispers of the sweet secrets of the Spanish girls across the mountains, all of them waiting for the strong young Frenchman in his handsome uniform.

And of course the boy does not see himself as a boy at all – surely he is a man, yes? – just as the sergeant says, and he is going on a great adventure.  He will do great deeds and show his courage in battle and make his family proud and his stay-at-home friends envious, and he will come home from Spain with a scar or two but nothing more, and once he is back home the young women will look at him in a different way and yield themselves in secret and the village priest will never know.

But his old father knows only his memories and so he still sees the young boy, the child so close to his heart, a young man now, but surely still a boy, yes? And a boy should stay at home forever and give comfort to his father’s final years. And of course the father knows that the sergeant’s words are all lies. No, the father sees it all differently. He sees his son in his new uniform and feels not pride but fear, and before the young soldier marches off with his regiment of the line, the heart-stricken father gives the boy a final ferocious embrace, a rough whiskered kiss on his cheek and whispers fiercely, “Come home!”

So what became of our boy – how did our young soldier meet death? Did he meet his end in one of Wellington’s vast slaughters at Talavera or Salamanca or Vitoria? Or did the boy die in the little war – la guerrilla? Was it an ambush, or a sniper’s ball or the swift and silent midnight knife? And in the last moment as life bled away did he cry out, “Mon père!”

And far to the north, did his father wake in the night in fear, knowing something was terribly wrong? Did he suddenly know what he wished never to know, what no father should ever know? And in the moment of knowing did he cry out, “Mon fils!”

But these are the thoughts of a father whose son goes off to a faraway war, whether it be Spain or Afghanistan, and for a time they were my thoughts. But now that time has gone, flowed away, faded into the past and now, in this moment, my son — mon fils! -- leads me up this mountain in the far south of France, he leads me into Spain, he leads me with his long, strong strides, and he leads me in the path of Charlemagne.