The Same Sky July 2011 Karen Kish   © Copyright 2026 by Karen Kish

Photo courtesy of  Wikimedia Commons.

I closed my eyes and hand, feeling our father’s weight of war. “Someday I’ll go there,” I whispered.

Three years later…. it’s time for my personal journey to reclaim my father’s tortuous past by following his World War II 100th Infantry Division footsteps — to the Battle of the Bulge, the third deadliest campaign in U.S. history.

Nancy, France. A car rental and seventy kilometers later, my husband Sandy and I are in Raon L’Etape, a high elevation German stronghold freed by my father’s 100th Division. My goals for this three-day journey are modest: follow The Century’s route town by town, find memorials to the Division, and solve the mystery of the origin of my father’s crimson Sons of Bitche cap. I’m now wearing his identification dog tag.

Howard M. Brayall

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As we round the corner toward city hall, there it is! A large granite plaque embossed with the 100th insignia, French and American flags.

This plaque is dedicated by the city of Raon L’Etape and the 100th Infantry Division to the nearly 1500 soldiers of the Division who were killed, wounded, missing, or captured….between November 6, 1944 and November 20, 1944 when the city was taken {liberated} by the 100th US Infantry Division…

I pose for a photo with my father’s dog tag dangling around my neck 67 years after being tucked inside his uniform during the bloody assault.

We drive on, stopping to search in each town. Blâmont, Sarrebourg, Metting. No commemorations. But as the thickly wooded landscape glides by, I’m imagining his infantry’s silentsilent shadowy advance in pelting rain, stoop shouldered, bent knees, artillery at the ready, dodging among tree shields. My father was one of those pacing shadows.

La Petite-Pierre, Vilsberg, Wingen, Bitche. No memorials. We arrive at Au Vieux Moulin Hotel in Bitche. For three months the Centurymen had maintained the front lines near the Bitche salient on the defensive flank of the Battle of the Bulge. Fierce fighting continued at several Maginot Line fortresses, the 280-mile-long useless network of concrete bunkers and pillboxes constructed to impede all attackers, except for the Germans who simply initiated their invasion elsewhere. Then, in a whirlwind 36 hours, the 100th ‘army crawled’ through a firestorm of German mortars and rockets to claim Bitche and the surrounding forts.

Years later, my father returned to France and Bitche several times with 100th veterans’ Century Honors Tours for bittersweet, PTSD-laced, band-of-brothers reunions. Here is where he procured his prized red Sons of Bitche hat. In fact, there is a remembrance in Bitche, but we didn’t find it at that time:

…dedicated by the city of Bitche and the 100th Division to the nearly 3000 soldiers of the Division killed, wounded, missing or captured during the battle for the Maginot Sector between December 3, 1944 and March 17, 1945…

Then 15 minutes west to Rimling, the last stop on my personal Century Tour. My 22-year-old father was drafted as private Howard Brayall in June 1944, trained at Fort Bragg, and, five months later, mobilized to the front lines as a heavy machine gunner: Raon L’Etape in November, Bitche in December, Rimling in January, then back to Bitche a week later. Today Rimling is a two-story colorful palette with one main street. As we round the corner of the central church, there it is! An alcove plaza flanked by two tall flag poles: one French, one American. The granite stone next to an elevated military statue reads: To the memory of Soldiers of the 100th Infantry Division killed in the combat for our Liberation…

Sandy and I hike up the high escarpment behind the village. My father talked about the war only a very few times; just a mention would exponentially intensify his night terrors. Once he mentioned to me that a lethal piece of shrapnel had harmlessly embedded in his breast pocket Bible. He later told Sandy a more detailed story. He was positioned on a high escarpment, possibly right here in Rimling. The wintry battle raged, up and down, for ten days. Night blazing red. Continuous ear-splitting BOOM!BOOM!BOOM! shelling. Machine guns spluttered, mortars blasted, grenades raged, no cover from shell-shocking cacophony.

Sometime during the shattering blitz, my father lunged clumsily into the officer’s tent, screaming. “I CAN’T HEAR! I CAN’T HEAR!”

The sergeant raised a quieting hand. “At ease, private. You’ll endanger the others by yelling.”

My father swayed, cradling his shaking head. “I CAN’T HEAR, CAN’T HEAR!”

The sergeant glanced left to an attendant with a dismissive, take-him-to-the-medical-tent nod.

I think about his story as we stand on the high ridge. Sandy points to the horizon. “We can barely see the Vosges Mountain range from here. They mark a natural border between France and Germany. Rimling was part of Germany after the Franco-Prussian War in the 1880’s. Germans and French have lived in this town. Look below at the war’s traces.”

The terrain’s subtle curves sketch the impression of once-craters and a network of trench-line fissures.

The vista is bucolic, tranquil. Sandy grasps my hand, lifts our arms, gazes at the blissfully clear blue sky. “Same sky. Same sky your father saw.”

“Same sky,” I murmur. Except bomb blasted insanity then. Sun-bright innocence now. “It’s so beautiful here, so peaceful — now.” I grasp my father's dog tag, raise it in silent tribute. Scanning the innocuously lush summer greening countryside, I decry, bitterly, how this idyllic panorama wrought Dad’s lifetime of nightmares.

My father, legally deaf after the war, was awarded the Bronze Star for “heroic service,” but no medal can ease a scarred lifetime. In 1995, I titled his eulogy “Dad’s Peace,” because savage shrieks wracked his tormented dreams for a half century. Only death quelled them.

Ten years later a framed collage hangs in our son Andy’s home in Pennsylvania. My father’s single dog tag, his draft card, and a June 1944 black-and-white wedding photo. My happy mother’s gown encircles the stage. And there’s my handsome father, dapper in his new Army uniform, his smile masking the imminent war wraiths within.

Me at Raon L’Etape