CHERBOURG, France — At 96, Edward Tresch Sr. can still conjure keen memories of a decrepit ship he served on in the Merchant Marine during World War II.
Built in 1918 to haul bauxite, the coal-burning relic was “the dirtiest ship in the world,” Tresch recalled.
He’s traveling on a very different vessel this week: the luxury cruise liner Seabourn Ovation.
Tresch, who was born in New Orleans and lives in Slidell, is one of seven World War II veterans sailing aboard the Seabourn Ovation as guests during the National WWII Museum’s 10-day northern European cruise, which coincides with this week's 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings.
World War II veteran Edward Tresch Sr., 96, of Slidell, looks in awe around the grand room inside the Cherbourg, France City Hall before the start of a Q&A program with local high school students on Wednesday, June 5, 2024. The town of Cherbourg, a key point of entry for the Allies invasion, helped organize the event with the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. Tresch's son, Edward, stands with him. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
On Wednesday, Tresch, two other veterans and a Holocaust survivor went ashore in northwestern France at Cherbourg to meet with 50 French high school students who created an exhibit about their city’s experience during the war.
D-Day was part of it. On June 6, 1944, American, British and Canadian forces braved the punishing defenses of Hitler’s “Atlantic Wall” to secure a beachhead in France, the first step in liberating the country from the Nazis. Cherbourg sits atop the Cotentin peninsula, which juts into the English Channel west of the beaches the Allies stormed. Cutting off German forces on the peninsula, then capturing Cherbourg and its prized deep-water port, were primary D-Day objectives.
Dignitaries, visitors and bands, including the St. Augustine High School Marching 100, from around the globe are congregating in the Normandy region of France for D-Day commemorations. In the coastal town of Arromanches on Tuesday, vintage military vehicles traversed the beach at low tide as C-130s and other military aircraft rehearsed for an air show.
On narrow two-lane roads running alongside ancient stone walls and fertile fields of wheat and fennel, World War II-era Jeeps driven by men in period uniforms jockeyed for space between chartered tourist busses.
Elaborate ceremonies at the Brittany and Normandy American cemeteries and in the town of Sainte-Mere-Eglise are meant to convey the epic scale and sacrifice of D-Day.
But smaller events such as Wednesday’s veteran/student summit in Cherbourg, facilitated by the National WWII Museum, offered a more up-close-and-personal perspective on history.
Travel for a purpose
Since the 60th anniversary of D-Day in 2004, the museum’s educational travel program has coordinated more than 200 trips. For the 75th anniversary in 2019, the museum hosted two cruise ships with nearly 1,000 passengers.
That was unwieldly, National WWII Museum president and CEO Stephen Watson said. This year’s 475 passengers are “still a lot of people to be taking care of for 10 days. But it’s more manageable than what we did five years ago.”
The museum works with tour guides, transportation specialists and local government liaisons in France to coordinate the complex logistics of such trips.
When the museum got word that officials in Cherbourg wanted local students to meet with veterans, “we were delighted to help make that happen,” Watson said.
Watson, staffers from the WWII Museum and the Victory Belles, the museum's 1940s-style vocal trio, accompanied the veterans to Cherbourg’s city hall Wednesday.
In addition to Tresch, the delegation included Jack Appel. Now 100, he served in the Army’s Signal Corps during the war and was present at the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Charles Richardson, who turns 101 on Friday, was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1943. He served as a radioman and gunner aboard B-17 bombers based in Framlingham, England, flying combat missions on D-Day and during the Battle of the Bulge.
As little Jewish girls in the Netherlands, Maud Dahme and her sister spent three years away from their family, hiding during the Nazi occupation. After reuniting with their parents after the war, they moved to the United States.
As Tresch, Richardson, Appel and Dahme arrived at Cherbourg’s city hall, students lined each side of an arched entranceway and applauded them.
In a high-ceilinged second-floor room with a herringbone floor, gilded walls and an ornately carved ceiling, the four living history guests of honor listened as Cherbourg mayor Benoît Arrivé, sporting a French tri-color sash, welcomed and thanked them in French.
'Unique connection' to New Orleans
Watson cited France’s “unique connection” to New Orleans, the WWII Museum’s hometown, which “makes it especially meaningful for us to partner with the city of Cherbourg on this reception.”
Addressing the students, he noted that “the opportunity to hear from those who lived through the war is precious.”
The 50 students from Lycee Millet, a Cherbourg high school, spent the next 30 minutes questioning the veterans. Lesley Coutts, one of the museum’s France-based collaborators, translated back and forth from English to French.
When the museum’s cruise stopped in England, Richardson was able to return to his old air base – now a museum – in Framlingham for the first time since the war. Back then, he came to think of the base as home because he doubted he’d ever see his real home again.
This time, he inscribed his name alongside those of hundreds of other veterans on a chapel wall and saw his old mission hut. During the war, two B-17 crews were assigned to each hut.
“The thing I remember so vividly,” Richardson said, “was you would fly a mission, come back, and the other crew would be gone. In several days, a new crew would come in, they’d fly a couple missions and then they’d be gone.
“It’s a sinking kind of feeling. I never got shot down but was close to it.”
For many years, he didn’t talk about his war experience. Writing a book finally helped him come to terms with it.
The 80th anniversary D-Day trip “has been wonderful,” Richardson said. “People have been so kind.”
Wanting to be a man in uniform
Tresch enlisted in the Merchant Marines at age 16. In response to a student’s question, he admitted that one of his main motivations was that “at that time all the young ladies were dating people in uniforms.”
After the war, Tresch worked as a bartender, then a food and beverage manager, at hotels in and around New Orleans. He raised his family in Arabi, then resettled in Slidell after Hurricane Katrina.
He’s traveling aboard the National WWII Museum cruise with his son Edward Tresch Jr. On the ship, a crew of 400 tends to the 500 passengers. For Tresch, it’s an almost unimaginable luxury compared to his World War II experience.
“I never thought I’d sleep in a grand hotel that can go all over the world,” he said. “It’s magnificent.”
Later this week, he’s scheduled to meet the president of France. Between that and the luxurious floating hotel he's aboard, his life at 96 seems to be headed in the right direction.
“It’s kind of late,” he said, laughing, “but yeah.”
