The valley was a vibrant green, covered with moisture from the earlier rains. Rain clouds again threatened to wash away any hopes that I might have had about breaking 110 at the Faulquement Golf Course. I plodded carefully on the soft mud of the sloping terrain trying to avoid sliding into the ravine and being washed away into the adjacent pond, where I would probably have come to rest next to one of my golf balls.
An aging gray, concrete structure emerged from the trees on the left. Through a hole that was a gun emplacement ninety years ago, came a forbidding blackness, witness to the anticipation and fear of the French people after World War I. It was a part of the infrastructure to prevent Germany from invading France . . . again. After World War I, France decided to build a barrier . . impregnable walls and emplacements with guns which were fixed toward Germany to ensure that Germany would never again invade France. An impressive barrier!
The Germans agreed, so they invaded France through Belgium, with whom the French had friendly relations.
The Maginot line was a great infrastructure of walls and emplacements, like the one that probably purloined my golf ball on that cold, rainy day in France, but, like my golf balls, it was only a futile monument to the inevitable.