Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 1, 1994 TAG: 9404300002
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: F-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Reading the book swept a shroud from emotions Buch had not dealt with since leaving his native France for North America in the early 1950s.
It also gave Buch (pronounced Boosh), who was nearing retirement after more than two decades as a nurse anesthetist in Roanoke, a new vocation, or at least, avocation - conducting tours through France and other European countries for veterans of World War II.
Buch's former hometown in east-central France sits on high ground overlooking the Rhine River Valley and the Black Forest on the German border. It was the scene of fierce fighting during the winter of 1944.
The town was garrisoned by the SS, Heinrich Himmler's private army. Himmler, himself, was in the town on occasion. His troops had orders to fight to death rather than surrender to advancing Allied forces.
Alsace is a grape-growing region and is well-known for its Gewrtztraminer wines. Buch's father, also named Antoine, grew grapes, too; but he was a religious man who turned them into a premium quality grape juice rather than wine. Buch has planted vineyards of his own at his home in Bedford County and freely offers visitors delicious grape juice like his family made.
On Dec. 4, 1944, Buch, a teen-ager, and his family descended into the cellar of their home to escape the fighting. They left the cellar on Dec. 22 but only to flee to the nearby city of Colmar as fighting for the village continued.
During the fight, which cost 100 American lives, Buch's father was killed by an American artillery shell, making him the village's first civilian casuality. The village was reduced to a pile of rubble.
Buch doesn't hold a grudge against Americans for the fate of his village and his father. Rather, he has an enormous respect for the young Americans who liberated his town from the Nazis.
After the war, Buch spent a hitch in the French Army in Madagascar and then in 1952 emigrated to Montreal, Canada, as a carpenter. He finished high school and then enrolled in Kings College, a Christian school in Oshawa, Ontario. There he met his future wife, Rose, who was a secretarial science student. They moved to the Roanoke area, whose mountains remind him of the Voges mountains of his native Alsace-Lorraine, in 1964.
Buch said he could never cry when his father died; but after reading the book his brother sent him on his birthplace, the dam he had built across his emotions broke. "Suddenly, the whole thing fell on me," he recalled. Part of the awakening focused on the sacrifices 18 -,19- and 20-year-old Americans made so he could live free." I saw these men as our savior," he said.
He went to the Library of Congress and tracked down the addresses of the members of the 3rd Infantry Division, who fought for his village. He suggested to the division's veterans association that he organize a group of the veterans and take them back to Bennwihr. In 1986, he served as a guide for 20 aging men and their wives.
"I wanted them to go back and meet the French people in the towns where they fought, to get to know them," he said. During the war, the armies were often moving so fast soldiers had no time to acquaint themselves with the people and places where they fought.
The residents of the villages invited the veterans into their homes and treated them as if they were family members. "It was just a beauty of a visit," he said.
Members of the 29th Division Association, many of whose members come from the Roanoke area, read a news story about that trip and asked Buch if he would put together a similar trip for them.
Another trip with the 3rd Infantry followed, and this time it included the Anzio beachhead and Rome. In 1991, Buch returned to France with more 29ers, taking them on a tour from Normandy, where they led the D-Day invasion, to the Elbe River in Germany, where they saw the war end.
Buch is taking another group of veterans to Normandy and England in June, the 50th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of France. The trip will include visits to the British beach at Slapton Sands, where American troops trained for the invasion, and a lunch with British veterans of the invasion.
"The veterans' groups are the closest-knit groups of any organization," Buch said. "They all went through a tremendous experience that no one else could understand."
Memo: ***CORRECTION***