Niederbronn, France — I never met Lise Pommois until April 5th, 2024, but I felt like I knew her for a lifetime.

On a sunny, 65-degree spring morning, the 87-year-old French woman from Niederbronn, France, walked down a steep hill toward me in this picturesque town of 4,500 people. She walked toward me with a man she knew — of course — because she knows just about everyone in the area. She even met The Queen of England several years ago at a movie premiere in London, England.

Lise walked up to me in a parking lot near the tiny Niederbronn Train Station, we smiled at each other and embraced, and she looked down at her shoes and laughed. “Don’t make fun of me Tom and don’t laugh!”

In her excitement to meet me, she had put two different pairs of tennis shoes on her feet before leaving her house.

For several weeks, Lise and I had arranged to travel together in the Alsace region — the area of France near Strasbourg and near the Rhine River bordering Germany. I would drive with the World War 2 historian and author and visit small French towns that were destroyed in major battles from the war in 1945.

Lise is well known with the 12th Armored Division Association as she attended many of the Hellcat reunions in the early 2000s.

Lise and I met in March 2024 by email when I began researching my book into the life of my Father-in-Law Haig Derderian, who served in the 714th Tank Command Company B of the U.S. Army’s 12th Armored Division in World War 2. We emailed each day since then and did a Zoom call in March with her..

With my wife, Sue’s, blessing, this journalist and future author embarked on a journey on my own in France to visit with war historians, French survivors of World War 2, and see cities that are rebuilt today after being destroyed by battles in World War 2.

Back on Jan. 8th, 1945, Haig and his tank battalion were the first unit into the tiny commune of Herrlisheim, France — about 20 miles north of Strasbourg — when they hit a wall of Nazis. The German army had just launched Adolph Hitler’s Operation Nordwind, which was the dictator’s plan to overtake Strasbourg and cut off the American military’s supply lines.

It took Haig and the 12th Armored Division 10 days to defeat the Germany army in Herrlisheim. But the battle took its toll, claiming thousands of American soldiers lives, plus tanks and other U.S. weaponry.

Around this same time, Lise Pommois was a young girl living with her mother and father in a small town near Tolouse, in southern France. She remembers hiding in a water-filled ditch at about age 5 with her younger sister, and their mother along with other people from the town as armed Nazi soldiers walked by looking for prisoners to take.

They survived capture that day, but shortly after, while Lise was attending school, her baby sister and their mother were captured by the Germans and taken to a prison. Lise said her mother knew someone in the law profession who sympathized with the Germans and he was able to get her and the baby into a nearby jail instead of a prison camp.

Lise said her father was also arrested and taken away by the Nazis to a prison camp in northern Germany near Berlin, but she doesn’t know the camp. He never talked about it with the family.

All she remembers is that – to the surprise of Lise’s mother — he came home from the prison camp one day driving a motorcycle after the war had ended.

At nearly 5 years old, Lise was alone and had to be raised by strangers.

Before her mother and father’s arrest, she remembered that she would hear German soldiers marching through town and singing songs.

`I would open the windows and hear them singing and I loved how they sang! They sang so beautifully and I wanted to hear them so I opened the window,’ Lise said. `Then one of my parents would yank me away from the window and close it telling me to be quiet.’

A couple years later, her mother and father would return home after the American soldiers liberated their town and the rest of France. She recalls moving to Versailles, France, with her family. Her father worked in the main library there after the war.

`I used to rollerskate in the library. It was the best place in the town to go rollerskating,’ Lise said laughing. `I had such a good time doing that.’

Later in life, Lise earned degrees from universities in Europe so that she could teach. She’s such a natural and fun teacher because loves it. At one period in the 1990s, she took groups of 15-year-old French boys for 3 weeks at a time to the United States in various cities just to give them an education and eye-opening experience of what life was like in the U.S. She did that U.S. trip for 4 consecutive years without her school system knowing because the principal never would have approved it.

Now she takes people like me on battlefield and World War 2 history tours in France just for the pure enjoyment of teaching people.

We spent close to 10 hours together April 5th driving Alsace, France. Just outside her hometown of Niederbronn, Lise showed me the battlefield where the Prussians and French armies fought in a one-day battle in 1870 that claimed almost 360 lives.

While at one of several monuments established by the victories by the Prussians, we met a couple from Germany and discussed German and French war history, as well as a little U.S. politics, where Lise and the German couple said they don’t like either President Joe Biden or former president Donald Trump. Without naming names, they all agree that one is too old and the other is too crazy!

From there, Lise and I drove through the small town of Hatten, France, which was the scene of a major battle in Operation Nordwind around the same time as the battle of Herrlisheim.

In Hatten, we walked around 2 old churches that had been destroyed – a Catholic and Protestant church — during heavy fighting while the Americans and Germans blasted artillery from their tanks and weapons. We toured the Catholic church, which was rebuilt with beautiful, ornate stained glass that should be in a major museum somewhere.

As we walked through the town, she talked about Joe Nielson, a U.S. soldier with a U.S. Armored Division who had been in the town in a house that survived the destruction. He hid in a basement as German soldiers ran by looking for Americans or French civilians to capture or kill.

`There was so much death in that town Hatten. The buildings were destroyed and there was no reason for it,’ Lise said.

Lise remained in touch with Joe over the years as a result of Army reunions in the U.S. that she would attend. She even visited Joe when he lived near Washington D.C. He died in 2018, Lise said. Lise’s eyes told me that she cared for Joe. After the war, Joe earned a doctorate degree from Michigan State University in sociology and also became a pastor where he taught the word of God for 20 years at churches in Ohio and Michigan.

One of my highlights with Lise was visiting the Musée de l’Abri de Hatten, a French World War 2 museum just outside of Hatten. Lise helped set up the museum over 20 years ago and donated many photographs and artifacts to the place.

It’s part of the Maginot Line, a system of bunkers extending hundreds of miles through France that the French built prior to World War 2 to house French soldiers and civilians for protection. Some bunkers were as deep as 13 stories.. At this particular bunker, it was only a few feet deep and it held injured American soldiers, as well as healthy armed French soldiers.

While it was now 72 degrees fahrenheit outside, it was a constant 54 degrees inside the bunker, so a bit chilly for the 2 hours we were in there. We walked through each room, which contained life-size dioramas of what each room looked like back during the war. Included were bedrooms where soldiers slept, a dentist office, infirmary, storage for weapons and ammunition, and even a general store.

Lise is an honored lifetime guest at the museum because she had helped set it up, so we got free admission and we got to tour the bunker and grounds by ourselves.

The museum also housed armored vehicles from other eras that Lise explained were `given to the museum because no other museums wanted them.’ They include tanks, rocket launchers, jeeps and various other armored vehicles from Germany, Russian, France, and the United States. In a shoutout to the Christmas cartoon Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, this was the Island of Misfit military vehicles.

We ended our tour of the museum in an area where you could purchase snacks, drinks, and souvenirs. Lise and I each drank an orange drink with gas,’ to which Lise replied with a laugh, `I hope we both don’t explode.’

Lise knew the 2 female workers behind the desk. For about 30 minutes they chatted in French as I listened on. My ears perked up every time I heard one of the 10 French words I know. Every once in a while I would interject, Hey, I know that word — you just said Fantastic.’ We all laughed. Two minutes later I’d do it again and we’d all laugh.

I’ll say, it was the best French conversation I have ever been a part of. As we left, I said in a perfect American accent, Merci beau coup. I am a true Frenchman now!

Lise and I drove back 40 minutes to her home in Niederbronn. She said she didn’t want the day to end and that it was one of the best days she’s ever had. I didn’t want to leave either. But our meeting had to come to an end. I parked in front of her house high on top of a hill 10 hours after we met for the first time ever.

We sat in the car for 30 more minutes talking – talking about life, the war, and whatever Lise wanted to discuss. In that moment, it wasn’t about me: It was about Lise — the teacher, mentor, author, and historian. It’s just something she loves — to educate the world about whatever she can. She is a teacher of history and of life.

I’m so blessed that the stars aligned for me and Lise Pommois so we could have this wonderful friendship and experience together. I’ll remember this forever and I’ll certainly include the experiences of Lise in my book.