Memories of war are never far from those who served, nor families who suffered trauma of their absence. Recent showing of Rick Burn's thought-provoking The War series on Public Television certainly intensified those memories.

"It wasn't easy to watch,", confided our bank's vice-president. "My father was in Normandy's deadly parachute drop on D-Day and still refuses to talk about the war."

No wonder. It's easy to understand after seeing scenes of those parachute drops with their horrendous casualty numbers . . . many drowned after being dropped over the Channel, rivers, ponds, etc. On their descent they were quite literally targets with no defence.

Once, when suggesting they return to France together to revisit sites where he fought, his father declined. His only comment, with Irish humour, was: "No thanks, the last time I was there they shot at me!"

One cannot travel into any region where battles were fought without reliving what happened there. And in some parts of the world, it tends to be quite overwhelming . . . certainly along England's coast, cities and villages, where there were seemingly endless, destructive bombing raids.

In areas of France which we regularly revisit, it was ground warfare, literally hand-to-hand combat at times. This summer we encountered two new sites, both standouts, that reached out across history from the Franco-Prussian War on to World Wars One and Two. The loss of life was staggering, with many of the more recent battles covered on The War in bloody detail.

One is a very dramatic new comprehensive underground museum at Shirmeck deep in the Vosges, which takes visitors through all three of those wars, attempting to analyse their causes and depict them in a very realistic way.

Claudine Levy, of Strasbourg's Bas Rhime Tourist Office, had suggested it to us as a worthy new site to visit and we'll take readers there next week. The history it covers is like taking a graduate course in the subject.

But this week we first wanted to guide readers through another stellar find, a destination that left a very vivid impression. Some areas have so many points of interest that it takes years of revisits to discover them all. Fort de Mutzig was certainly one of them.

We'd discovered it following our usual habit of picking up every interesting travel brochure, whether in a tourist information office, hotel, post office, even grocery store.

We'd seen one completely new to us, both in Obernai's Tourist Information Office and at St. Odile. A very distinctive, rotating turret cannon emblazoned across its cover definitely caught our attention.

Intrigued, the very next day we drove up to the site high in the Vosges Mountains, through Mutzig, where victorious Germans built a military headquarters after the Franco-Prussian War.

Today, its appearance look more like an architecturally attractive college campus, complete with impressive iron fence and masses of flowers. In fact, it's now a French military base.

It would be easy to bypass the mountain fortifications further on if not carefully paying attention to directions. There we met a volunteer manning the entrance who turned out to be a marvellous fount of information.

Turns out we'd never heard of Fort de Mutzig before because this mostly volunteer group of preservationists working desperately to save this impressive slice of military history didn't have funds to publicise it, although it's been open for ten years. The brochure we discovered had been one of their first attempts to make it more known to outsiders.

Much like the dedicated group of Bermuda volunteers devoting time to removing invasive trees from Dockyard and helping at other fortifications, these young Frenchmen were intense in their determination to save this remarkable underground fortification. It had been equipped with the very latest in military weaponry for its time.

It hadn't been easy . . . and its history and location contributed to the problems. This is now France, located on military land now controlled by the French Army . . . but built by conquering German Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1893-1918 when he occupied this slice of mountainous geography.

How does one convince France's government that preservation of a German fortress intended to hold on to occupation of French land is a worthy cause? Even if it was among the most advanced fortification of its time.

Once you tour these extraordinary fortifications, it's easy for any historic-minded person to understand the volunteers dedication and salute those steadfastly making the effort.

While their neighbours are out enjoying the good life relaxing, these remarkable preservationists are using their spare moments doing often grimy restoration work.

Open seasonally (see fact file), we had a choice of two different tours, one given in French, the other German. We chose to return later in the afternoon for the German one and ended up in a group where ancestors had very obviously fought on the Kaiser's side.

Happily our guide, very fluent in English, could also offer us personal explanations to supplement an excellent six-page translation given to English-speaking visitors explaining high points of each underground area visited.

Our guide's father was French, mother from the ancient Roman city of Trier, Germany.

Everything about this fortification was different to others previously visited. A very good 380-page illustrated book we purchased on the site for $19 covers 1,200 European World War Two sites.

Fort de Mutzig is included because it played a role in the 1940 campaign and was centre of regional attacks in November-December 1944.

It's described as "representing a new era in fortification concept". We spent more than three and a half hours exploring its many underground levels and would have liked even more time viewing its extraordinary uniform, cavalry and weapons displays . . . all were standouts.

The visitor will be entranced. There is so much here it would take a guidebook to cover it all. Descending into the machine-gun casemate, we found the water-cooled weapon still in place. An arched metal ceiling in the tunnel leading onward was still in perfect condition. Special explanatory displays were everywhere.

Absolutely every element of life in a massive underground military fortification was here . . . from its kitchen, troop quarters and hospital to water reservoirs, electric power station and some incredible machinery.

Its combat facilities looked ominous even today . . . both those inside and around its perimeter.

Originally built covering 500 acres, its habitable underground area could house up to 6,500 men in wartime and was around 40,000 square metres.But you're not through once outside again, because there were a battery of ten artillery turrets, each weighing 18½, very rare at the time.

Each gun could deliver ten rounds per minute and was acquired with 2,000 rounds of ammunition. Cost of the battery was one million goldmarks, plus another million for the ammunition.

There were also assorted canons, steel observatory cupolas that raised and lowered and a haunted mood that still pervaded the area. We found it a rather unusual experience to be in a fortification built by the Kaiser. Our great, great grandfather John Happ, born near Trier in what is now Germany, was the seventh son of a seventh son.

We're told that was considered something very special in those days and Prussia's Emperor was his godfather, presenting him with $50 in gold as a gift.

But by 1843, the family were tired of constant warfare and, fearing their sons might become canon fodder, sold all their land and sailed to the United States with all their family, even taking in-laws along.

As the first judge between Chicago and Waukegan, Illinois, he named the high school in the area where he bought land New Trier High School after the Trier area he had left. Even today, the school's crest contains an image of the Porta Negra, one of Trier's famous Roman ruins.

Ambitious volunteers who set about saving and protecting Fort de Mutzig are to be applauded and, hopefully, the French Army will allow them to continue their work. They're doing so now on a sort of lease arrangement.

Factfile: Fort de Mutzig is only 20 minutes west from Strasbourg. It's open from April until October, Saturday and Sunday afternoons and daily from July 1 to September 15 with morning and afternoon tours. Check www.Fort Mutzig. eu. for specifics. Admission is seven euros (close to $10 depending on exchange rate) and worth every penny.

Next week: France's newest war museum Is exceptional