Kilroy slept here: Hotels of war

Once they served. Now they serve room service. In my travels, I've come across many hotels that have weathered war. A B&B in Vicksburg, Miss., with a cannonball wedged in the wall. The lakeside villa where an Axis dictator tried to hold on to power at the end of World War II. A permanently anchored ship that set a record for carrying soldiers across the sea

to war.

There are hundreds of hotels with a war story to tell. The places where Washington really "slept here." The B&Bs and plantations of the South whose one-time owners bet on the Confederate cause and lost.

During World War II, just about every major hotel on the West Coast served some military purpose. Even the Ahwahnee, the luxury lodge in Yosemite National Park, was taken over as a hospital for mentally anguished war casualties - a move that psychologists came to question, since the looming granite walls led to an unanticipated kind of claustrophobia.

Out of this roll call of military service, I've picked a few notable spots I've found in the now-quiet, one-time war zones around the world.

-The Willard InterContinental Hotel, Washington, D.C. One of the best hotels in the nation's capital was the scene of some presidential cloak and dagger in the days around the Civil War. Though the current Willard dates to the 1890s, it sits on the site of an earlier version of the hotel where Abraham Lincoln arrived incognito Feb. 23, 1861, soon before his presidential inauguration.

The secrecy was due to an assassination attempt in Baltimore that had Lincoln backers concerned that locals already bent on rebellion (Washington is a very Southern city to this day) might try again. But word got out and Lincoln soon was entertaining politicians and socialites while planning his new Cabinet and wrestling with reports of actions by Southern states that were seceding from the Union rather than accept his move into the White House. Lincoln left March 4, his inauguration day.

A bill - hotel, not legislative - signed by Lincoln is framed in the lobby. The total for the 10-day stay: $773.75; 1401 Pennsylvania Ave. NW; Washington, D.C., 20004, 1-02-628-9100 or www.washington .intercontinetal.com. Rooms from $322 per night.

-Cedar Grove Mansion Inn, Vicksburg, Miss. A Union cannonball is still stuck in the parlor wall from the days when Union gunboats laid siege to the key Mississippi River town. When the Confederates finally lost the city, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant snoozed away (rebels claim drunkenly) in the master bedroom of his new headquarters.

2200 Oak St., Vicksburg, Miss. www.cedargrove inn.com or 1-800-862-1300. Rates from $100 per night.

-Pershing Hall Hotel, Paris. Supermodels cavort where Gen. John "Black Jack" Pershing planned American battle plans in World War I. The boutique hotel was also the former home of the American Legion, the U.S. veterans group, in Paris. The scene is decidedly hip, but there are remnants of the past all around - including American stars in the wrought ironwork and portraits of prominent past veterans upstairs.

Rooms from $556 per night; 49 Rue Pierre Charron, Paris. 011-33-1-5836-5800 or www.pershinghall.com.

-Royal Hawaiian and Moana hotels, Honolulu. The two venerable hotels were already well-established on the beach at Waikiki when the Japanese attacked nearby Pearl Harbor in 1941, bringing the United States into World War II. Shrapnel from the American anti-aircraft fire rained down on Honolulu.

With the beaches a tangle of barbed wire as Americans prepared for a possible invasion of Oahu, the hotels served as hospital wards and later as R&R spots until the conflict ended in 1945. The Moana later merged with a modern hotel next door and today has one of those needlessly pretentious corporate names: The Moana Surfrider, A Westin Resort Waikiki Beach. We'll just stick with the Moana. Much has changed, but the Moana's famed Banyan Court looks much the way it did on the day the dive bombers and torpedo planes flew toward Battleship Row.

Call 1-888-625-4990 or go online at www.spg.com. The Royal Hawaiian is at 2259 Kalakaua Ave. The Moana is at 2365 Kalakaua Ave. For both hotels, go to www.spg.com or call 1-888-625-4990. Rates at the Royal Hawaiian and the Moana start at just under $300 per night but can climb steeply during busy periods.