Thoughts and experiences in Normandy

I recently remarked on facebook that I feel like I came back from my excursion a little older. It was a heavy weekend, and through all my experiences and conversations and continuing reflection, I notice a particular deepening with regards to my views on peace, American identity, and cultural transmission of history.

(Also, I apologize for the fact that I may have written this blog more for me than for readers, another step in reflecting on my experiences up North. Hope some of it's interesting.)

We started in the city of Saint-Milo (which, as a French guy reminded me today kind of snobbily, is technically in Brétagne). Even though the city feels old, with a medieval wall surrounded it, and fortresses on the ocean, most of it was reconstructed after heavy bombing in WWII. This was the case with many of the cities we visited, as they were either attacked by the Axis powers or they suffered during the American invasion. I noticed, for example, that the cathedral's stained glass windows were very modern. The cathedral still had the smell that only a really old church could have.

This is sort of an embarrassing story: There's a famous French writer, Chauteaubriand, who is buried on an island only reachable at low tide. When it was getting time to rejoin the group, the tide lowered enough to reveal the little path to his final resting place. I raced down the beach and across, and, as I had to pee, I ran up the hill before all the other people crossing over to do my business on the other side of the island. After having done so, I turned a corner to see his grave, marked by a sign which read, "Here lies a great French writer. He wanted only to hear the sound of the wind and the waves. Please respect his wishes." Oops. When I returned to the bus a little late, my professor said, "Well, visiting the tomb of Cauteaubriand is a good excuse for being late." I didn't tell him how exactly I paid my respects.

The next day, we went to the "plages de débarquement." As I decended onto the beach at Arromanches (where the Allied forces built their artificial port), I instinctively picked up handfuls of sand and scattered it as if it were grain all the way to the ocean (a ritual I would repeat on the Utah landing beach.) I hastily wrote in my notebook:

It's just a little beach
and now I have the sand of Normandy
plastered on my jeans
after I sank my hands into the cool earth
and sprinkled it back in the sun,
the shadow, and toward the waves.
in the same way, several children beside me
stick their shovels into the sand.

In a museum, we read the quote of Private Henry Parker, who described his touching down onto Omaha beach, saying, "As our boat touched sand and the ramp went down, I became a visitor to hell."

I added to my journal: "I didn't feel like a visitor to hell. I didn't even feel like a visitor. I hope that's the point." Echoing these sentiments was a French poem in ridiculous rhyming quatrains that said, "See the laughing children / Playing in the sea / Today's sun / Dries Yesterday's tears." I don't know if this is true.

But I had a long to to reflect on this that day as I ran along the marine terrace outside of the town. From the highest point of the cliff I could see miles of green coastline in both directions. I asked these questions: Why is it necessary in every museum to juxtapose the horror of battlefield photography with the serene beauty of Normandy today? What does war do to a region's culture? Is Normandy still grieving? How could D-Day and its deaths have been avoided? What does this mean for violence and intervention today?

I kept thinking and talking with others as we visited the American and German graveyards, walked along the beaches and cliffs marked with bomb craters, and returned that night to Caen, another city utterly destroyed as France was saved. I felt at the same time proud to be an American and disturbed by the footage from the 40s, where political and military leaders used the same language in describing WWII intervention that Americans use today when they speak of military action around the world. However, after our visit to the Museum of Peace (which situated well the D-Day invasion in its context of war and totalitarianism, French cooperation and resistance, genocide and poverty) my thoughts sunk a little further into place. In the end, D-Day seemed to me to be simpler than all the debate and questioning. It requires grieving and thanks for the sacrifice of the soldiers.

And so I returned Sunday afternoon with the weight of a deepened understanding of just how devastating war is and how widespread violence is in our world. But I also carried with me a new appreciation for the value of human culture and its power to create and preserve, to look back in order to move forward, and even to save.