Normandy Day-Trip

The next few days will be rather packed, so I wanted to make a blog post while I still have a clear memory of last weekend (which started on Friday).

On Friday, four friends and I took a bus trip to Normandy to view sites and artifacts created during the 1944 D-Day invasion. After a long, early-morning bus ride, our bus arrived at a museum that walked the viewer through a history of pre-war Europe, and then showed relics from the brief French defense and eventual German Occupation and French Resistance. This is a period in history that I have never learned much about, so many artifacts in the museum showed me new facets of the war. For example, I had always had a simple story about the Occupation that showed Nazis being bluntly oppressive (as per the Huns in old U.S. propaganda), but this is false. They tried to rally French support for their campaign in the USSR with posters like the one below:

"They give their blood; give your labor
to save Europe from Bolshevism."

Propaganda like this make me have the obvious and chilling realization that America was fighting a nation every bit as industrial and strategic as we were during this war. Our victory was not guaranteed, and our enemy cannily played on the fears of the continent to build a force in their own defense. I've also been impressed by what I learned about the French Resistance, which used coded messages to undermine German war efforts in France and retain French national morale. That's a topic I'll be looking into much more in future.

The startling impression of competence from the Germans was redoubled when we moved to the cliffs of Normandy, in particular at Pointe du Hoc. American Rangers scaled this peninsula 100 feet above the ocean the night before D-Day, hoping to seize the six large artillery pieces  there, which could have attacked Allied forces on two adjacent beaches. At this site, every hundred yards contained one broken bunker and three holes that were the result of sustained shelling. Pictures below:

Destroyed German Bunker

Crater from a bomb that fell during the Invasion
(At least 12 feet deep, 30 feet across)

From my reading background, I have an ingrained notion that people I side with are invariably more competent than their opposite numbers, and World War II is a clear example where that is not the case. The pattern of bunkers and cannon on the north coast of France looks pretty dang intelligent to me, and I am impressed at the courage and planning that allowed us to break a hole through it and enter France. I'm also taken aback at the scale of damage at this battlefield, for even at Gettysburg the scars of war have healed. Having seen the traces of bombs that were dropped seventy years ago, I am frightened to think of what might happen if two modern armies decided to duke it out. Thankfully, this possibility is waning with time, but sites like this battlefield must be preserved to help people remember how much damage was done in a war that would pale by modern standards.

The impression of magnitude I received at Pointe du Hoc was doubled at the American Cemetery. There, the graves of 9000 soldiers lay in a wide green field by the sea. I'm a science major, so 9000 is usually just another number to me. But look at this picture, and I'll tell you what I saw instead of a field covered in marble crosses and stars:

Each of these graves is a soldier who would still be alive if not for the battles of this war. Walking among them, I made sure to hold the image of a field of men standing at arms in my mind as I passed the graves, and it was not an easy time. It didn't help matters when I pictured instead the old men that they would have grown to be standing instead by their graves. A park ranger at the site asked us to say the names of the soldiers as we advanced through the site, to be sure they are remembered. I took pictures of a dozen stones or so, and will post them later so that their names can be repeated by anyone visiting this site.

This grave site was the segment of the day-trip that made the greatest impression on me, especially this last story: At the monument to the fallen, a French park ranger described how his family's village had been defended by a lone American soldier during the invasion of Normandy, protecting his grandparents. After sharing this story, he asked a group of strangers at the monument to turn away from him and face the flags while the speakers played "The Star-Spangled Banner" behind us. The group quickly started to sing along, and the moment of singing the national anthem on foreign soil to honor fallen soldiers is among the most memorable moments of this trip so far. If you ever travel to Normandy, the experience is well worth the distance.