I spent the first week in June with my eldest son Justin, who works for EF Educational Tours -- a first-class organization. My father turned twenty-two on 6 May 1944 and spent that spring and summer in a B-24, the “Belle of the Brawl”, on thirty missions over the European continent. On my flight to France, I read Stephen Ambrose’s “The Wild Blue”, which opened my eyes further to what my father endured. Now, I have more questions for him, but he died five days after my 21st birthday. As long as I remain in the here and now, they will remain unanswered – perhaps answers come later. My son peppered me with questions about his grandfather he never met, which I answered as best I could. We still have his bomber jacket, which was part of his company’s exhibit. Below is my father holding me when I was thirteen days old and my son while in Caen this month.
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On Monday the 3rd, we drove to Mont Saint Michel in Lower Normandy, a magical place. The serene countryside with wheat fields, grazing livestock, and an occasional village with a church clustered among small low-lying buildings appeared like self-sustaining communities removed from today’s hubbub. Several miles from our destination, Le Mont rose out of the low-lying marsh to float seemingly on the horizon. The weary walk to the top was rewarded with a commanding view.
Tuesday, we visited Bayeux that was spared the devastating bombings, unlike Caen. Our first stop was Musee de la Tapisserie de Bayeux, a must for this history lover. The museum has excellent accompanying audio that explains the sixty or so depicted scenes as you move along the seventy-meter tapestry. My son seemed enthused, and so I regaled him with more about the bastard Duke William, Matilda his queen of nobler rank than him, Edward the Confessor, the misfortunate Harold Godwinson, Tostig and the Battle of Stamford Bridge, and particular to our Woollacott North Devon roots, Britric.
We visited Cathedral Notre Dame, and fortuitously, a rehearsing orchestra added to our experience as we moved about the magnificence. Across the road from the British Cemetery is a memorial honoring William the Conqueror with a Latin inscription on its frieze that translates into, “We, once conquered by William, have now set free the Conqueror’s native land.” Rosebushes, irises, and other plantings were in front of the gravestones. Each row had different plantings and together you sensed you were in a perfectly maintained British garden. I paused at some gravestones to read the epitaphs as my eyes welled; for the unknown, a simple passage ‘Known only to God’. I noticed each age and after a while, I thought, “How young, how very young.”
On Wednesday my son needed to prepare for upcoming events, so I went alone to Saint Mere Eglise, the first village liberated after the allied landing. Sounds of engines backfiring until they achieved a smooth constant rumble greeted me. Tanks, deuce and a half trucks, jeeps, and ambulances queued to parade through the village. I visited the museum, watched grainy black and white documentaries, and meandered about the village. A parachute with a mannequin attached dangled from the church just as John Steele did seventy-five years earlier. Men wore uniforms of the times. The 101st Airborne arm patch being most prevalent -- a screaming eagle with talons extended intent on grabbing its prey. Women wore dresses, some with Red Cross armbands, their hair coiffed 1940s style, and bright red lipstick. The air was filled with Glenn Miller and the Andrews Sisters. I was in 1944 and thought often of my paratrooper friend who had died two months earlier. “What was his day like seventy-five years ago?”
Main roads were closed on the 6th, except to buses transporting people to Omaha Beach. Traveling early that morning and absent heavy traffic, the countryside seemed more serene than a few days ago. I wondered if it was just as serene before all hell broke loose. At the memorial service, President Macron spoke in French except when we faced the veterans and thanked them in English for their sacrifice. The veterans seemed as moved as I was. President Trump, not an adept speaker, gave a few touching vignettes that caused me to well-up. The band sounded triumphant and the ballads sweet and touching to add to the solemn occasion. Sitting near shade trees, I heard approaching jets before I saw them. Their roar intensified and climaxed as they emerged from the tree cover. Several streams of red, white, and blue – bleu, blanc, et rouge -- billowed behind; minutes later, more jets, a deafening roar, and more color. The cemetery is unassuming with only white crosses or Stars of David and absent plantings like the British Cemetery at Bayeux. Perfectly aligned, the over nine thousand grave markers seemed to stretch to eternity. The enormity is overwhelming.
On Friday, EF Educational Tours hosted over two thousand people at their Utah Beach pavilion, many were high school students. The Company had made a ‘baseball card’ for each invited veteran with his image in 1944 and in 2019 on it. The students grabbed cards from the available stack, queued, and waited until the veteran was available to sign his card. Awestruck, they hung on words from men eighty years or so their senior. Any teacher would long to captivate their students as these veterans did. Padlocks were available to sign and attach to the Remembrance Wall that the EF Tours had constructed outside the Utah Beach Museum. Navy Seals reenacted the landing and bounced in challenging surf, not nearly as challenging as waves I had recently seen in the D-Day landing documentaries.
Research gives you only facts. Visiting where history occurred gives facts a life. Quite special to this trip was being alone with my son for a week, more time alone than I have ever spent with any of my children. Experiencing the 75th anniversary of D-Day was emotional, thought-provoking, and rewarding.
Research gives you only facts. Visiting where history occurred gives facts a life. Quite special to this trip was being alone with my son for a week, more time alone than I have ever spent with any of my children. Experiencing the 75th anniversary of D-Day was emotional, thought-provoking, and rewarding.
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