Paris m'attend: Honoring Mothers: Memorial Day 2012

Normandy was such a profound experience for me I have to give it it's own moment in this blog. D-Day was the beginning of the end for WWII in Europe, and for many years I have wanted to come to this corner of France. D-day commenced on June 6 1944, and in June 1984, when the fortieth anniversary of this enormous battle was celebrated, my Dad and I were picking up some groceries at Albertsons in Provo. Every magazine cover at the check out stand was headlining the anniversary and as we stood there I just made a comment about the fact that media was paying so much attention to this event. I’ve always been quite patriotic and I certainly was not trying to minimize this historic moment, but Dad looked at me with mild surprise and simply told me that I simply would never be able to understand how important that battle was, or how it affected the lives of the whole country. He told me that he was a young teenage boy at the time and that the horror of war was so real to them, and that the collective relief of D-Day and the following events was more then I could comprehend. For some reason that short exchange impressed itself on my mind and forced me to contemplate what it must have been like for him to be a teenage boy in those years and to wonder if war was in his future, and I’ve also asked myself more questions about what it must have been like to have actually participated in that horrific battle. Coming to this place in France is one of the things I have most looked forward to in this trip, and I came with thoughts and memories of my Dad.

I didn’t really know what to expect, so I came into the experience a bit cautiously. The first thing I learned as we drove into the park is that the French government has actually given this little piece of France over to the United States in appreciation for what was done in their behalf, we were instructed as we entered the visitors center that we were to speak softly and be respectful. The Visitors Center was a collection of film clips, pictures and personal stories presented in the dignified manner that you would expect and began with stories of three young men who had been there on that day. One soldier was a young doctor with a wife and a couple of children at home; another was 21 year old young man just beginning his life; and then there was a third that looked to be in his mid 20’s. I was quickly overwhelmed with the reality that these were real people, with real lives, and, most profoundly for me, these were people with mothers. Many had wives, girlfriends, or children, but every one of them had a mother, and suddenly that was all I could think about. What would it have been to be one of the mothers waiting at home wondering if your son was participating; what was it like to be one of the 9000 mothers who later received a telegram informing them of the death of their child and then had to wrestle with the realities of that ghastly battle. And as I moved through the Visitors Center displays there were literally moments when I had to walk away in the middle of a narrative because it simply was too difficult to finish.

On the wall as you entered

This little hall finished the Visitors Center experience. As you walked down this spare corridor towards the cemeteries, a woman’s voice was quietly reading the long list of names of those who were killed in this battle, which continued for weeks after June 6^th. There were over 9000 casualties.

I’ve seen pictures of these fields, but I was unprepared for how moving they would be. And all I could think about was that for every cross, one soldier was laying in the ground, and that there had been a mother across the ocean huddled in her room trying to keep her life and heart from irreparably falling to pieces. The weight of those combined horrors was physically crushing.

I just walked quietly

It was sobering to see that the entire country was so wounded by this event.

A cemetery chapel

It was sobering to see that the entire country was wounded on this day.

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Following Omaha Beach we again got in the buses and moved south to Utah Beach and Omaha Beach.

Here, 250 soldiers specially trained for this mission, landed at the foot of these cliffs and began climbing ropes that they had shot into the rocks. Systematically the Germans cut the ropes and fired at the soldiers, but in some extraordinary feet, the American’s prevailed and took this strategic point of ground that the Germans had considered unassailable. In the end, only 90 of the 250 survived.