17 juilliet

17 juilliet
Normandy Memorials
A day completely off the bike.
Starting with a divine breakfast of flan avec pommes prepared by Morgan, we headed off to the Omaha Beach cemetery and memorial. The visitor center engulfed me, particularly the individual narratives told by the men themselves (for the survivors) or their families (for the dead). These were boys, plunging into a truly terrifying situation. They died such brutal deaths.
Then, the cemetery itself. Eyes were blurry with unexpected tears.
Then off to Point du Hoc, where the craters and broken bunkers from the shelling remain. Wind was howling. Rain came and went and came again. Imagining the chaos, the din, the fear and death, was overwhelming. The bunker at the point showed evidence of massive fire within, with one wall etched by the impact of hundreds of bullets. An arresting site.
Best to imagine the craters as a child's playground. Morgan, Grant and I ran in and out of the craters. Got a viscereal sense of the topography.
Our final stop was the German cemetery. Dedicated to peace. A different place, quiet and contemplative. Most of the soldiers were 18, 19, 20 years old. Some of the graves were multiple. Lots of trees. Again the wind. The visitor center again engulfed me with stories. Of note, the first person account of the Allied invasion from the point of view of one of the surviving German soldiers. He was at first completely numb, only awakening to action when machine gun fire against his position began. He knew he had nothing to fight for, most of his compatriots were dead or incapacitated from the endless shelling, but what else could he do? Still more stories, and more tragic still, the countless noncombatants caught in the crossfire. Emotionally exhausted, we made our way back to the farmhouse and started cooking...
Dinner started at 10. At midnight, the conversation slipped into a pause and we said our "Bon nuit." Then the conversation got rolling again and next we looked it was 1:15 a.m.