A Necessary Sacrifice
5:14 PM, 9-4-06
It’s difficult to convey the magnitude and emotional tour de force of the experience I had on this day. I suppose I’ll go through each step of the day and then try to sum up the significance and enormity at the end after I’ve related the details of the places I visited.
We woke up early in Bordeux in order to have plenty of time to get ready and find breakfast before catching the bus. The tour we were going on was called Battlebus, and while it was among the more expensive things I’ve done so far, it was worth it more than anything else by far. We picked up breakfast at a local bakery (I’ve never had such good croissant as those I’ve had in France) and then proceeded directly to becoming lost. Fortunately we’d left ourselves a good amount of time (bearing in mind the possibility that we would get lost) and were able to arrive at the Battlebus pick-up site with time to spare.
The tour group was small. We were with the group that was going to visit the American sites from World War II. With us were all adults, all over 40, who were obvious war-history enthusiasts. There was a pair of Brits, a pair of Americans and then a Canadian woman. Our guide’s name was Stewart, and if any one of you (my readers) ever does this tour (which I suggest above all other things in France), you must make sure to get Stewart. He was a master storyteller and had an obvious passion for the history of war. You could see it in his eyes and hear it in the way he talked, but there will be more on this later. Introductions finished and we began the longest part of the trip, the drive out to the north coast of Normandy, specifically, Utah Beach.
Stewart explained to us some of the details of D-Day as we drove. I had no idea about most of the material he told us about. He explained that he’d met a good number of veterans from D-Day, people who lived in the area or else visited and took the tour. His skill as a storyteller resided in his use of specificity. Rather than telling us of statistics—who and how many died when and where—he focused on the life of a specific soldier and conveyed it in a way that portrayed both the personal and grand level of the conflict.
Utah Beach was beautiful but somber. The beach was mostly unoccupied, even by tourists. It was a stormy day and at the end of the tourist season, Stewart explained, and was consequently the least busy he’d seen it in months. Somehow the rain seemed appropriate. The weather, he said, was the only part of D-Day we couldn’t control. In fact, the invasion was suppose to be launched a day earlier but weather conditions were too poor. Even so, he told us all about how weather played the most significant role in the outcomes of D-Day. The thick cloud banks, much like what lay over us as we stood on the beach, had hampered visibility and caused the paratroopers not to land in six specifically located drop zones, but instead, to land all over Normandy. The ensuing chaos had both positive and negative effects.
Utah Beach was the ultimate success story. Few soldiers were killed and almost all objectives were achieved. On this note, we got back into the van and headed off and left behind what would be the only real success story of that day. Next on the stop was the small city of Sainte Mere-Eglise.
The city of Sainte Mere-Eglise is a small town of only a few thousand people and is the site of one of the most hard-fought battles of World War II. The paratroopers, which were intended to land in very specific zones through Normandy, were scattered because of cloud cover and weather conditions. Many landed in this small town where a retinue of Nazis was out in the middle of the night, fully-armed, overseeing the townspeople who were fighting a fire. It was entirely by coincidence that so many people were awake when the paratroopers landed, and a terrible coincidence it was. The Nazi troops were able to shoot many of the soldiers before their feet even touched the ground. The battle was dramatized in the movie The Longest Day.
After Steward explained to us a little about the history of the town, we ventured over to a museum commemorating the struggles of the D-Day fighters. The museum was really great. It had a vast array of items from the life of the soldiers, from items you’d expect, like guns and helmets, to packs of cards or cartons of cigarettes. I’ve never been a big fan of war museums, but with Stewart telling stories of the soldiers and the struggles they faced, it really gave what we were looking at a lot of meaning. Most telling were the bullet holes, still marring parts of the town square. There was a Roman road marker in the square that had gouges in it from the bullets. It’s strange how there’s a kind of difference between looking at something like bullet-holes, only fifty years old, compared to the road marker of almost two thousand years. One can appreciate the age of something, yet it’s difficult to really connect with something so old and so separated culturally. These bullet holes and the items in the museum—they’re immediate, connected to us by only a generation or two.
Our next stop was not part of the normal one-day tour. Battlebus does one and two day tours, and the stop in Angobille au Plain was usually reserved for the two-day. In many ways, this was the best stop of all. Few would recognize the name of this little village in Normandy, hosting perhaps eighty people—about same number it held sixty years ago on D-Day. The village was picked as one of the drop zones for the allied paratroopers. Unlike the other sites, this one actually received most of the paratroopers, over a thousand in all. What was unexpected about this, however, was the enormous retinue of Nazi soldiers that were living in and around the city. Fighting broke out quick and would not stop for three days.
The fight, however, is not where the story lies. The amazing story of Angobille au Plain fell within the church. One would be hard-pressed to find mention of the battle here, let alone the amazing things achieved inside of the small church in this quaint town. Two medics—not surgeons—hardly trained except for a few weeks before being shipped out were among the paratroopers that landed there. I’ll try and relate what Stewart related to our group as best I can, but without standing in the church, seeing the blood-soaked pews, its difficult to fully absorb the story. Kenneth Moore and Robert Wright had been without sleep for two days because they’d been on standby for the D-Day launch. They’re scarcely had anything to eat when they landed in the square of Angobille au Plain, where fighting had already broken out. Within minutes of the fighting, casualties began amounting. People were taken to the humble church, where they could only hope the Nazis wouldn’t reach or would otherwise respect the symbol of the red cross.
For the next three days, the city would change possession between the allies and the Nazis no less than seven times. Counter attack after counter attack would drive back the forces. The soldiers would take possession only to become displaced hours later. All the while, the casualties grew and soon, Wright and Moore were caring for both Germans, Americans, and townsfolk within the church. Some were not fatally injured, but at least 81 were critically injured, hovering on the thin line between life and death. These two men worked tirelessly, without sleep for three days—that makes five total days without sleep—fighting exhaustion and hunger, in order that they might save the lives of those around them. Had they rested for even an hour, even a moment, any one of those 81 people could have died. Instead, only one of the critically wounded people died. Of the 81 people that would have died without the help of these men, only one died—an eight-year-old child. It was only later, after the Americans gained control of the town and after Wright and Moore had rested that they found out that the patron saint of that church was none other than St. Luke, the patron saint of physicians and doctors.
Sitting in the church, hearing this story in conjunction with the sights around me, including the two stain glass windows dedicated to the men, was amazing. Stewart explained that the two men had visited the church on different occasions, though never together. They had intended to visit this last year in Spring, but health conditions left one man unable to travel. Still, the other came over and talked to the townsfolk, who revere the men up until this day (there are four monuments and they’re going to install a fifth; each of the eight townsfolk donate 100 dollars or more each year toward the memorials and telling the story), as well as Stewart and the members of the tour company, Battlebus. Stewart told us many more amazing things about this place, each containing the sense of sad wonder inherent in this story. It’s amazing to think that this story, lost among the many heroic acts of WWII, is just one of many, and it was fantastic to get to hear and witness something with such a local significance. Experiencing it like that gave it an amazing personal touch.
Next on the list was a stop at Pointe du Hoc, which was beautiful, as well as significant in D-Day. This was the place where the newly created American Special Forces made their debut. Rangers, trained specifically for climbing the sheer cliffs of this section of the Normandy Coast, scaled up and seized this point, which was thought to contain a number of huge guns able to fire on Utah and Omaha Beach. The guns, however, had been replaced by telephone polls. The rangers were undeterred, though, and tracked down the guns and destroyed them. It was counted as a major victory, though many of the rangers died in the subsequent attack on the point they had captured.
The ground was littered with bomb craters, left from the Allied bombing of the place. It was a strange landscape, so totally unnatural. Again, one could feel a profound sense of connection to the past, walking through this place. There was the sense that you could take a walk and step through the very fabric of time and bear witness to the battles and bombings of this place. We mostly explored on our own, here, after Stewart finished telling us the story about the rangers. The weather was still nasty and so we gathered in for the final of the battle sites we would visit.
Omaha Beach. The quintessential battle in seizing control of Normandy and securing the invasion so that troops could continue on to the rest of Europe. A terrible failure and terrific success. If you’ve seen Saving Private Ryan, that will give you an idea what it was like, only Omaha Beach is four miles long, not just a small stretch of land, and American soldiers were dying like that, as they came of the boat, all across the beach. Two thousand casualties. I never really appreciate the significance of the battle until being there and having it explained. I knew it was important in the war, but I guess it never really meant anything to me until I went there. It’s impossible to know for sure, but chances are that if Omaha had failed, the invasion would have failed. Omaha was supposed to be bombed by airplanes, eliminating most of the machine guns and heavy artillery. The navy was supposed to help too. Instead, only one gun of many was destroyed, and many Americans lost their lives. The fault does not lie in the airplane division, however, because a heavy bank of fog covered Omaha on the day of the attack. Thus, men were slaughtered even as they took their first step onto European soil. And even after the sea wall was taken, those same brave men who had survived running across the beach in the open were asked to climb up a bluff and try to seize control of the guns. That’s bravery, the kind reserved for wars fought against real evil, the kind of war that we haven’t seen since World War II and Hitler.
Stewart told us of Omaha and we all talked over a drink at a nearby coffee shop while we waited for the rain to dissipate. The dismal weather seemed somehow appropriate, especially now. Walking the sands—sands once red with the blood of men—was a powerful experience, one that I would suggest to anyone. This convinced me to visit the concentration camp, Daschau, when I go to Germany. I hadn’t been sure before, but after standing on that beach, listening to a silence that seemed to rain down across the decades, I became sure that I needed to see the other side of the war. I wanted to see the evil that these brave men were fighting against.
We had some time to walk around and explore. I spent some time by myself on the beach and then walked around with Ashley a bit. Eventually we returned to the bus and went to our final destination, the Colleville Cemetary. This cemetery is the second most visited burial sight in the world after Arlington Cemetary. It houses thousands of dead soldiers, the families of which elected to have their sons or daughters or brothers or sisters buried in Normandy, where they’d fought so hard to gain freedom. The cemetery looked very much like Arlington, with crossed in perfect rows. They were all facing West, back toward their homeland. I walked around the cemetery alone, reflecting on sacrifice, reflecting on war. In our present day, wars are so infrequently fought for a good reason, if there can ever be a good reason. Defeating evil, that should be the cause of a war, but instead this excuse is misused, manipulated, and in doing so, made to dishonor those who fought against real evil. What is worth the ultimate sacrifice? I asked myself this as I gazed over the thousands of men and women, all of whom gave up years of life to ensure that evil did not overcome. Life rarely affords one with the opportunity for real sacrifice, to give selflessly and wholly in exchange for something good and pure. It’s too bad, I think. Sacrifice can inspire—it inspired an entire religion. I think knowing what you would sacrifice, or facing that decision to give up something important to you, is a defining thing—something that let’s you look deep inside and see what you are. Maybe that was what I got out of this day, a better sense of what we came from, what was given in order that I should exist here, at this moment, as I am. It’s tough to appreciate, so distant in time and space, but walking on those beaches and in those cities gave me chills, not from the wind, but from something unseen that seemed to hover just beyond the wind, out of sight. It was a beautiful experience, inspired not by sight so much—as many of my other experiences have been—but by recognition and comprehension. It was inspired by words and thoughts.
Tags: Europe, France, Normandy, Omaha Beach, Travel, world war II
gregbilsland
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