Remembering in Normandy

  La Hague, France
Thursday, April 17, 2008

This morning I spent some morning time in the hotel lobby on the Internet getting caught up on my ongoing work. Before checking into the Campanile Hotel the evening before, I asked specifically if there was Internet access in the room. The receptionist said there was wireless access in every room. After double-checking to make sure I understood correctly, I took the room. You can guess where this is going. There was no signal in my room.  When I called the reception to ask if they could move me closer to the wireless hub, I was told there were no more rooms available and if I had trouble I should come to the lobby. I felt like I'd been had, which I had, but I was too tired to think of going to look for another hotel. Instead I promised myself I'd never be back to the Campanile in Bayeux!
 
However, while in the lobby a very fit looking man about 55 came in with a day pack and began poring over a map of the D-Day beaches. When I asked if he was going to visit the beaches, he informed me he was a British Army officer, over here with a group of young officer candidates. "We're here to walk them over the ground, and explain how things happened, back then. We're trying to help them understand such things in preparation for Afghanistan, Iraq, and other such places." We chatted about Gold and Sword beaches, where the British had landed, and I mentioned how I once met, at the US cemetery at Colleville, a British veteran of D-Day who had come ashore on June 6th, 1944 as commander of a tank with a flail of chains on the front to explode anti-personal mines. The officer before me knew immediately which regiment it must have been, and said in fact he was currently serving with the same one. We had a brief, but very interesting conversation.
 
I started out toward Portbail where we will have our Festival in 2009 (not this year please note; next year). On the way I drove parallel to Omaha Beach, which I have visited many times. Around the place where the road turned from East-West to North-South, I made a brief stop at a cemetery in La Cambe. Not an allied cemetery this time, as I've done many times before, but a German one. Thousands of Germans died during the invasion too. Some supported the Nazi agenda, but some didn't. And many were very young, just like the Americans and British and Canadians who arrived in waves. The German cemetery is very sober, dark colored headstones, few of them sticking very far out of the ground.

The German Cemetery and La Cambe

The exhibits in the small museum showed photos of how young some of them were, looking like boys, as many of the soldiers from that period did. 
 
It is a horrendously sad thing to die in the violence of war, even when on the winning side of freedom. But how much more tragic to die fighting, many times in ignorance or with no great commitment to the cause, on the side of tyranny and barbarism!

Gravestone of an unknown German soldier

Such is the waste of the human way: faulty ideology; misleading loyalty. Proverbs 14:12 came to mind:  "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." I was sad for the young men buried there who were cut off in their youth.
 
To get to Portbail, I had to drive through Carentan, a town that was taken with many casualties about 10 days after D-Day. Easy Company, of the 506th PIR, immortalized in Stephen Ambrose's book Band of Brothers, which was later made into an excellent HBO series by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, took part in the action at Carentan. There is now a couple of church members from another COG church association who live on the outskirts of Carentan.
 
I drove on the Portbail where I checked on additional lodging possibilities in case we have more applications that what we can accept at the VVF we have reserved. There are several other possibilities, so I hope we can accept all those who apply.
 
The tide rises and falls a very significant amount here, one of the largest vertical changes in the world. As I drove out to the beach area where the festival site will be, I saw many pleasure craft moored in rows and tied to buoys, but actually sitting in nothing but mud, some lying on their sides, some standing straight up on their keels. Because of twists and turns in the coastline, the ocean was no where to be seen.
 
I had lunch at a little café near the bridge leading out to the beaches, and next to a thickly fortified Catholic Church which judging from its appearance dated back to the early Middle Ages.

The Church at Portbail

In those days seaside church buildings were fortified almost like castles, so they could be defended against Vikings or other marauders who knew that there were usually gold or silver implements and utensils in such buildings.
 
It was cool outside, but warmed up nicely when the sun came out. So a number of people, including me, ate outside on the sidewalk. We kept putting on jackets and sweaters when clouds covered the sun, and then taking them off again when the sun came out in a bright blue sky. That might seem like a lot of bother during lunch, but after long gray winters, most people in Europe love to sit outside in the sun. It really was a lovely day, and a delightful lunch.
 
After lunch I checked on the ferry system which gives access to the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, one of which was barely visible in the distance. They went to England after the Norman Conquest and even though they're very near the coast of France, stayed that way every since, though I believe one or the other of them has recently decided on full independence. 
 
This will be a very enjoyable site in which to spend a wonderful event. It has beautiful sea vistas, interesting cultural visits to make, and fascinating history not only of WWII but even going back to the Middle Ages.
 
In the afternoon I drove first toward Sainte Mère Eglise. That was the first village liberated by the allies on the night of June 5th 1944. If you remember the movie The Longest Day, that was the village where paratrooper John Steele, played by Red Buttons, landed on the Church steeple and stayed hung up there all night. I still remember as a boy watching John Wayne pointing to "Sant Mare Aygleess", as he said it, to start the war. I had to head back that way to catch the main road to Cherbourg.
 
Just before Sainte Mère Eglise I stopped briefly at a small bridge over the Merderet River. This whole region is very marshy, and the Germans had flooded as much of it as they could, to make any allied offensive operations extremely difficult.

Merderet marshes

There were only a few raised roads, called causeways, which were dry and usable by vehicles. It was to control those causeways that the paratroopers were dropped the night before D-Day. A monument near this small, seemingly insignificant bridge, told of a sharp action on the site.  US paratroopers dropped in a very mixed up and confused fashion, got organized in the dark with whoever they could find, and took the bridge. German soldiers counter-attacked twice the next day, the second time with tanks in support, but they couldn't take the bridge back.

The bridge on the Merderet River

The little stone bridge was one of tens of thousands just like it in France, but this one had become special because of the heroism of the men in action here. What people do, what they sacrifice, at crucial times can turn insignificant, ordinary objects into extraordinary things.
 
From there I drove out to a small village near the port of Cherbourg (that deep water port was the main target of the Normandy Invasion - the allies needed a port capable of supplying all the needs of the allied armies liberating Europe).

The seashore in the Harpers' village

Daniel and Cindy Harper live in a quaint stone village house about 300 meters from the ocean. Daniel had just arrived back from his work at a nuclear technology facility nearby when I pulled up.

The street where the Harpers live

 
I spent a wonderful evening with the Harpers, talking about different church activities in Europe. They travel all over helping out and visiting in France, Belgium, Switzerland, the UK, and other places.

The Harpers in front of their house

They'll be in Ireland this weekend, and are planning to visit Sweden soon. They seem to be everywhere and their enthusiasm and desire to help and serve are very much appreciated. Daniel speaks good French already, but I was especially impressed to see how much Cindy's French had improved. She didn't speak any when she arrived a few months ago.
 
It was a very pleasant end to a full and varied day.