Day 30: Normandy

Well this is technically 2 days after I got back from Normandy but I didn't have time to write until now. The trip was amazing, it was a lot more profound and sad than I had been expecting. The bus ride was about 3 hours, which was not at all bad considering 1) the French country side is probably the prettiest countryside I have ever seen and 2) I had one of the 4 best seats in the bus, which was kinda like a 2 story bus in that where the seats were where above the driver so I sat in the very front right in front of the windshield and it felt like we were on a roller coaster. Before we made it to the beach where we were staying we went to Caen where there is a museum dedicated to promoting peace by documenting war, particularly WWII. It was really moving and very interesting, it gave a extremely detailed history of the war and since it was from the French point of view there were defiantly things that I didn't know before or hadn't considered before that were super intersting. There was a temporary exhibit about the jewish children that were killed during WWII and that was really hard to see after having gone to Dachau the weekend before, it brought up a lot of supressed memories. There was also a cold war exhibit which we all found pretty hillarious (in a very dark humor way), it showed a lot of American and Soviate propaganda videos which were quite amusing, and there was one video featuring a song called "duck and cover" which was about how if a nuclear bomb is dropped you should duck and cover under your desk, a picknick blanket, etc and you will be fine. After Caen we went to Gold Beach (on of the beaches the Brittish invaded) where we were staying and explored around a bit. The beach was very facinating, the history really weighs down on you when you go there, and you can just feel how many people died there. There are remnants of the Allies defense/suplise structures left in the water and they really look like giant scars. The next day we went to the Museume of the Disembarkment, which was a really cool museum. It is right next to Gold Beach and gives and incredably detailed history of all the planning that went into D-Day as well as the fighting that happened after D-Day to seize Normandy. I never fully appreciated just how complex it was, and if definatly blew me away. After the Museum we went to Omaha Beach where there is a graveyard of American soldiers who fell in France, the land of which was given to the USA by the French. That was the hardest part of the whole weekend for me, there was a memorial to the fallen soldiers and in the room around the memorial there were about 20 placards with pictures and stories of heros from D-Day, most of which died. It was incredably emotional and I was crying a lot when reading them, which apparently most people do because one of the French guards stationed there came up to me and asked if I was alright. Right after you leave the memorial you see Omaha Beach which is even more sad than Gold Beach. While there are no reminants left in the water at Omaha (that I saw), it was the beach that suffered the highest casualties (3,200 american soldiers dead) and it was impossible (for me) to look at that beach and not see all the death and distruction that happened there. When walking around the graveyard there were a few graves marked "here lies a fallen comrade at arms, known only to God" and it really hit me hard that I was looking at the grave of an american boy who died at Normandy, and whos parents, friends, and maybe wife have no idea where he was burried, and I of all people got to see his grave. It was very emotional, and the weekend as a whole plus my visit to Germany last weekend have made me view WWII so very differently. It feels so much closer to me now, and so much more real which is really hard but at the same time is very important for me. Like visiting Dachau, I think it will take me a while to fully process what I saw at Normandy.