Travel days hurt. And since yesterday was all about going from Great Britain over the English Channel to Normandy, I’m chalking the lack of a Day 4 post due to exhaustion from hearing French pre-teens scream “I want it” while bouncing around on the dance floor of the ferry boat. Today, though, is different. Today was all about living history through our visit to the Caen Memorial and the D-Day beaches.

We started out visiting the Caen Memorial, a museum dedicated to the events that took place on June 6, 1944 and its aftermath. The Memorial includes different artifacts and items recovered from the war as well as a movie that showed the invasion from the perspectives of the Allies and Allied forces, side-by-side. This was quite moving given the lack of narration – forcing you to pay attention to the images and sounds – an immersive piece of visual communication.

We began our tour at Pointe du Hoc, the place where the US Rangers scaled the cliffs and almost 2/3 of their unit were killed in order to take the Pointe. Students were amazed at the massive craters left by the bombings alongside the chunks (huge mofo pieces) of cement that came from the German bunkers when they were hit. This was what Joey (one of the grad students in the class) was most looking forward to seeing. And not from a “this is cool, man” perspective either. Rather, it was from the inquisitive perspective of seeing how they pulled it off and looking at it from the point-of-view of the Allied troops and what they might have seen on that day.

Omaha Beach was our next up. This was the bloodiest of the five beaches, nicknamed “Bloody Omaha.” And here people are, traipsing around on it walking their dogs or sunbathing. You wouldn’t think that this was where 1,200 lives were lost in one day. But it was. And that, in and of itself, was readily apparent when we saw German bunkers still on the beach. I found Alex W. looking out across the water taking it all in. I asked her what she thought and she told me she was just trying to take it all in. A common response actually. Try going to a place of death and engage in leisurely activities there. It doesn’t feel right. But life goes on.

From there we visited the American Cemetery where over 9,307 people are buried, of which 307 soldier’s locations are still unknown to this day. Talk about solemn and eerie all in one. Our final stop was Arromanches where we saw from afar the mulberry bridges that the Allies built to bring their tanks and troops ashore from the big boats.
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I think today was all about experiencing new things but on a much different level than earlier. Day 3 was about experiencing the tangible: food or a play. Both are items of pleasure that we can choose to do or not do. Today was about experiencing history in a way that not many people get a chance to do: in the places where actual events took place. We put our students in a place where they didn’t have a choice about experiencing the beaches and memorials. They had to do it. And I’m not expecting them to have a momentous epiphany about their lives in relationship to the world around them and all that jazz. No, I just want them to understand that humans are more than just flesh and bone. Rather, we are shaped by that which we experience over our lives. The past has as much of an impact on us as our present, as will our future.

Wow, that’s deep. I really need to tone this down some. You’d think I have a Ph.D. or something.

fin

PS – Mackenzie has kept up her “trying new things” philosophy by trying some squid and having creme brûlée at dinner. Needless to say, the brûlée was a hit.