I’ve never really liked military history. This is sort of strange for me to admit since I am a history major and I’m currently studying World War II. Yet, it is how I’ve always felt. Guns, military tactics, logistics, they’re all just concepts that I can’t really grasp because I like to focus more on people when I think about history. Therefore, I was a little bit skeptical that Bayeux would be a memorable place for me. It’s a charming little town in Northern France, and a lot of history took place in the surrounding areas. But would it be all that interesting since the Normandy campaign is mostly just military history?
Staying in Bayeux, however, and visiting the beaches where the Americans landed and successfully carried out Operation Overlord was an incredible experience. I never realized the impact it would have on me until I actually saw the places where so many young men fought and lost their lives. In addition, visiting the German, American, and British cemeteries proved enlightening, showing me that social and cultural historians are needed to interpret the wars that young men, and in some cases women, die for.
While visiting Utah, the sea was calm, the sky blue and sunny. It’s hard to imagine that just almost 70 years ago this beach was covered with bloody men and filled with the sounds of gunfire, screams, and shouts from commanding officers. There was a museum located at Utah beach that carried many artifacts belonging to soldiers from World War II, including letters from soldiers to wives and girlfriends to boyfriends stationed overseas. Most of the men who died during the Normandy campaign were just boys, and reading these letters puts their sacrifice into perspective and allows me to understand how much they were giving up and what their loved ones were losing as well. Omaha, similarly, was the same calm seas and blue skies. There wasn’t as much to see since the town seemingly moved up to the shore, and it’s as if life had never been interrupted. It’s almost hard to believe that a major military invasion took place there, and that Omaha proved to be one of the bloodiest and most difficult beaches for the Americans to take.
The French had the unique ability to remember the war in an authentic way, because the majority of the fighting took place here. They don’t need alluring museums with fancy movies (although we’ve seen a lot of those) to make an impression on the public. The history is in the earth. It’s in the giant craters and bunkers we found when we visited Pointe du Hoc. It’s in the oceans and the beaches that seem so serene now, but eerily give us glimpses of the past through remaining bits and pieces of barbed wire and the occasional bunker found during low tide. It’s in the cemeteries, where so many bodies of young men are buried leaving behind the sinking feeling that all war is a little bit absurd, no matter how good or just the cause for fighting once was.
Ultimately my point here is this: Cultural and social history has a place in this war story, because war isn’t just about the military tactics, panzer divisions, and mulberry ports. It’s also about the people, the soldiers who made these events happen and lost their lives as a result of ideological claims, whether or not individual soldiers sympathized with them. It’s about the mothers and fathers who buried their children, and the family members that to this day visit the graves of loved ones lost. And lastly it’s about the impact of war on society as a whole and the small ways in which we can remember and hold on to a past that should never and can never be forgotten.
Me, standing in a crater left over from the bombing during WWII at Pointe du Hoc