(Bear with me, but the WiFi in Paris won’t load pictures just yet. Edits to come.)
Bayeux has definitely been the most impactful town we’ve visited in relation to World War II for a number of reasons, and in this post I’ll focus on three: museums, perspective, and sites.
I was fascinated by the memorials here. They often seemed more text/information-heavy than the artifact-after-artifact style of the the Imperial War Museum in London, but I learn more that way, and the film and images definitely made up for the lack of 8,000 tanks. The Imperial War Museum was so technology-heavy that it lacked a human aspect to me. That was never the case here. At the Utah Beach museum, there were several detailed personal accounts, like the one of American pilot David Dewhurst. Testimonials about him recounted, “A wing could come off, and he’d say, ‘We’ll worry about it when we’ve landed,'” and “He was good in every respect. He was one of the very best this country ever produced, as a man… and as an officer.” This kind of thing makes me tear up. I also really liked the perspective provided in “Letter to an American,” written by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the author of The Little Prince:
(Insert Antoine photo)
This human theme ran through to the museum preceding the American cemetery at Omaha as well.
(Insert cemetery pano)
I found an exhibit with a voiceover from PFC John R. McDonnell, a Lakewood, Ohio veteran, and I took down as much of it as I could: “I remember saying goodbye to my best friend — we were close all throughout the war. We hugged and shook hands and talked about what we’d do after the war. When I got home, the first thing I asked my mom was ‘How’s Glenn?’ She hesitated and said he was killed by the Germans. I still think about him all the time…” Stories that emphasize the soldiers as individuals really bring home the cost of war for me. Thomas Barry, the soldier whose grave I laid a flower on, studied Journalism at Ohio State.
(Insert Barry photo)
It’s the little things like that serve as a reminder: these people are us. (As a sidenote, we met two British veterans in this museum who served in the Royal Navy at Sword and hadn’t seen each other in 71 years until today, which was unreal.)
The Caen Memorial really hooked me aesthetically. The construction of several exhibits blew the WWII part of the Imperial War Museum out of the water (which wasn’t that hard, to be fair). Near the beginning of the museum, one exhibit that focused on the Nazi rise to power was connected to the consolidation years by a pitch black cave with a single image of Hitler speaking right over the exit, and, in the very center, they sharpened the acoustics so you could hear yourself breathing really intensely… Something about it just made the pit of my stomach drop. It was incredibly well done. I felt like I was walking right into the terrors of that period. I also really appreciated the use of film for sections like the bombings and destruction of French cities, because reading about events like that doesn’t do them justice.
For a similar reason, I also loved the 360° film that we watched in the Gold Beach Museum at Arromanches. There was a really wide variety of spliced images spliced images on all nine screens — they showed the maps of the advances and setbacks by different nations from 1940 on, (staged) footage of the invasions on the beaches, the liberation of coastal cities and of Paris, and the Allied bombings and their effects on French cities. I thought it was the perfect type of presentation — with all of the bits and pieces that you have to put together, your interpretation is less simplistic. It lets you work your way through the complicated narrative instead of providing a smooth story that tells you how to perceive the events. That’s not to say there wasn’t still a French narrative of how they were trounced by both the Nazis and the Allied bombings and tried to salvage their pride after being defeated and collaborating, but I personally believe that’s entirely justified.
There were a lot of complaints from the group about the portrayal of Americans in these last two museums particularly. I disagree with the complaints. It seems as if people are seeking out information that could have a negative twist at every chance they get. Whether Americans want to believe it or not, our history with the French is not all good — war is not all good — and the French have have every right to show all side. They’d be wrong not to show the civilian casualties in the narrative of French remembrance. Sure, some of the films are dramatized with babies and kittens in the wreckage, but even that isn’t false — not to mention that America certainly dramatizes its wartime films as well. It’s just part of representation.
But it’s not as if there was nothing positive about the Americans here… I mean, for goodness sake, the buildings here actually say “Welcome to our Liberators.” They appreciate us, trust me. They talked more about American assistance at every stop than a single one of the British museums did — in London, Bletchley was the only place I even heard the words “Pearl Harbor,” and it was from a guide who’d initially forgotten the name of the base. On the whole, I was actually struck by how positive Normandy was toward the Americans. When we pulled in toward Utah Beach, there were American flags everywhere. We turned onto Rue General Eisenhower, which was clad with liberation signs. The remembrance here is different. They’re very focused on continued friendship with Americans and assuring us that there are no hard feelings over how we destroyed their cities before liberating them. It’s interesting in that the sincerity is questionable — I mean, it’s obvious that this town runs on dark tourism. If they didn’t throw on some red, white, and blue, people might stop showing up. I’m not saying they’re disingenuous, but I do wonder how they really feel about us. In the airborne museum in Sainte-Mère-Église, one applicable line from a film that stuck with me: “A little corner of America in Sainte-Mère-Église — forever.” The praise was overwhelming. Getting back to the initial point, I think we can be a bit too sensitive about our nationalist ways, and it’s important to recognize that there are perspectives other than the ones we were often taught back at home.
The French were also much better about acknowledging their darker role in the war than Britain was. There were several sections in the Caen Memorial that blatantly highlighted their collaboration with the Nazis and explained why they felt compelled to join in such horrific acts, and it outlined their antisemitic laws and mistreatment of the Jews and their role in appeasement (which the Imperial War Museum totally left out). I thought it was a great move to include the less pleasant side of their own history.
Moving on to perspective… When a town makes its living on the death that took place inside it, an interesting sort of remembrance takes place once every historical site becomes a tourist attraction (histourism… I’m coining it now). Maybe that’s what contributes to what the couple we met at dinner mentioned. The woman said that when she went to the beaches, she and her husband saw a bunker where the cannons were, and there was a group of people with a picnic blanket right next to it. She didn’t know what to think: “is it… disreverent [her word, not mine], or did they fight so we could eat there? And then there’s this crater from a bombshell, and there are these children running down one side and up the other. And they have no idea how that hole got there.”
(Insert children climbing up the crater)
I knew exactly what she meant when we stopped at Pont du Hoc. I found myself crying almost immediately upon entering the site. The craters left behind from seventy years ago are larger than I could ever have imagined, and it’s pretty terrifying when you think about what that means. Matt said it well in his site report — it was the most somber place we’d been by far. But what really got me was when I looked out on the cliffs, and a young girl behind me holding a camera screamed out, “I have a great idea! Let’s sit in one [of the craters] and all cover our heads!” Inside the bunker, a small boy peered out of the slat while making gun noises. This idea of “playing war” that is so common in today’s society is even more jarring at a site like this one. I think the touristy nature lends itself to moments like those, and I’m not sure how to feel about it all.
As for the last prong of this post, what really made Bayeux the most impactful place we’ve visited were the sites themselves, like Pont du Hoc — the ones that no museum or book could ever truly encapsulate.
(Insert Moldiv collage)
Actually setting foot on the beaches really got to me, and I found myself in tears for the majority of our visits. One thing in particular that I kept noticing was how unbelievably beautiful these places were. It almost felt wrong that the flowers still grow here. Thinking about the lives sacrificed on these hallowed grounds — like the men at Pegasus Bridge who were asked to crash the gliders into barbed wire fences and hold the bridges against shooting from snipers and bombing attempts, the 200+ lives lost at Utah Beach even though the invasion went as well as it possibly could have, men like PFC John R. McDonnell’s friend Glenn and like Thomas Barry the Journalism major — made it feel as if the sun could never shine on a place like this. And in some ways, I suppose I got what I was asking for: it sleeted at Omaha. Actual sleet in the middle of May. Sometimes, you get the feeling there really is someone up there.
On the whole, I was entranced by Bayeux, and I’m so appreciative of the experience I had in this town. I’m also a little suspicious that the alumni office is dropping people here intentionally (I’m on to you, Archie), because the couple I previously mentioned was from the great state of Ohio, and I met another man with a Block O tattoo on his arm. How firm thy friendship, I suppose.
On to Paris!
-Meg