What is there to say about a massacre?

Following London, our trip continued to northern France. We stayed in Bayeux and took daily excursions to the beaches of Operation Neptune, national cemeteries, and museums. The cemeteries and their distinct characteristics had the most profound impact on me. We visited cemeteries established by the United States, Great Britain, and Germany and each presented a different narrative of the war and how it is remembered. Observing these monuments, I was reminded of a quote that speaks to the idea of remembering the dead. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut said: “There’s is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead.” Each of these cemeteries says something about the massacre that was World War II.

The American cemetery was the one I knew most about prior to visiting. It is a grandiose display that pays tribute to the heroism of American soldiers who died during the liberation of Nazi-occupied Western Europe. To Americans, World War II is known as the Good War; we were victorious and came out of the war relatively unscathed. Fittingly, the cemetery is a celebration of the American war effort. It is not bombastic, but it is patriotic in a uniquely American way. The cemetery pays tribute to the good American boys who came across the sea to save the world from Hitler’s evil.

Its rows of orderly, white headstones serve to impress the magnitude of American losses.

Memorials placed throughout the cemetery reinforce the narrative of good vs evil. This narrative is a celebration of the American cause for entering the war. The Americans helped win the war and did so at a comparably low cost. This is not to disparage the losses of American families related to the war, but the absence of civilian casualties and destruction of infrastructure compared to other nations participating in the war are the reason why America remembers a Good War. American losses were important and meaningful, but they were also a magnitude of order lower than that of nations who saw their countryside ravaged and their civilian populations devastated. The American massacre, while tragic, is one that ultimately has a happy ending. These men died to secure a world safe for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Their sacrifice, while tragic, achieved the end it set out to.

The German cemetery offers a stark contrast. Here there are rows of small, sober grave markers of the German soldiers who died during the Normandy landings. It is a much more somber place that seeks not to celebrate but to remember. Here there is nothing of the Nazi cause, only dead men. Little is said of the dead; those whose names are known are marked accordingly and those who unknown are simply labeled “A German Soldier.”

Among them, there are likely Nazi fanatics who were fully devoted to Hitler’s cause. However, there are likely also those men, young and old, who were sucked into the German war machine without much devotion at all to the cause they died for. Here these things do not matter. The cemetery only seeks to mark those among the many killed in World War II who were German and died at Normandy. This cemetery celebrates neither cause nor combatant. Instead it remembers the men who died because of their participation in the war, regardless of circumstance. I will be able to speak to this more fully after visiting Berlin but I believe this is reminiscent of the general German perspective of World War II. Germany was host to a hateful regime that perpetrated horrendous crimes against the world. As it emerged from occupation as a new nation, this history demanded to be dealt with. The Germans do not celebrate the war but they do not ignore it. Rather they mark the tragedy of the massacre so that it is not forgotten.

Finally, the British cemetery commemorates both a cause and cost of the war. Here the headstones are more personal; they bear the emblem of a soldier’s unit, his name, date of death, age, and a personal inscription from his loved ones.

The British fought the People’s War and in their cemetery the fallen seem the most like people. Each headstone offers an intimate connection with the fallen and the family they left behind. The British cemetery also contains graves of Polish, Czech, Soviet, and German soldiers in addition to those dead from the British Empire. The inclusion of foreign graves shows that the People’s War isn’t exclusive to British people. Instead, the narrative focuses on the personal cost the war wrought on people throughout the world. The cemetery seeks to remind us that wars are fought by people and that each of those people leaves behind a life full of family and friends, some never to be seen again.

Of all three, I found the British cemetery the most moving because of its articulation of loss at this much more personal level. This cemetery speaks not only to a massacre of soldiers and civilians but also the ravaged families that massacre left in its wake.

The three cemeteries all serve as a reminder of World War II, a massacre that claimed a terrible cost. Today, as every day since the war, we must wrestle with what and how we say of this massacre. We must be careful in this regard to do proper justice to the many facets of the war. The sacrifice of young men and civilians the world over should be commemorated and remembered. These tragedies define much of our world today but we must be careful not to idolize war. Idolizing war only leads to more war and more dead. Rather we should honor these dead by living for peace and a world with fewer massacres.

In addition to the cemeteries, we visited several others sites in Bayeux, a small town in the north of France. We then moved on to Paris. Here are some pictures from both: