Obi-Wan Kenobi says “Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view.” This quote offers a lot of commentary on the historical and national biases that I encountered in France. My classmates and I visited many sites in France that left us wondering: “Is this what the French are taught in schools? I this really what they believe?” Sites like the French Military Museum and the Caen museum and memorial left me with questions about how history is taught worldwide.
During the interwar period, countries spent a lot of time and money preserving the war. Countries like the United States and Germany spent a great deal of time researching technology and war tactics during this time. The French did not spend nearly as much time or money in their research. The German Army captured Paris in May of 1940, forcing the surrender of France. With Paris and France under German rule the French were now out of the fight. The truth of the French War was that they lost early. This fact was what struck me as we walked through the French museums praising the work their country did.
Within the French Military museum, Les Invalides, the text on the walls praised the French army for helping with the Dunkirk evacuations The Dunkirk evacuations took place in 1940 when the German Army forced the French north to the Dunkirk pocket. The British came to aid the evacuation of French and British troops from the country. The museum said that thanks to the French resistance the British were able to rally and later fight the German forces in Africa and Italy. We never learned about this, and I found it very shocking that the French took credit. The French were defeated and relied heavily on the British Navy to save thousands of their men. The museum also discussed the concept of “Free France.” The museum explained that the Free French state offered help to the Allies. There really was no “Free French State.” Charles De Gaulle was the leader of the resistance in France but he did not have an organized state to back him up. While the resistance did help liberate France they did not play as much of a role as this museum said.
At the Caen museum the exhibits gave off the impression that the French were the victims of the war. The museum tried to downplay French collaboration with the Nazis. The museum gave great insight into the resistance and less about the government that they had during the time of the war. I was expecting them to take credit for Vichy but they hardly mentioned it. They cared a lot about the resistance and how they hoped to defeat the Germans. The glossing over the Vichy regime was very shocking to me.
These differences in the French view of history made me think about how history is taught depending on location. The French likely do not want to be seen as the country who lost the world war within weeks. The French said these things in the museums because they believed that what they did was enough for the war effort. I think this also shows that what we are taught in America could also be nationally biased. We are taught things that we did correctly in our history classes. We fail to mention some of our moral downfalls during the Second World War, because they reflect poorly on our nation. One needs to think and analyze the author they are reading to determine the biases they might have. The French are just like any other country; they are just telling the truth based on their point of view.

As we progressed onto France, we went and stayed at a hotel in Bayeux. Bayeux is a small country town in Normandy. The air was clear and the people there were hospitable and it was a good place to adjust to the French language. I felt like one of the international students on campus who are in a foreign environment and doesn’t understand the local language. The language barrier was difficult and I don’t know French and what Spanish I do know was unhelpful when trying to communicate with the locals.

Bayeux was the first town liberated from the Germans after the Allied invasion of France called Operation Overlord or also known as D-Day.  The D-Day invasion happened on the Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha and Utah beaches. While in Normandy we visited the Utah, Omaha and Gold beaches. The beaches were not what I expected when I learned about them. They were different from what I had imagined. The Utah Beach was the first we visited and it reminded me of the beaches of North Carolina.  With that in mind, I tried to imagine traversing the beach with all of the wet, heavy gear and weapons the soldiers of the D-Day invasion had to carry along.  The wet sand that they sunk into only made their assault harder under enemy fire. Later that week we went to Pont de Hoc, the small peninsula between the Utah and Omaha beaches. Pont de Hoc was where the Germans had heavy guns that could have affected the Allied navy’s assault and the Allied invasion. Pont de Hoc was covered in mass craters caused by the Navy shelling. Allied forces had to climb up the cliff face to surprise the enemy and capture the guns. The sight was beautiful but it was hard to think that it was a battlefield.  Later we went to Omaha and I had my biggest surprise. Most of the beach was flat and then there were tall hills instead of the rock faces that I thought that the soldiers had to climb. It turns out that I was thinking about Dog Green, the farthest west Pont of the beach closest to Pont de Hoc. Dog Green was the rockiest part of the beach while the rest was easier to advance on but the soldiers had to deal with heavy enemy crossfire from down the beach.  I learned that the amphibious transports dropped off there load to far from their intended target range. They were supposed to drop off the tanks 3 to 5 clicks off the beaches in low tide but they dropped them off almost 7 clicks and from there most of the heavy armor and tanks drowned. Through the actions of the transports, the Omaha assault had only 10 percent of their original tanks.  The last beach we saw was the Gold Beach. I didn’t expect to see that it had a town on the beach front. So that when the allies advanced on to the beach, they rolled right up to the town and had to face the enemy in an urban area.

Normandy underwent heavy strategic bombing, the allies destroyed the local’s homes and businesses, their communities and had to deal with all of it under the Nazi occupation. It was hard to think that the Normans were thankful to the allies for freeing them from occupation when these same people who freed them also destroyed their property and left their homes in ruins. It was a surprise to learn that the church in Bayeux was unharmed by the allied bombing. The church is called the Notre Dame de Bayeux and it was built in the 1100’s.

While we were in Normandy we went to the different cemeteries. We first visited the German cemetery. It was located near a highway and was not was I expected from a cemetery. The German soldiers who died in Normandy were buried there. Their tombstones were flat on the ground and when closer examined they had multiple names. Many of the graves were shared graves and many unknown soldiers. In the middle of the cemetery, there is a large mound that was actually a mass grave of unknown German soldiers. It was a very despondent sight. How the cemetery was arranged brings to mind trying to remember the fallen but not what they fought for. The other cemeteries we visited were the American and British cemeteries. The American cemetery was close to the ocean, with the well-known white crosses and star of Davis’s. The sheer scale of graves brings into perspective how many died. It is one thing to know the number of those who died and another to be there and see the graves.  The British cemetery was different in that they had tombstones for all who were involved because they believed that in death all of the soldiers deserve a proper grave. They also had the different designs of the soldier’s regiment on their tombstones. What they have written on them was left to the families to decide. This made the graves more personal and hopefully brought closer to the families.

One thing I really liked in Normandy was the airborne museum that had a building to show and inform people of Operation Neptune. Inside they had an area where people had to walk through a replica of a plane that dropped the paratroopers over France and had a small scale of what the paratroopers were dropped over under a glass walkway. It was really cool to see what the paratroopers experienced as they jumped. And then from Bayeux, the group travels to Paris.

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.

The cemetery overlooks Omaha beach where many American soldiers came ashore to liberate Western Europe.

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

Rows of headstones at the American cemetery.

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.

John O. Fry, Jr. one of the Buckeye Twelve, Ohio State alumni who are buried at the American cemetery.

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.”

The German cemetery.

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.

F. H. Rigg. Age 26. Killed July 23, 1944.
“To the world he was just one but to us he was all the world. Wife and family.”

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.

Central monument at the British cemetery.

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.

Graves of unknown soldiers at each cemetery.

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:

Pegasus Bridge

A crater at Pointe du Hoc

OHIO picture at Utah Beach

Mont-Saint-Michel

Centre Pompidou museum of modern art.

“International Klein Blue” by Yves Klein

Musée d’Orsay

Sunset OHIO along the Seine

“Stop! This is the Empire of the Dead.” Paris catacombs

The catacombs

Grand Musée de l’Armée (French Armed Forces Museum) at Les Invalides

The Louvre

“Winged Victory of Samothrace”

“Liberty Leading the People” by Eugène Delacroix

L’Arc de Triomphe

With this blog, I write about my experiences in France, where we stayed in Bayeux and Paris. Bayeux is a sleepy town in the Normandy region, with old, thin streets and stores that mainly close by 10 pm. Paris is the polar opposite, and is the cultural capital of France. Bayeux mainly feeds on tourism brought on from the D-Day Invasion, while Paris has moved on, and is a business capital of the world. In this blog I will talk about many things, like the invasion beaches we saw, Pointe du Hoc, war cemeteries, and museums.

Bayeux in World War Two is a rather interesting case. The Germans stationed here were not a cutthroat division, and retreated from the Allied Invasion, leaving the town nearly unscathed, although I’m not sure of what happened in regards to bombing raids. Paris also went relatively untouched and was occupied by Nazi Germany for much of the war.

In American memory, Omaha seems to be one of the most remembered beaches, with the opening of Saving Private Ryan being there (it was filmed in Ireland), and more casualties happening here than others. So, what was found was a bit surprising: beachfront properties. The land wasn’t preserved much, but a monument opens to the beach. There’s no museum accompanying the land, but restaurants are named after it nearby.

Utah Beach was a more preserved beach, with sand dunes marking the nearly untouched area. Surrounding the beach were a museum, monuments, and decaying war memorabilia (like a German Flak gun). The water was also at a lower tide when we arrived, meaning the water was receded like it would have been on June 6, 1944. Standing at the edge of the water watching the waves ebb and flow, one could not help but to think that we were seeing what an American soldier would have seen over 70 years ago. Needless to say, Utah Beach was a very touching place to be.

Pointe du Hoc was a German controlled area invaded by Army Rangers on D-Day. These Rangers were tasked with disabling artillery guns which could have been problematic in the beach invasion. Once these men scaled the nearly vertical rock face, the guns were not found in the expected site, but were found and disabled soon thereafter using thermite grenades. The site is now an American monument site and is pocked by huge craters from shelling and Nazi bunkers. Actually being there and seeing the effects of naval bombardment was mesmerizing, as I had always seen footage of ships firing cannons and not thought about the effects on the the receiving end of the firing. Besides going into the craters, going into the bunkers that were occupied with Nazis also had another humanizing feature. Hearing our own voices reverberate against the concrete, it is hard to imagine how deafening the shelling would have been.

View of Pointe Du Hoc

In our time in Bayeux we were also able to tour cemeteries for America, Britain, and Germany. The American Cemetery was gorgeous, with views of the Norman coast and pine trees dotting the land. The markers are also phenomenal, with either a white cross or Star Of David marking burials. Inscribed on each is the name of the soldier, rank, division, state, and date of death. While there, I was blessed to place an Ohio State flag on the grave of John W. Atkinson Jr.,  First Lieutenant with the 101st Airborne Division who was killed on June 8th, 1944. He grew up in Portsmouth (very close to Chillicothe, my own hometown) and attended The Ohio State University. There are twelve Buckeyes buried in the cemetery.

The British Cemetery was a jarring experience, because according to British belief, all soldiers deserve a respectful burial. These led to graves for not only Britt, but also Americans, Australians, Canadians, Czechs, Germans, Italians, Muslims, Poles, Russians, and likely more that I did not see. This display led to a remind that World War Two was a truly global conflict. The tombstones also included an inscription from the family of the lost, which was especially jarring.

The last cemetery I can discuss is the German War Cemetery, which was very different from the other two. The cemetery had to play the line of how to honor war dead from a country, when the country was under one of the worst regimes in history. This complex question has raked my mind often, and I think that the best answer is in the cemetery we toured. The tombstones are flat at ground level, typically with two soldiers buried in each plot. In the middle of a cemetery there is a hill with a cross with two Germanic figures underneath it, and the hill has unidentified bodies interred in it. As we walked past it, a French teenager stood at the peak and sang a Whitney Houston song at the top of his lungs. Even though this was a cemetery for Germans who defended Norman beaches from Allied forces, I could not help but to be extremely bothered by the disrespect I witnessed.

German Cemetary

The last part of the French portion I want to discuss are the museums that we saw. Generally, these museums shared a common thread of discussing the war and showing artifacts. Typically, the French museums offered portions on the French resistance and the Free French Forces. In nearly every one of them, a picture of Jean Moulin (who briefly united Resistance forces under General de Gaulle) is shown. What was missing bothered me, there was barely a mention of the Vichy government, of France’s surrender in 1940, or many things that could paint France in a negative light. If you did not have background knowledge of the war and toured some of the museums, you would think that France fought gallantly, then some years passed, and General de Gaulle led forces into the heart of Paris and drove out the Germans singlehandedly.

In one example at the Caen Museum, there is only one picture from the roundup of Jews in the Paris Velodrome d’Hiver. Accompanying it is only a small description and no further explanation of the role that the French played in the Nazi regime. 13,152 Jews were arrested by French police in the two day round up, and they were then sent to extermination camps. The Caen museum was the only one that I saw that mentioned this; not even the Musée de l’Armée in Paris spoke of it. In a later discussion, we learned to be aware of who designs museums, as they may slant the museum to shine lights on some things and ignore others. It seems victims of French-Nazi collaborators are a group that has had the light taken away from them in the collective French memory, which I find to be a travesty.

We now go eastwards to Krakow, Poland. After learning more about D-Day and the Normandy campaign than I ever thought I would learn, I look forward to seeing a different viewpoint of the War. In my eyes, the Norman region thrives off tourism related to the 1944 invasion. Paris enjoys being one of the most renowned cities in the world, with barely a mention of a world war two in sight (asides from occasional plaques commemorating the heroic efforts of the French resistance).  I look forward to portraying my experience to you all again soon.

Au revoir,

Beau Bilek

This picture epitomizes Bayeux’s charm

Because of the comments of some of the people who went on this study tour last year, my expectations for Bayeux were relatively low. They made it seem like the town was a boring place with nothing much to do aside from drinking at the hotel. I guess their advice was not necessarily untrue—I spent quite a few fun nights at the hotel pool getting to know everyone a lot better—but last year’s group definitely undersold Bayeux’s charm. Walking through the cobblestone streets, I immediately felt an urge to start singing Beauty and the Beast lyrics. Bayeux honestly looks like something out of a fairytale. It also has plenty of cute shops and delicious restaurants. The meal from my first night there may have been the best one I ate in France altogether. It was four courses, including a perfectly cooked steak and chocolate mousse for dessert. Overall, Bayeux offered a welcome small town contrast to the fast pace of London.

Most our time in Normandy was spent at sites that related to D-day, and the first place we visited was the Caen Memorial Museum. It presented a uniquely French perspective on WWII, and I found myself thinking about When Paris Went Dark, the book that I read for my site report, more than a few times as I wandered through the exhibits. I could not help comparing the way the museum presented France’s role in the Holocaust as opposed to how it was portrayed in my book. Although the Caen Memorial did feature an extensive section devoted to conveying the horrors of the Holocaust, it gave very little space to the Vichy regime. It also made very little mention of how the French police would choose to persecute Jews independently of the Nazis. Further, I noticed that the museum presented the Marshall Plan a bit more critically than the way it is often portrayed in the US. They seemed to imply that America’s aid wasn’t entirely crucial in Europe’s recovery. Conversely, something that stood out to me at all the museums, but particularly during the 360-degree movie at Arromanches was how detrimental the Allied bombing was to Normandy. From an American perspective, the pre-invasion bombing is often glossed over and presented as a necessary measure. We don’t seem to fully acknowledge that it killed thousands of French people. The French, and particularly the Norman perspective on the Allies seems to be incredibly complicated. They were grateful to be free from Nazi occupation, but they had to endure unimaginable losses to achieve that freedom.

At Omaha Beach

Being able to stand on the beaches and cliffs where the battles of D-day took place made World War II, which always felt very distant from my reality when learning about it in class, seem tangible. Particularly Pointe du Hoc because there were still German bunkers set up and craters pitted in the ground. It was far easier to imagine the 2^nd Ranger Battalion climbing those cliffs than it was to associate the Omaha Beach that we saw with its “Bloody Omaha” moniker. The area has been developed and is surrounded by beach houses. My initial reaction to this was a bit negative. I had thought that Omaha would have looked more like Utah Beach, which is isolated and features a museum. I also understand, however, that France has mostly moved on from the war and it would be impossible for all of Normandy to stay permanently frozen on D-day.

Robert Forrest’s gravesite at the American cemetery

Touring the British, American, and German cemeteries was another experience that helped me to visualize the mass devastation of the war. I was struck by the fact that every one of those tombstones represented an individual life, many of whom were men my age or younger. This was especially true in the British cemetery, where each of the graves was personized with messages from the families. It was difficult, but moving to see how so many people had lost their only sons and the fathers of their children. The American cemetery, while breathtakingly gorgeous, was also more uniform and lacked that sense of intimacy. Because of this, it was extremely special that we could learn about an Ohio State student who was buried there and place a flag at his grave. Robert Forrest was a year younger than me when his bomber plane was shot down over France, but at only nineteen he had managed to become a pilot. It was a privilege to be able to learn about his and so many other personal stories throughout the week in Normandy.

During our trip to Bayeux, we visited many of the D-day beaches and other monuments that focused on the history of these invasions and their effect on this area. For instance, we visited Caen, which was a major city captured by the allies after months of long, treacherous battle following the invasion of Normandy. At the Caen Memorial Museum, we analyzed the French perspective on the war as it pertains to their involvement in the war and opinion of the nations involved during the creation of the museum at the end of the Cold War. One point of note was that there was a large amount of reading, pictures, and videos throughout the exhibit, much more so than was in the British Imperial War museum. I noticed that the French identified some of their failures, which was not seen to the same extent in the British Museums. The French noted themselves for cooperating with Germany, but seemed to make many convincing excuses as to why they chose to do so and did not describe the full extent to their cooperation. This allowed them to distance themselves from all the responsibility of awful wartime actions they completely put on Germany. They emphasized the history and significance of their resistance that was present, but it was considered a smaller movement than they portrayed it to be.

The French also seem to give more credit to British and American actions by always including them in the casualty count and mentioning their efforts repeatedly, such as with the Lend Lease Act and the significance of the emergence of the United States into WWII. They included a large amount of information about the war in the Pacific, of which England did not do as much, and described the entire role of the United States in the war. This was interesting and different because the Pacific side of the war did not directly apply to mainland occupied France, while it was a factor in their liberation by the allies who were directly affected by the war in the Pacific. The French seemed to honor the U.S. much more than I expected, given that their alliance did not seem to be nearly as strong as the British-American friendship that the British museum portrayed. Regarding the Holocaust, the French made excuses for not protesting it and claimed that its existence at the time was just too inconceivable for their citizens to understand. They blamed most of the deportations on the Germans, but they had a large role in the deportation of French Jews to Nazi concentration camps. This falsehood was also seen at the Memorial des Martyrs de la Déportation in Paris. At this memorial, there was a display of about 200,000 light bulbs down a hallway that represented the 200,000 French who were deported to concentration camps during WWII.

http://https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7I0LERguVD4MVByVnE5WjBnQzQ

About 76,000 of these deportees were Jews. The memorial’s lack of recognition for the Jews in this situation and minimizing of the role of antisemitism in this event create a universal-suffering view of the Holocaust. This view can be controversial because although people want to recognize all who suffered during this time, many negate the importance of racism in this terrible event. Though this Memorial recognized the atrocities that happened to this innocent group of people, it did not recognize that the French played a role in their deaths which effectively made it a memorial to France’s ignorance during and after the war.

The Caen museum romanticizes the idea of French resisters who were deported to concentration camps by the Germans to create sympathies for the French and make the historical account more in favor of France’s actions. Most notably, the exhibit condemned the strategic bombing by the allies because of its view of it being an “anonymous version of civilian annihilation” which mostly affected France before the D-day invasion. They also discussed profusely the heavy price France and Normandy specifically paid for liberation, which was a little shocking because the American perspective of D-day normally leaves out that information in favor of more heroic portrayals. Although the French typically included positive information about the United States’ involvement in the war, they excessively emphasized the terrors involved with their presence as well as it pertains to their bombing and destruction of the cities in Normandy.

The exhibits had less of an emphasis on the eastern front. But, this museum was built a year before the Cold War ended so anti-communist sentiment may have influenced that decision. The French did not want to glorify the accomplishments from nations that were communist at the time of the museum’s creation, preventing a large amount of recognition to be placed on the Soviet Union’s war efforts and contribution to allied success. The museum also claimed that Eisenhower “let” the soviets take Berlin, effectively invalidating the incredible sacrifice the USSR paid in its participation with the allies.

The Caen Museum, like museums in general, makes a political statement that idealizes its home nation and portrays a view of history that aligns with its social, political, and economic ideologies at the time. The refusal of the French to take responsibility for their collaboration with the Nazis was an effort to emphasize the tragedies they faced and establish a national sense of pride after the war literally tore France in half. This lack of acknowledgment was a comforting idea to France as it repaired itself from the war and needed a hopeful message for its citizens to believe in a successful future – for both themselves and their nation.

France was the second leg of our journey across Europe. Our first stop was the town of Bayeux, which was our longest stay in a single place. A small quintessential French town, this community was liberated about five days after the Allies moved off the beaches at Normandy. We spent our time exploring the narrow, winding streets to discover both the food and the history that the town has to offer. There are monuments and plaques everywhere commemorating the rich history including that of the cathedral, the Roman wall, and the occupation throughout the war. The pace is sleepy and quiet like that of my own hometown, and yet it feels as though the buildings go on forever like that of a city.

The focus of our time in France was largely the D-Day landings on the coast of Normandy, which resulted in the liberation of France from Nazi occupation. The first beach we visited was Utah, which seems to have been relatively preserved over time. Omaha, however, now bears an abstract monument on the sands and vacation homes and souvenir shops on the shores. I felt an unexpected pang of irritation, as though it was a disrespect to what happened there. After thinking about this for almost a week now, I remind myself that the war has ended and life has gone on. People resettled and created a new, post-war normal that involves vacationing on what are clearly some beautiful shores. Pointe Du Hoc is a cliff overlooking the English Channel and is the highest point between the beaches of Utah and Omaha. The U.S. Army Ranger Assault group scaled the steep cliffs here and destroyed an area fortified by the German army with gun pits. The site stood out to me because it not only pays respect to the events it has seen, but it allows visitors to explore the bunkers the American GIs faced. You could still see the charred ceilings, and I distinctly remember a women quietly speaking to her husband about how the Nazi soldiers surely would have suffocated in these sealed rooms. It adds a very human aspect to all of the soldiers who were sent here, including those who were technically on the ”wrong side of the war.”

France still struggles with its identity as an occupied country during the war. Its people have been left to contend with not only those now recognized as the heroes of the Resistance, but collaborationists as well. Each museum we visited had its own take on how the collective memory of the occupation. At the Caen museum, efforts were made to highlight the resistance efforts while mitigating the role of the collaborators. I’ve found it is important to recognize that there were those who actively participated on either side, such as the Vichy government or the SOE, but there are those who were passive in their actions. By choosing not to act in certain situations, whether it be not denouncing a neighbor to the government or standing by as someone is wrongly accused, civilians all played a role.

The German cemetery as well as many of the French museums focus on peace. For Germany, it appears the intention is to both recognize the horrific tragedy the Nazi party inflicted upon Europe, as well as making sure it does not happen again. The display in the information center shares stories of the individual pain and suffering of those affected as soldiers as citizens of all creeds, as well as a demonstration of national programming that allows young men and women to ground their understanding of history in the place where it happened. French museums also bear a pro-peace sentiment through their imagery of the suffering born out of the occupation. There will always be a fear associated with another war, another fight on the homeland, another occupation.

The American cemetery sprawls as well, with thousands of white crosses interspersed with Stars of David. Families chose to allow their sons and daughters be buried here. The stones bear the name and rank, date of birth and death, and state of enlistment. There is little individuality—the cemetery is a monument to unity and sacrifice for country. The focus is on a whole image, not any particular individual. It is less a place of mourning for families and more about a monument to the American sacrifice to liberate France. When walking up, I was struck by the powerful message of the headstones. Each of those men and women gave their lives for their country, willingly or unintentionally. Together, they rest as a monument to the bravery of the United States.

The British cemetery felt smaller than the others despite an equal amount of sacrifice in the war. Headstones bear name, rank, messages from families, markers of their service, and more. It is yet another testament to the idea of the People’s War, with each headstone personalized to the man who gave his life for Queen and country. The cemetery itself is absolutely meant for the family to mourn the loss, with stones still surrounded by flowers and mementos. It is worth noting that there are many other stones here, including German, Polish forces, Czech, Italian, Egyptian, and more. Some men are buried together; often flight crews who could not be separated in the wreckage or possibly upon family requests.

The German cemetery sprawled across a field overlooking the ocean. The stones were simple and uniform, bearing name, date of birth, and date of death. Many stones lacked this vital information, possibly a sign of the haste with which the bodies were being collected or the length of their stay before being collected. The place seems to be a penance, an offering representing apology for acting as the “evil,” despite many of these men not intentionally fighting for the Final Solution but a Greater Germany.

Sailing on the ferry from Portsmouth to Normandy, the choppy waters of the English Channel were not the only thing that was causing my stomach to churn, for I was filled with both anticipation and dread of travelling to a truly foreign country for the first time. While Britain is certainly distinct from the United States in many aspects, the shared language and multitude of cultural similarities imparted a sense of familiarity and comfort that was conspicuously absent in France. Other than a few momentary misunderstandings, particularly regarding the disparate French and Anglophone understandings of what a “menu” is, my compatriots and I managed to survive without any major catastrophes. Noticing and adapting to different cultural norms, while far more daunting than London, was fascinating, exiting, and, in regard to the ubiquity of pastry shops and (relatively) inexpensive three-course meals, delicious.

However, the distinct French language and customs were not the only notable differences between France and the United Kingdom. Throughout Normandy and Paris, we visited a variety of museums, cemeteries, monuments, and historical sites that all conveyed different perspectives of World War II history. While all of these locations were intriguing and informative in their own right, the overall narratives and foci of the French museums contrast starkly with the formal, detached empiricism of the British sites. For one, many of the exhibits, particularly the American-funded Utah Beach and Airborne Museums, are quite narrowly focused on military affairs. Being a military history enthusiast, I greatly appreciated the plethora of military artifacts, OOB’s, and battle maps; while I believe that a thorough comprehension of the actual fighting in Normandy is both relevant to the location and crucial to a larger understanding of the war, the dominance of purely martial aspects occasionally risked reducing World War II to a mere campaign narrative. In contrast, the “more French” Caen Museum aspires to a far broader, more universal understanding of the war. By chronicling both the interwar and wartime periods and addressing most military, political, and social aspects, including the Eastern Front and the Holocaust, the Caen Museum attempted to convey a general message of the essence of total war and its calamitous effects on Europe. However, similar to the idiosyncrasies of British “empiricism,” this universalist lens has imperfections that reveal a distinctly French perception of the World War II period and its significance. While acknowledging Vichy collaboration and the relative paucity of vigorous resistance in occupied France, the museum delves very little into these subjects. Similarly, the exhibits oversimplify the participation of France’s empire in the war effort, largely neglecting the moral complexities of colonial exploitation. Simultaneously, the conspicuous passages on the deleterious effects of Allied bombing in Normandy, while valid, further underscores this French perspective.

Yet, compared to Les Invalides, the Caen Museum is a shining beacon of objectivity. The Army Museum in Paris, while fascinating in its display of militaria, presents a grossly distorted view of the war and France’s part in it. The ignominious defeat of 1940, collaboration, and the roles of other Allied countries (save the USSR, interestingly enough) are all swept aside by a cavalcade of French military “triumphs.” Even allowing for the inherently limited focus of the exhibit on the French military, the museum is almost ridiculous in its pro-French bias, particularly the effusive Charles de Gaulle exhibition. However, having viewed the broader picture of France’s military and political history in Les Invalides’ military pantheon and in the glittering halls of Versailles, I can largely understand the prevailing nationalistic tone of French museums. France possesses a rich history as a political, military, and cultural giant in Europe; at the same time, France faced great crises and deep divisions throughout the twentieth century and particularly during the world wars. While I can never condone the distortion of historical truth, I believe that France’s self-righteous and skewed view of the war is symptomatic of the country’s continuing struggle to define itself and achieve domestic political and social harmony.

Bonjour from Bayeux, France!

The last few days have been an absolute whirlwind. I’m currently writing this on the three hour bus ride between Bayeux and Paris, so hopefully I’m able to recall the majority of what I did in Bayeux the past few days.

May 14^th

Our first stop of the day was the Caen Memorial Museum. This museum was interesting because it was split down the middle to denote two eras in 20^th century conflict: the WWII era in the Normandy region, and post-WWII history in the Normandy region. My analysis of the museum will not be very thorough, because I never made it to the post-WWII side of the museum. One of my biggest challenges on this trip has been learning time allocation in museums – I just get too absorbed in the reading and the exhibits and completely lose all track of time.

The Caen Memorial Museum

That being said, I only had time to view the WWII and D-Day exhibits at the Caen museum. The WWII exhibit was extremely informative, thanks to a bounty of informational signs and posters that were arranged chronologically to allow people to follow the flow of WWII more easily. The artifacts were not as plentiful as they were at the Imperial War Museum in London, but the artifacts that were there helped tell the story of WWII just as well. The museum separated D-Day into its own exhibit – the operation was so large that it only made sense for there to be a separate exhibit for it in order to explore all of the intricacies of the planning and execution of Operation Overlord. As much as I enjoyed the parts of the museum that I did see, I regret not having allocated enough time to see the other side of the museum, which would have allowed me to have a more thorough interpretation of the museum as a whole.

After we left the Caen Memorial Museum, we took a trip out to the countryside to see the Pegasus Bridge. The capture of this bridge was of vital importance to the Allies. It allowed them to control a critical chokepoint in the road network that made it possible for the Allies to get vehicles, troops, and supplies further into France after the D-Day invasion. The way this operation was carried out was incredible – four Horsa gliders were dispatched to land on a narrow grass strip in between the river and a swamp, just south of the bridge.

The landing site of the Horsa Gliders, near the Pegasus Bridge.

The town near the bridge was controlled and inhabited by German troops, making it extremely risky. The operation went so smoothly that the Allies were able to capture the town and the bridge without a single shot being fired from either side. Seeing this bridge in person really gave me a greater appreciation for just how important this mission was to Allied success in the D-Day invasions. Additionally, as an aviator, I also had a greater appreciation for the skill of the Horsa glider pilots after seeing the “landing strip” on which they were forced to land. To land on such a narrow, short grass strip in the dead of night is extremely daunting and dangerous, and these pilots pulled it off almost perfectly. Reading about these missions in books or listening to lectures about them is one thing, but the significance and magnitude of a mission didn’t really hit me until I was actually there, on the actual ground where the history was made.

May 15^th

Coincidentally, the longest and busiest day we had yet also happened to be my favorite day yet in terms of historical sites visited. We began the day with a trip to Utah Beach. Utah Beach looked exactly how I had pictured it in my mind: rolling dunes, dark blue waters muddied by the churn of the sand, a large expanse of beach between the waves and the dunes, and a somber gray sky coupled with a brisk sea breeze to complete the scene.

View of Utah Beach from the dunes.

Seeing Utah Beach like this made it easy to imagine what it would have been like on the day that the Americans stormed the beach, but the feelings that those men must have felt can never truly be recreated. It was an extremely humbling experience to stand on the same beach that was the last thing that many men ever saw. It was hard to not get choked up thinking about the amount of young life lost on that beach, making it ever easier to imagine the waves running red and the beach littered with bodies. As beautiful and peaceful as the beach is now, it is hard to forget the dark history that occurred on those sands.

After visiting the beach, we toured the Utah Beach Memorial Museum just behind the dunes. This museum was surprisingly well planned and full of artifacts from the beach. Artifacts are my favorite part of museums because they are tangible evidence that D-Day actually happened, and each artifact has its own unique story behind it to explain why it ended up in the museum. This museum was not nationality-centric in any way, but was more aimed at education as a whole, making the inclusion of both sides of the fight significant. I did not feel as if the museum was trying to teach a lesson or send a message, but rather that the museum was there simply to show people what happened at that location and to present it in as unbiased of a way as possible. It was nice to tour a museum like this and enjoy it for what it was without trying to find some deeper meaning behind it.

Our next stop of the day was the town of St. Mere Eglise, the first town captured by the 101^st Airborne Division on the night prior to the D-Day invasions. The first thing that caught my eye in the town was the massive ancient church and, more surprisingly, a mannequin, dressed as a U.S. soldier, dangling from a parachute at the top of the church.

The church at St. Mere Eglise – note the paratrooper mannequin at the top left of the church.

Naturally, this piqued my curiosity, and I read the various signs to find out more information. Turns out that a man named John Steel, a paratrooper for the 101^st Airborne Division, got snagged on the church when his parachute became entangled on the church steeple upon landing in the village. The mannequin was placed there to recreate the scene and to attract tourists to the spot for a good photo op. After a quick lunch in town at a tiny café that played Elvis songs on a loop, we ventured over to the 101^st Airborne Museum. Despite the small size, I was taken aback by the abundant number of WWII military uniforms on display, hung proudly on a wide assortment of mannequins, ranging from garish to realistic to downright creepy, and everything in between.

D-Day artifacts recovered from Utah Beach.

The museum also boasted a large number of D-Day artifacts recovered from the beaches and donated by family members of those directly involved with the D-Day invasion. This museum was decisively in favor of the Allies based on the way in which the German artifacts were on display. While the Allied artifacts were on display in eye-catching locations, hung proudly for all to see, the German artifacts were often laid out in cases, as to not attract as much attention as the Allied artifacts. For such a tiny museum, they had a wonderful variety of displays and exhibits and did a fantastic job with making it as immersive and as hands-on as possible.

We once again boarded the bus for a short journey further into the French countryside to visit the Angoville au Plain church and cemetery. It was used as a hospital for both Allied and German soldiers during WWII, making it an extremely unique location, as both sides agreed not to attack this building. One exception to this was when a mortar crashed through the ceiling of the church, but thankfully, the mortar was a dud and did not explode.

The hole in the ceiling from the mortar.

The hole in the ceiling and crack on the tile floor from this mortar are still visible even today. This church was strangely peaceful and relaxing, despite the turbulent history of its location some 70 years ago.

The crack in the floor from where the mortar landed.

The church has been dedicated as a monument and is open to the public so they can view its history for themselves firsthand.

The last location of the day was a quick stop by the German Cemetery at La Cambe. The first thing that drew my attention was the massive line of uniformly spaced trees that lined the outer perimeter of the cemetery. Upon closer investigation, each tree had a plaque placed under it in memoriam to a German soldier who had perished in the Normandy region of WWII. The cemetery itself was extremely imposing, in line with classic German architecture of the time. There were several blocks of graves, denoted by a series of 5 dark black stone crosses, followed by hundreds of smaller, flat gravestones for the multitudes of soldiers buried there.

German cemetery at La Cambe.

In the middle of the cemetery was a massive mound containing the remains of hundreds of unidentified German soldiers. It was topped by a massive black stone monument of a cross, looking down ominously over the rest of the cemetery. This cemetery seemed to send the ominous, foreboding message that war is a terrible thing and should be avoided at all costs. The massive number of graves and dark stones made this message resonate with chilling intensity.

May 16^th

This was another marathon day for us, cramming in several important locations into one day. The first stop of the day was Pointe du Hoc, the strategic location that the U.S. Army Rangers were tasked with conquering on D-Day. This location was hands-down my favorite location that we had visited yet for several reasons. Not only was the location extremely scenic, with wide, sweeping views of the English Channel and sheer, vertical cliffs, but because the scene was virtually intact from its D-Day condition. The craters, created by naval artillery shells and mortars, were abundant and scattered throughout the battlefield.

The cliffs at Pointe du Hoc.

The bunkers, created and used by the Nazis, were (mostly) still standing in the condition they had been left in after the fighting had stopped on D-Day. Some bunkers were completely destroyed, reduced to nothing but a pile of rubble, while others were still intact and able to be navigated by the adventurous soul wishing to gain a firsthand glimpse at history. The main gun battery, on the tip of Pointe du Hoc, still had the charred wooden ceilings in place from where the Americans had flamed out all of its Nazi inhabitants, killing everyone inside. Here, history was tangible, palpable, and real.

Ruins of Nazi fortifications at Pointe du Hoc.

Being in the actual location of such a significant battle gives you a much greater appreciation for its significance than learning about it in a classroom ever could. The visit was perfected by not only the beautiful, sunny weather, but by a high-speed low pass performed by a French Air Force fighter jet, clearly showing off for all the visitors. I left Pointe du Hoc feeling refreshed and invigorated by the sea breeze and sunshine, but also with a greater appreciation of the challenges faced by the Army rangers who scaled the cliffs, defeated the Nazis, and helped liberate France.

Our visit to Pointe du Hoc was followed up by a trip to the most infamous beach in the D-Day invasions, Bloody Omaha Beach. Surprisingly, my visit to Omaha beach was in stark contrast to my visit to Utah Beach, and not necessarily in a good way either. The weather at Omaha Beach that day was hot and full of brilliant sunshine, which did not fit the weather conditions of the D-Day invasions in the slightest bit, already ruining the mental picture I had.

Omaha Beach D-Day memorial.

The image was further ruined by the incessant swarms of gnats and flies, which proved to be an unavoidable nuisance for the entire extent of our stay on Omaha Beach. Perhaps the most disturbing part of the visit was the juxtaposition of the beach, the deathbed of thousands of young men, to the multimillion dollar vacation homes, just on the other side of the street, coupled by the screaming French schoolchildren who were using the D-Day memorial monument as their jungle gym. This was extremely upsetting to me for several reasons. One being that I always envisioned the atmosphere at Omaha Beach to be one of heavy sincerity and reverence to the sacrifices made there, when in reality the return to complete normality had taken over in the form of noisy, inconsiderate schoolchildren and commercial development of beach homes and burger shacks. To me, it seemed that the French had attempted to cover up the history of this location in order to make money, completely disregarding the significance of the location aside from the two monuments dedicated to the forces that took the beach back from the hands of evil that day. Try as I might to see Omaha Beach as it was on June 6^th, 1944, I cannot. My mind is forever clouded by the image of beach homes and a carefree lifestyle taking precedence over perhaps the most historic moment of WWII that ultimately changed the course of the war, and liberated the country that was taking advantage of its monetarily profitable location.

Feeling sunburned, annoyed, and disappointed, we left Omaha Beach for our final stop of the day, the American Cemetery. Before entering the cemetery, we went through the memorial museum that displayed the story of WWII on exhibit plaques, as well as personal accounts from soldiers in the war. We viewed a short video about the cemetery, during which I felt myself get choked up several times, realizing just how intense this experience was about to be. Upon entering the cemetery, I was immediately overwhelmed with the sheer magnitude of uniform, white marble crosses that were staring me right in the face.

U.S. WWII memorial in Normandy.

The museum said over 9,000 soldiers were buried at the cemetery, but a number that large does not truly resonate with you until you’re standing face to face with row up on row upon never ending row of crosses, beneath which a proud American soldier was buried after giving the ultimate sacrifice. Even thinking about it now, it is hard to not get choked up thinking about these men and the sacrifice they made for their country in a time of need, and it is not hard to see why these people are commonly referred to as The Greatest Generation. This location was the most emotional that I had visited, and after planting the Ohio State flag at the grave of my fellow aviator and Buckeye, Roger Dyer, I found myself wandering the rows of graves, trying to imagine the name on the grave as young man, full of promise for a better future, and not just a name on a grave. It was an extremely humbling experience to be surrounded by so many true American heroes.

Rows upon rows of fallen soldiers.

The American cemetery evoked an entirely difference message than that of the German cemetery. Instead of feeling apologetic, this cemetery exuded resounding American pride and excellence. It was much brighter in color than the German cemetery, and the actual size of the cemetery was much larger, making the cemetery seem like it was making a bolder statement: these headstones should be held in proud regard and seen as honorable sacrifices, rather than as a ominous lesson that war is hell, such as in the German cemetery.

May 17^th

This was the “lightest” of the days we were in Bayeux in terms of sites visited and historical lessons learned. We began the day with a break from WWII history to travel back in time to the medieval era of 1077, when the famous Bayeux Tapestry was created. This tapestry, over 230 feet long, was created to tell the story of the Norman conquest of England. While not directly related to WWII history, it was still incredible to see a historical relic that has survived nearly a thousand years in near perfect conditions, despite switching ownership several times and nearly being burned several times. The entire time, I could not shake the feeling that Monty Python and the Holy Grail was based off of this tapestry, and I could almost hear the theme music playing in the background as I toured the museum.

We then boarded our bus and drove out to Arromanches, or Gold Beach, one of the British D-Day invasion beaches.

Arromanches, or Gold Beach. In the distance, you can still see the ruins of the Mulberry Harbor in the water.

Here, we took part in the Arromanches 360 experience, in which we stood in a 360-degree movie theatre room, where scenes from WWII and D-Day were projected in high-definition on 9 different screens and supported by surround sound speaker systems. This experience, while only 20 minutes long, was incredible because it was as close as we could get to living in the moment of WWII era events. I got chills when Hitler’s “Triumph of the Will” speech was projected, his voice booming around us, and thousands upon thousands of German civilians cheering him on were projected on the surrounding screens. It was surreal to be immersed in an experience like that, and truly chilling to experience an extent of what they experienced for only a few moments. The D-Day scenes were even more intense, with explosions and gunfire erupting from all angles. As devastating as WWII was to the world, I would love to be able to travel back in time to experience the world as it was during that extremely pivotal time in history.

May 18^th

This day was relatively short in the fact that we only went to one location, Mont Sain Michel, which isn’t really related to WWII history in any way. The island was remarkable to see, and something that was high up on my bucket list after my parents said that it was the one location they missed on their honeymoon to France almost 23 long years ago.

Mont Saint Michel looming in the distance, shrouded by the dense fog.

The history of the island and the abbey itself was incredible, and it looked like something that was straight out of a fairy tale. The weather was absolutely miserable that day, with the fog and rain distracting from the splendor of the location, but the architecture and the history of the buildings made up for the unfortunate meteorological conditions.

Later that day, we had a group dinner at the Duke of Normandy restaurant, courtesy of the generous benefactors of the History of WWII Study Abroad program group. Here we had traditional French food for dinner, the perfect sendoff before our trek to Paris early the next morning.

Overall, Bayeux was a whirlwind of experiences, both of the historical nature and those made in present times. I will never forget the sensation of feeling the cool sand of Utah Beach between my toes, the brisk waters of Omaha beach wash over my feet, and the invigorating sea breeze of Point du Hoc whip through my hair. I will also remember Bayeux as the place where our group of 23 travelers came together as a cohesive unit, bonding over Carrefour baguettes by the pool and enjoying the simple pleasure of watching a French countryside sunset together.

Making friends and memories in Bayeux.

*Posts are obviously a few days behind schedule.