Ever since I visited Normandy 20 years ago, I've thought that every American needs to go there at least once. It should be our version of the American Hajj -- an essential pilgrimage that every citizen makes once in their lifetime, because it teaches you in a way nothing else ever can exactly what it means to be American in this world. You will never understand yourself or your country -- who we are, and what our existence makes possible -- in the same way again.
We visited Versailles a few days later. Our guide -- an elderly Frenchman with flowing silver locks, an extremely gay affect, a cravat, watery blue eyes, and a mouth that seemed to be stuck in a permanently disapproving pucker, led us into the King's study and started talking about the reasons that the monarchy failed. (I'd been walking around the palace for 45 minutes at this point, marvelling at the opulence and muttering to myself: Holy Christ on a baguette, did these people ever need a revolution....) Our guide made it clear that in his opinion, the thing that undid the French king was his support of the American Revolution -- a commitment that France, as it turned out, could ill afford (well, no, not while you're spending the substance of the nation on...gestures wildly...ALL THIS....), and which ultimately broke the country.
He went on like this for a long minute or two, his mostly American and Brit crowd listening uncomfortably, absorbing the shame he was clearly intending to inflict. But I wasn't having it. With such recent images of Colville-sur-Mer still filling my head, I couldn't control my mouth. Before I could catch the thought, my voice raised itself, solid and clear, and out it flew....
"I'd like to think that we paid that debt back, with interest, on June 6, 1944."
The words hung in the air. The group sharply, audibly inhaled with a single breath. My husband, standing beside me, winced, and then stared at me with an odd combo of embarrassment, pride, and glee. (Hoookay, so, that's my girl...) The guide's azure eyes widened like I'd just peed in the spittoon, and his mouth puckered so hard it looked like I'd shoved a lemon into it. (And I kind of had.) And thus ended his commentary. We moved on to discussing the vases on the mantle.
We've got this bond, us and France. They paid for our existence with treasure -- and, ultimately, blood, if the guide is to be believed. But we did not forget. When history gave us the chance to pay it back, we came, and climbed those beaches, and died for their existence, too. And they have not forgotten: two-thirds of the visitors to Colville-sur-Mer --some 650,000 per year -- are French. They bring their children, and they remember our sacrifice. Their memory hasn't died, either.
Our family had no members at D-Day -- my grandfathers were all in the Pacific -- but my kids' paternal great-grandfather sat out the invasion in a German POW camp. He was a B-17 tailgunner with the 90th Bomb Group, and had been shot down in February during the Big Week air assault on German industrial facilities that softened the ground for D-Day. By August, he'd escaped the camp, gotten over the Pyrenees, been returned to the UK, and was headed home.
Thank you for this! I too have been to Normandy, Omaha, the bunkers , Point de Hoc and the American cemetery. As a former Soldier in the 29th Division, Normandy is a special place. I found many 29ners graves at the Normandy Cemetery. It's incredible what they did on 6 June 1944, punching through the bluffs to get off the beach, as I stood on Omaha Beach and looked inland. The same at Point de Hoc!
As we remember those who served our country, I am reflecting on the service of my father (US Navy, WWII, South Pacific) and my father-in-law (US Army, WWII, 95th Infantry Division), as well as the Soldiers from my own service who have passed.
I also want to express what a privilege it was to serve with many great Soldiers. I truly value their service following their retirement. I learned a great serving with them and continue to do so.
Thank you for this. My Dad was at Normandy and the Battle of The Bulge, but he never talked much about it. Now I know why. I'm thankful he's not here to see what the fuck his country has become.
Thank you for this. My grandfather was a prisoner of war for two years, shot down over France. He and my great uncle (who was at Iwo Jima) eventually told some stories one night years ago that made my blood run cold and that showed a side that made sense as to why they never spoke about it until then.
I’m thrilled that you got to have this experience and this opportunity for reflection! My unit was part of the larger tasking group that popped over there in 2018. Standing on the monument at Vimy was very very humbling. I didn’t have a chance to see the beaches but I can only imagine (assisted by your words) the scope and heaviness.
I’ve been there-just once….not even sure which of the beaches you’ve mentioned it was. I was in France. On my honeymoon. A privileged and clueless child of the post-war baby boom era - starry eyed with love and optimism for what I believed the world I grew up in would be handing to me with a less than zero sense of what all that had cost to so many.
But as I stood, alone, in an abandoned German gun bunker-my wife was outside-i don’t think she liked the claustrophobic atmosphere inside that place-and looked out over the expanse of sand and water, a sense of some of that foolishness falling away hit me.
The tone deafness-for a moment-became hearing.
In contrast to the brilliance of a perfect cloudless day, the darkness in that bunker seemed immeasurably thick and bottomless.
The silence in there and outside was overwhelming.
It roared.
And so-some people in my life-those affected by what our toy self-styled Secretary of War so blithely ‘Oh poo-poos’….
The father of a dear friend was there on one of those beaches. He lived into his 90s, an artist and a Dad and also a minority-because he’d survived.
Another man I knew crawled on his belly through potato fields in France disarming mines. He was father, a grandfather and a dear friend.
Another got into the navy by lying about his age. He ended up in the South Pacific on a ship whose job was to pick up survivors and mostly body pieces after the Japanese had blown their ships to pieces or shot down planes. He was a friend who both helped and bedeviled our family beyond measure, because his intermittent raging against humanity for the rest of his life made it a miracle that he’d managed to have a life at all.
An uncle was in a tank in Italy that got blown to pieces. He walked out unscathed, but forever scarred. He contributed great things to the study of art, architecture and the ancient history of Tuscan Italy.
My father was on a supply ship in the Pacific and was in the midst of Guadalcanal. He’d gone into the Navy right out of prep school. He became a doctor, a cancer surgeon in the days before Sloan Kettering and other such places who healed people enough to add years to their lives. He was a privileged man, who was at times one of the most fun loving and joyous people I’ll ever know. But I never knew about Guadalcanal until decades after he was gone. Beyond hearing once that he’d seen a Japanese reconnaissance plane that scared the shit out of him, because if you saw one of those planes, it was very likely you’d be seeing a squadron coming after you very soon afterwards. Besides that detail, I never heard anything of the war beyond the fact that a number if his friends had died in that war. He died very young - in a boating accident - but was really troubled by an inability to address any of the emotional blowback of that experience or many things that occurred in his brief life afterwards.
I’ve known people who survived Vietnam but were and are scarred. One guy you’d never that things like My Lai went on ALL the time.
Another, a well spoken, and quietly gentle Ivy League educated corporate executive who, at the sound of a firecracker, would be on his belly on the floor.
People who’ve been part of the Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan thing who are scarred.
Human beings. Good men. Men who’ve made a difference in my life despite the havoc wreaked on their beings-physically, mentally and spiritually.
And yesterday, that disgraceful and incompetent joke-the loud mouth cheap television huckster motherfucker who heads our military has the gall to stand there and arrogantly insult the sacrifice and pervert the mission for human dignity, warts and all, going forward with a bunch of pompous, arrogant and frankly self-pitying vomit that is THE mantra, manifesto and message of the MAGA disease.
Never mind COVID, MAGA and all of its’ cult and sycophancy is THE ideological and moral Ebola of our times.
Hegseth is a walking talking reminder of what that ‘Greatest Generation’ sacrificed so much to put a stop to, but there he was-a bartering bobble-head spouting shit like a fertilizer sprayer in springtime, but poisoning every bit of honor and decency that this country is supposed to stand for.
What sadness.
And we have a cage fight coming up to ‘celebrate’ the birthday of an incontinent and incoherent criminal who can’t even let a team like the New York Knicks try for a title without making it all about himself by turning New York City into a security nightmare so the HE can be there-in a place where he is reviled and despised.
Just another great big beautiful Queens ‘fuck you’ to the world.
And in the legislature, the lying and evasion continues with ongoing passage of bills that cement this garbage into place. Meanwhile the ‘opposition’ leaders might as well be in a bunker somewhere. They’re nowhere to be found let alone heard from.
I am grateful for your article today, but at this particular anniversary, am sickened beyond measure.
Who the fuck have we become?
I can only hope that we will begin to wake up, because ‘It’s too late’ seems more and more an apt description of what all this no only looks like, but IS.
So, please keep doing the work you do. Take time off if you need to as you’ve done, but please do not give up….
Ever since I visited Normandy 20 years ago, I've thought that every American needs to go there at least once. It should be our version of the American Hajj -- an essential pilgrimage that every citizen makes once in their lifetime, because it teaches you in a way nothing else ever can exactly what it means to be American in this world. You will never understand yourself or your country -- who we are, and what our existence makes possible -- in the same way again.
We visited Versailles a few days later. Our guide -- an elderly Frenchman with flowing silver locks, an extremely gay affect, a cravat, watery blue eyes, and a mouth that seemed to be stuck in a permanently disapproving pucker, led us into the King's study and started talking about the reasons that the monarchy failed. (I'd been walking around the palace for 45 minutes at this point, marvelling at the opulence and muttering to myself: Holy Christ on a baguette, did these people ever need a revolution....) Our guide made it clear that in his opinion, the thing that undid the French king was his support of the American Revolution -- a commitment that France, as it turned out, could ill afford (well, no, not while you're spending the substance of the nation on...gestures wildly...ALL THIS....), and which ultimately broke the country.
He went on like this for a long minute or two, his mostly American and Brit crowd listening uncomfortably, absorbing the shame he was clearly intending to inflict. But I wasn't having it. With such recent images of Colville-sur-Mer still filling my head, I couldn't control my mouth. Before I could catch the thought, my voice raised itself, solid and clear, and out it flew....
"I'd like to think that we paid that debt back, with interest, on June 6, 1944."
The words hung in the air. The group sharply, audibly inhaled with a single breath. My husband, standing beside me, winced, and then stared at me with an odd combo of embarrassment, pride, and glee. (Hoookay, so, that's my girl...) The guide's azure eyes widened like I'd just peed in the spittoon, and his mouth puckered so hard it looked like I'd shoved a lemon into it. (And I kind of had.) And thus ended his commentary. We moved on to discussing the vases on the mantle.
We've got this bond, us and France. They paid for our existence with treasure -- and, ultimately, blood, if the guide is to be believed. But we did not forget. When history gave us the chance to pay it back, we came, and climbed those beaches, and died for their existence, too. And they have not forgotten: two-thirds of the visitors to Colville-sur-Mer --some 650,000 per year -- are French. They bring their children, and they remember our sacrifice. Their memory hasn't died, either.
Our family had no members at D-Day -- my grandfathers were all in the Pacific -- but my kids' paternal great-grandfather sat out the invasion in a German POW camp. He was a B-17 tailgunner with the 90th Bomb Group, and had been shot down in February during the Big Week air assault on German industrial facilities that softened the ground for D-Day. By August, he'd escaped the camp, gotten over the Pyrenees, been returned to the UK, and was headed home.
Well done, Sara. Thank you for doing that.
Thank you for this! I too have been to Normandy, Omaha, the bunkers , Point de Hoc and the American cemetery. As a former Soldier in the 29th Division, Normandy is a special place. I found many 29ners graves at the Normandy Cemetery. It's incredible what they did on 6 June 1944, punching through the bluffs to get off the beach, as I stood on Omaha Beach and looked inland. The same at Point de Hoc!
As we remember those who served our country, I am reflecting on the service of my father (US Navy, WWII, South Pacific) and my father-in-law (US Army, WWII, 95th Infantry Division), as well as the Soldiers from my own service who have passed.
I also want to express what a privilege it was to serve with many great Soldiers. I truly value their service following their retirement. I learned a great serving with them and continue to do so.
Thank you for this. My Dad was at Normandy and the Battle of The Bulge, but he never talked much about it. Now I know why. I'm thankful he's not here to see what the fuck his country has become.
Thank you for this beautiful, heart-breaking account. We all need to hear it, feel it, honor it.
This is beautiful! Thanks for making what happened more real so we may understand and learn from it….
I will read this every Memorial Day, remember the heartfelt message all other days and keep it in my heart forever. Thank you.
Beautiful and moving. I have been to Normandy several times, with a DDAY survivor. What an honor.
Thank you for this. My grandfather was a prisoner of war for two years, shot down over France. He and my great uncle (who was at Iwo Jima) eventually told some stories one night years ago that made my blood run cold and that showed a side that made sense as to why they never spoke about it until then.
I’m thrilled that you got to have this experience and this opportunity for reflection! My unit was part of the larger tasking group that popped over there in 2018. Standing on the monument at Vimy was very very humbling. I didn’t have a chance to see the beaches but I can only imagine (assisted by your words) the scope and heaviness.
I’ve been there-just once….not even sure which of the beaches you’ve mentioned it was. I was in France. On my honeymoon. A privileged and clueless child of the post-war baby boom era - starry eyed with love and optimism for what I believed the world I grew up in would be handing to me with a less than zero sense of what all that had cost to so many.
But as I stood, alone, in an abandoned German gun bunker-my wife was outside-i don’t think she liked the claustrophobic atmosphere inside that place-and looked out over the expanse of sand and water, a sense of some of that foolishness falling away hit me.
The tone deafness-for a moment-became hearing.
In contrast to the brilliance of a perfect cloudless day, the darkness in that bunker seemed immeasurably thick and bottomless.
The silence in there and outside was overwhelming.
It roared.
And so-some people in my life-those affected by what our toy self-styled Secretary of War so blithely ‘Oh poo-poos’….
The father of a dear friend was there on one of those beaches. He lived into his 90s, an artist and a Dad and also a minority-because he’d survived.
Another man I knew crawled on his belly through potato fields in France disarming mines. He was father, a grandfather and a dear friend.
Another got into the navy by lying about his age. He ended up in the South Pacific on a ship whose job was to pick up survivors and mostly body pieces after the Japanese had blown their ships to pieces or shot down planes. He was a friend who both helped and bedeviled our family beyond measure, because his intermittent raging against humanity for the rest of his life made it a miracle that he’d managed to have a life at all.
An uncle was in a tank in Italy that got blown to pieces. He walked out unscathed, but forever scarred. He contributed great things to the study of art, architecture and the ancient history of Tuscan Italy.
My father was on a supply ship in the Pacific and was in the midst of Guadalcanal. He’d gone into the Navy right out of prep school. He became a doctor, a cancer surgeon in the days before Sloan Kettering and other such places who healed people enough to add years to their lives. He was a privileged man, who was at times one of the most fun loving and joyous people I’ll ever know. But I never knew about Guadalcanal until decades after he was gone. Beyond hearing once that he’d seen a Japanese reconnaissance plane that scared the shit out of him, because if you saw one of those planes, it was very likely you’d be seeing a squadron coming after you very soon afterwards. Besides that detail, I never heard anything of the war beyond the fact that a number if his friends had died in that war. He died very young - in a boating accident - but was really troubled by an inability to address any of the emotional blowback of that experience or many things that occurred in his brief life afterwards.
I’ve known people who survived Vietnam but were and are scarred. One guy you’d never that things like My Lai went on ALL the time.
Another, a well spoken, and quietly gentle Ivy League educated corporate executive who, at the sound of a firecracker, would be on his belly on the floor.
People who’ve been part of the Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan thing who are scarred.
Human beings. Good men. Men who’ve made a difference in my life despite the havoc wreaked on their beings-physically, mentally and spiritually.
And yesterday, that disgraceful and incompetent joke-the loud mouth cheap television huckster motherfucker who heads our military has the gall to stand there and arrogantly insult the sacrifice and pervert the mission for human dignity, warts and all, going forward with a bunch of pompous, arrogant and frankly self-pitying vomit that is THE mantra, manifesto and message of the MAGA disease.
Never mind COVID, MAGA and all of its’ cult and sycophancy is THE ideological and moral Ebola of our times.
Hegseth is a walking talking reminder of what that ‘Greatest Generation’ sacrificed so much to put a stop to, but there he was-a bartering bobble-head spouting shit like a fertilizer sprayer in springtime, but poisoning every bit of honor and decency that this country is supposed to stand for.
What sadness.
And we have a cage fight coming up to ‘celebrate’ the birthday of an incontinent and incoherent criminal who can’t even let a team like the New York Knicks try for a title without making it all about himself by turning New York City into a security nightmare so the HE can be there-in a place where he is reviled and despised.
Just another great big beautiful Queens ‘fuck you’ to the world.
And in the legislature, the lying and evasion continues with ongoing passage of bills that cement this garbage into place. Meanwhile the ‘opposition’ leaders might as well be in a bunker somewhere. They’re nowhere to be found let alone heard from.
I am grateful for your article today, but at this particular anniversary, am sickened beyond measure.
Who the fuck have we become?
I can only hope that we will begin to wake up, because ‘It’s too late’ seems more and more an apt description of what all this no only looks like, but IS.
So, please keep doing the work you do. Take time off if you need to as you’ve done, but please do not give up….
We have all got to stay awake.
You probably have seens this... quite remarkable, https://substack.com/@irishpoliticsnewsletter/note/c-264986690