Blog 25 – Not all tours are meant to be fun
D-Day; June 6th, 1944. https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/d-day
In mid-October Andy had a set of multiple meetings scheduled in Paris. While I would know many of the folks involved and enjoy meeting them over drinks and dinner; I still needed something to do during the day. I looked for a day trip and found Normandy and the D-Day landing beaches bus tour. https://www.pariscityvision.com/en/france/normandy This is a full day; 14 hours door-to-door. Normandy is located about three hours outside of central Paris. The day starts with a long pre-dawn drive.
I am not a World War II buff. War is not glamorous or exciting to me. Defenses and strategies played out with real human lives is not of interest. But I am a minor history buff; time, distance, culture, old buildings. I can’t help but feel compelled to see and touch the actual places where World War II took place as we venture around Europe. Memorials, remains of bombed buildings, the existing streets that supported the movements of both Allies and Nazis; Jews and Gentiles. The magnitude of the efforts for both good and evil remain incomprehensible. The courage, the honor, the horror; it is too much to understand. This is what took me to the beaches of Normandy.
According to: https://www.historyonthenet.com/d-day-casualties The total number of casualties that occurred during Operation Overlord, from June 6 (the date of D-Day) to August 30 (when German forces retreated across the Seine) was over 425,000 Allied and German troops. This figure includes over 209,000 Allied casualties:
- Nearly 37,000 dead amongst the ground forces
- 16,714 deaths amongst the Allied air forces.
- Of the Allied casualties, 83,045 were from 21st Army Group (British, Canadian and Polish ground forces)
- 125,847 from the US ground forces.
The beaches of Normandy were just that before the war; beaches. Beach towns where families and friends would gather for a weekend holiday. And, then the Nazi’s came; outings ceased to be. Occupied France was turned to the Axis war effort.
Invading the European continent via the west coast beaches was determined by both sides to be a key military option. To defend against such an attack, Hitler built the Atlantic Wall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Wall It was a fortified wall of bunkers, guns, and barbed wire fences running from the northern tip of Norway to the southern French border with Spain. Regardless of the fortifications, Eisenhower knew this was the only option to come at the Nazi’s to form a new front of the war. The planning took months.
Much of the coast was bombed prior to D-Day in hopes of confusing Hitler regarding the Allies actual planned landing location. Military and civilian lives were sacrificed along much of the coast. It worked; Rommel left the area as he did not believe an invasion imminent. None-the-less, 425,000 troops were killed and up to 20,000 French civilians were sacrificed in addition to the military personnel.
It is too much. Too much to comprehend. Too much to see. November 11th will be Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth and much of Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day It will be Veteran’s Day in the US.
The tour was not fun. It was enlightening. It was sobering. When I asked my seat mates why they had chosen this tour, they replied: “You can’t come to France without coming to Normandy”. That may be the point of this blog posting; to see all the history here, not just the pretty buildings, not just the rolling countryside. See what we are capable of doing both to each other and for each other. A day of Remembrance, a tour of Remembrance. The day ends with a long post-sunset drive back to Paris.