Day Six July 15
On Day Six, we jumped on the bus and headed back to Paris. Some of us took the train up instead--by plan and by accident--but they got to have lots of extra time in Paris.
As we drove in, we started to see more and more sights--here's the Pantheon through the bus window.

Here's our home in Paris--the Victoria Palace hotel.

Note all the motorcycles parked on all the sidewalks. They were everywhere and a large percentage of them weren't chained down. Startled me (but then I live in Chicago).

We had dinner every night in the Palace restaurant across the street. The first night, eating outside was just perfect--just the right summer breeze. The next night, there was a downpour, wind, and hail!

Here we are all posed.
After dinner, a lot of us had the idea to take a stroll around town. There was daylight until late in the evening.
I made it up the Rue de Rennes to Ste. Germaine des Pres before I decided that I was running out of steam and needed to test out the luxuriously deep tub in the bathroom. I wish I'd gotten a second wind and continued with the group to the boats on the Seine and the Eiffel Tower at night, but I was sound asleep before they landed.

Day Seven July 16

At the last minute, I decided to go on the Normandy trip. I had the feeling that there was unfinished business. When I thought about what that might be, I remembered that Dad had originally been drafted into the 28th Infantry Regiment, where he spent almost two years. He was transferred just as they were shipping to England. I knew they fought in Normandy and the Huertgen Forest. I decided to go and honor the men he'd known so well who hadn't made it home.

So with a new bus and new maps, we headed out to the west.
One thing that surprised me while traveling in the bus is how rural France is. The only real change was in the roof lines--in the east the roofs are red with a shallower pitch. In Normandy they were grey and swept down low.
We arrived at the Caen Memorial--which rises like a fortress on a hill overlooking the city.
We didn't have time to see much of it, but the grand hall was full of people. The wall reads, "On the sixth of June, on the beaches of Normandy, more than 10,000 young soldiers paid (fell) for our freedom."

I had a feeling there was a great deal to see there in the lower levels, but we had time for the half hour of film, lunch, and a quick dash into the store.

The museum has a virtual tour on the web at

http://www.memorial-caen.fr/portail/index.php

The first 15-minute film was really powerful. It had a split screen with the Germans on the Atlantic Wall on the right and the cheerful soldiers in England loading the ships on the left. All it was was sound effects and images, but the story was clear enough and moving. The second film showed abstract troop movements across the map of Normandy for the first 100 days. I suspect it was confusing if you didn't know something about the history of the fighting already--but what was clear was the price the French towns paid. There was a photo of a town, a cartoon explosion and then a photo of what was left--rubble.

From there, we picked up our guide, who apologized for trying to squeeze a several day tour into an hour and a half. As he talked about the situation on D-Day, we drove down to Omaha Beach on this beautiful summer day.

 

To my shock, it was in fact, a beach--a public place for sand and sun and swimming. But it was also a memorial--with the large concrete monument but also the sculpture rising from the sand. Seeing the happy families there felt as though the sands themselves were healing.

I asked the guide how long after the war it took before they let swimmers back on the beach and he said that they were back almost immediately. They'd get covered with oil from the leaking sunken ships and rinse off with gasoline.

I was here in 1969 and there were still great hunks of iron--I'll scan my photo from then and post it.

The veterans sit by the sign for the statue--Les Braves. The sign reads:

"I created this sculpture to honor these men: the sons, husbands, and fathers, who endangered and often sacrificed their lives in the hope of freeing the French people.

"the statue has three elements:

The wings of hope so that the spirit that carried these men on June 6th, 1944, continues to inspire us, reminding us that together it is always possible to change the future.

Rise Freedom! So that the example of those that rose against barbarity helps us remain standing strong against all forms of inhumanity.

The wings of fraternity so that this surge of brotherhood always reminds us of our responsibility towards others as well as ourselves. On June 6, these men were more than soldiers, they were our brothers.

Anilore Banon"

I went down to the shore to gather sea shells to remember how happy a place of so much grief and pain can become. I also wanted to wade in the water and gather a few stones to place them with the stones I gathered during the profoundly moving trip we took last year to Newfoundland. Two sides of the shore, American and European, uniting in many ways.

Of course there wasn't really time, so I had to dash back up to the bus with my sandy feet.

From Omaha Beach, we went to the American Cemetary. We asked whether there was a German cemetary, and there are six in Normandy alone. The nearest has 27,000 in it. And they are still uncovering German bodies in the fields. One was found just two weeks earlier. In the chaos of the retreat, there hadn't been time to mark where comrades were buried. But the American graves registry detail had kept records. Also, families had the option of repatriating bodies to the United States. The Normandy cemetary has 9,387 buried there and a list of 147 names of those missing in action.

This is a reflecting pool by the visitor's center overlooking the cliffs. A bird sips on the edge. I included this photo because I was so struck by the beautiful birdsong throughout the cemetary.
I didn't go into the visitor's center because the time was extremely short and I could see that there was a security checkpoint with metal detector. So I headed out along the cliffs, looking down on the beach.
In other words, this must have been the view the Germans had.
As always, the view of the crosses in their white geometry was moving. But it was healing to see that there were hundreds of people paying their respects. Some were searching, most were just reading and meditating.

I was searching--hoping against hope with so many crosses and so many units involved with the fighting in Normandy and so little time that I might find someone from the 28th Infantry Regiment (the Black Lions).

It was the second stone I read. I felt blessed.

 
Unfortunately, we had little time, so we hurried back to the bus. We knew supper was waiting for us, but the traffic around Caen just stopped dead in its tracks and we stayed almost perfectly still for almost an hour. Finally we got moving again and headed back to Paris, our supper (wonderful salmon), and a taste of a Parisian hailstorm.
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Days One & Two Day Three Day Four Day Five Days Six & Seven Day Eight