Normandy

Day 17
Wednesday June 1

Cockadoodle doo waaaaayyy too early this morning. We met as a class outside the main entrance of Gare du Nord, one of the bigger train stations in Paris. Its tricky to find the front because generally when we go through there, we stay under ground...plus at 7:30am everything is just a little fuzzy. Long story short we took a few laps around the place (which spans like four city blocks) before finding our group. Then, off to the bus! A quick 3 hour drive through the countryside later, we were dropped off at the Normandy memorial museum.

American Cemetery at Normandy

It was harrowing to say the least. The museum begins with the history of WWI, and how the fragile peace it established fell apart. Then it gets increasingly frightening--a soundtrack of Hitler's voice and marching boots played as we saw pictures of Nazi soldiers and Holocaust victims. The museum traced the escalation of the Nazi power, including important battles, the French resistance and occupation, and how the war became a "total war." I was particularly struck by photos of Nazi soldiers, blonde boys that looked to be about 12 years old. I cannot describe the photos in the Holocaust exhibit...

"Here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms
known but to God"

Then we piled back on the bus and drove another hour to the American cemetery at Omaha beach. I've never been to Arlington, but I imagine it would be something like that. We walked along the edge of the identical white marble crosses, but they extended beyond the horizon for longer than we could gage. There were countless crosses that read "Here lies in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God." Apparently they're still finding bodies.

After some time in the cemetery, we walked down to the beach to unwind for a minute, but I couldn't get the image of soldiers running from the water across the beach out of my brain. I saw a picture in the museum of thousands of soldiers running, being gunned down from planes above. 10,000 died that day.

We drove to another beach, Pont du Hoc, where bits of machinery, bunkers, and torpedo explosion-sized holes still stud the beach. The whole experience was very surreal in that I had physical proof of the destruction in front of me, but the sun was shining and the ocean was pure blue. I imagine these days of destruction in black and white...

One of the holes left in the earth from
the torpedoes

Normandy beach

Then, back to the bus, where our ISA coordinator surprised us with a cider tasting. Thank God. After our day, we needed a little something to take the edge off, and Normandy is known for their hard apple cider. A sweet frenchman showed us around the cider farm/factory? and then gave us unlimited cookies, the best apple juice I've ever had, cider, paummeux, calvados, and creme de paummeux. YUM. You would think us angsty poets would have pounced on the opportunity to buy the 80proof calvados, but that apple juice was sooo delish that we couldn't resist.

Cider barrels

We checked in to our hotel (which is gorgeous--so nice to have a normal shower for once), met for a quick workshop/freewrite, then had dinner with the Cecelia. I was so wiped out by the end of the day that I beelined for the bed--we turned on the TV in our hotel room, and guess what we found. BBC! Diana and I have been watching CNN everyday because its the only channel we get in english, so BBC was groundbreaking! Woo. Ten seconds later I fell asleep.

Voila, Day 17