Day 36: D Day

So today was all about history. We started at the Caen-Normandy Memorial Museum which was absolutely amazing. It showed the entire progression of World War 2 with in depth information from 1915 until the late 1980’s. It was so well organized and displayed. There was so much amazing historical paraphernalia from Nazi air wings to letters from prisoners and guards. There was even a piece of the Berlin wall!! I felt like I saw every single angle of the war and it was so touching and informing. We also saw actual footage from D-Day and there was an entire exhibit dedicated to the storming of the beaches with a play by play of each event and the planning of Operation Neptune. 

After the museum we headed off to one of the Normany German cemeteries. These cemeteries actual got to me a lot because it struck me that after the war the Allied soldiers made these beautiful cemeteries for the German fatalities. Given not much effort was put into them, but they were simple and pretty and well maintained. It was so bizarre to see these soldiers for what they were which was teenagers and 20 year olds who were born in the wrong country at the wrong time and found themselves in somebody else’s war. They are seen by history as being the bad guys in the war and they were definitely on the wrong side but it wasn’t their fault and almost all of them, had they been born somewhere else, would have been fighting against the Nazis.

We then went to Omaha beach and saw the American cemetery there. It was breathtaking how beautiful they made it. There was statues and beautiful flowers and an amazing pool with water lilies in it. The white crosses which went on for ever were crazy because it looks so beautiful and serene and sad because you know that each cross represents a lost American soldier. Each cross however is so touching because it has the soldiers name, rank, date of death, and state that they lived in. It was nice to look through the names and commemorate them. The soldiers who couldn’t be identified had crosses that said “here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God” which seemed so sweet and poetic. 

Once we had walked through the cemetery we walked down to the beach and it was outrageous to see the beaches after watching all of that footage because they look exactly the same. We saw bunkers and secret passages and foxholes and craters from bombs. We walked through green sludge and wondered how soldiers had done this in their gear with the pressure and fear that came from being fired at. It was all very awe-inspiring and it really reminded me of the significance of June 6, 1944 and all that it symbolized.