Keeping it positive

How do people visiting the Normandy Battlefields for the first time react to the occasion? It does not matter from which angle the visit is primarily motivated. Typically it breaks down into either of three categories, historical interest, family connection, or academic study.

It’s a bit like going to a funeral. There is usually deep apprehension about how it will go, and even more concern for the reaction to it.

My first touring day always starts with gentle background comprising a visit to the Mulberry Harbour at Arromanches, a masterpiece of British invention to enable the re-supply of troops already ashore. Then a real German battery at Longues sur Mer to witness the extent, level and capacity of the huge defence guns of the Axis powers. Afterwards a graphic account of what happened on Omaha Beach, surely the only battlefield in the world needed to be seen at first hand to appreciate the strength of the German defenders against the initial weakness of the attacking Americans. It is still a major source of wonderment that they were able to do it.

Following that, the big one. A visit to the Colleville Normandy American Battle Monument’s Cemetery above Omaha Beach. 9387 burials representing 31% buried in Normandy against 69% whose remains were repatriated at the request of the family. It is a stunning sight. Row upon row of Latin crosses and Magen David, Christians and Jews buried without differentiation. There is nowhere except by aerial view that the cemetery can be seen in its entirety. Most were young, single boys – an even more tragic realisation.

It is always especially sad to see the grave of a young person, whose life lay ahead of him, in this case cut brutally short by a bullet or whatever. What a heinous crime against mankind, the slaughter of the best and the fittest by the best and the fittest – a future generation.

Headstones bear the inscription that they gave their lives. I disagree, they had their precious lives taken from them.

Surely to God the ability to kill a human being does not authenticate the Cause in the doing of it?

At this point the visitor can descend into the sentiment of pathos and be overcome with emotion. An understandable reaction, but it would be better to appreciate that the battle, what they died for, was a success. Visitors with personal connections to a buried soldier return not with bitter tears of grief over the uselessness, but with tears of gratitude for what the death helped to achieve.

Everyone knows that going to a funeral can be approached in two ways, and by far the better way is to celebrate that person’s life and achievements.

So it is in Normandy.

To weep and wail over the loss, those tragic deaths, is to miss the point. The point is that notwithstanding the lesson of history this tragedy is repeated time and time again. It is witnessed in all military cemeteries not only in Normandy but throughout the world. The civilian story is no less tragic.

In Normandy the theme of the American cemetery is of a glorious victory. The theme in the German cemetery is of peace.

Go figure.