This weekend I went to Normandy with my program, and most of Saturday was devoted to World War II memorial sites. We visited the cemetery and memorial at Omaha Beach and Point du Hoc at Utah Beach.
The memorial and cemetary at Omaha Beach.
In both places, I was struck by the natural beauty and the immense difficulty the troops of D-Day faced assailing those cold, steep cliffs. The visit provoked interesting reactions from my group, as we asked ourselves what purposes war memorials serve and how we feel about those purposes and about war itself.
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| View from Point du Hoc, Utah Beach. |
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| Craters left in the earth by American bombs. |
I ran into two girls I went to high school with (our graduating class had a little more than 50 girls) at Omaha Beach. The world fits inside a shoe box sometimes.
Peace,
Maria
Yo yo, you totally know me. I got to see Normandy in July 2004 and your pictures are so familiar! We called the craters "airplane-manufactured foxholes."
ReplyDeleteAt the Eiffel Tower on the Fourth of July, we found some surviving members of Easy Company, including Compton and Malarkey of Band of Brothers fame. And then, we ran into them again at Omaha. I guess the odds of that are much better than finding your high school classmates!