Stepping Onto Normandy Beach

By now it was late afternoon. The cool fog that had proliferated since the early morning had almost completely burned off, and the sun glistened in the sky. Normally after so much travelling I’d start to get tired, but I left plenty in my reserve specially for the last section of the tour. I was softly excited, but a bit uneasy. I wasn’t sure what to expect, not from the place but from myself.

The van stopped, and my French tour guide and the three other passengers got out. We walked twenty yards to a road parallel to the sea. Then I finally saw it with my own eyes.

Omaha Beach.

Last semester I had the opportunity to study abroad in London. For my spring break (don’t worry, I did other stuff too) I got to finally to visit the number one place I always wanted to go to as a history buff: Normandy beach. I booked a tour in Bayeux, France, of the American sector of the D-Day landings from June 6, 1944. My only regret from the entire trip was that I didn’t spend more time there and visit the British and Canadian sectors as well.

It was a historian’s dream, and the experiences I had earlier that day already left me awestruck. I had been into the church of St. Mere-Eglise where the 82^nd Airborne landed, Utah beach where my great-uncle landed 73 years ago, and the Point du Hoc where the US Army Rangers scaled the cliffs in order to destroy German heavy guns, to name a few. But I couldn’t really believe I had been to Normandy without visiting one of the most enduring and visceral symbol of the entire war, let alone the landings themselves. Now I was finally here.

Where I stood, there was a German bunker and war memorial to my left. To my immediate right was a road stretching behind the beach with a bluff and several houses laid out behind it. And in front of me was the beach. The first thing that strikes you about it is its sheer vastness. It’s both incredibly deep and wide, with the waves breaking off so far that there are hardly any tide pools at all. However, the water clearly washed up very close to shore, on account of the smoothness of the sand.

After a few words and some more gazing, heart pumping I finally stepped onto the beach. Perfect footprints were left in the sand and not a grain of it ended up in my shoes. Our tour guide led us to the middle of the beach about fifty yards in. For the next fifteen minutes, the tour guide shared more details and period photos of the invasion. With each minute I was able to imagine myself even more vividly in an American soldier’s shoes. It was astounding and spine-chilling.

Imagine you’re where I am, which would be closer to the cliffs than where the first soldiers landed. You would be knee-deep in water, weighed down by loads of equipment. Ahead of you are mines, anti-tank emplacements, and barbed wire. Each minute, more and more Germans are pouring machine gun fire straight on you from the bunkers ahead. And perhaps worst of all is the sheer distance you have to go—hundreds of yards ahead of you into the fire. If you can't imagine it, maybe this will help. I could not stop thinking about how $%&*#@ I would have been.

As I turned and looked out towards the sea and thought about the countless lives’ lost on this beach. Prior to arriving, I figured if there was going to be a single time I would straight-up break down and cry it would be now. But what I was going through instead surprised me. I can’t quite explain it, perhaps it was mindfulness or just an enormous sense of gravity. I would describe it like as if you were standing at the top of a mountain and looking upon the world below. You can’t judge it or connect it to anything or really think about it at all very much. All you can do is just take it all in.

The next thing I did surprised me even more. I took several steps away from my group. I remembered I had a zip lock bag in my pack. Without thinking I reached down and grabbed a handful of sand, and then another and another. The sand was golden brown and seemed to have broken shells in it, wet from the sea. I closed the bag, put in in my pack, then walked off the beach, catching up to my tour guide.

We still did other things for the tour, including visiting the gorgeous American cemetery just behind the beach. That was incredible too, but nothing I did after—or really, ever—will compare to stepping on Omaha beach myself that day and seeing it with my own eyes. That sand sits in the bag on my bookshelf, still wet with the water from the English Channel. It's a reminder to me of what I experienced that day and what those men did for you and me all those years ago. I will never remove it. 

A Short History of Wars Starting By Accident

The recent headlines of a U.S. fighter jet shooting down not just a Syrian Air Force jet but also one of its drones definitely raised an alarm or two in my head.  It was made even more disconcerting by the fact that the Russians said they would target U.S. warplanes west of the Euphrates River and were cutting their avenue of communication to us. And that's not even accounting for Syria or Iran's feelings about it. It seemed like yet again that the situation in the Middle East was spinning out of control.

Now, I don't think that these two instances will escalate to a war with Russia or even fundamentally alter the current situation in the region. Everyone just might get off easy. However, if the parties involved aren't careful and mindful of the implications of their actions, in the future a similar incident could occur. If heads are too hot, it could prove to be the spark to greater quagmire and bloodshed, if not in Iraq and Syria then elsewhere.

Sadly, there's plenty of wars that by accident. I'm not referring to instances where deliberate attacks were staged with full awareness of the potential consequences, such as the Nazi invasion of Poland or the Confederates firing on Fort Sumter. Nor am I referring to parties being tricked into fighting, like the French in the Franco-Prussian War. No, here are just a few wars that started because some people unable to keep their #$%& together.

• First World War

Perhaps the most well-known example of a seemingly distant geo-political conflict spiraling out of control. The assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire by the Serbian separatist-terrorist organization the Black Hand quickly roped in treaty-bound (and opportunistic) European nations. Austria-Hungary threatened war with Serbia if its government wouldn't turn over the terrorists. Then Russia jumped in to protect a fellow Slavic/Eastern Orthodox nation. Then Germany stood up for its ethnic German sibling and attacked Russia...'s ally France first because they bordered Germany, which drew Britain in shortly after. Within a couple of short months, a Balkan regional squabble had escalated into a full-scale European war, engulfing the world within a few years.

• Sino-Japanese War

China had already been mired in civil war between communists and nationalists, and in 1931 the Japanese decided to take advantage of the chaos and annex Manchuria in the north, renaming it Manchukuo. Then 1937, nationalist soldiers traded shots with a Japanese dispatch along the Yongding river outside of Beijing. The skirmish itself passed without incident as no one was killed, but the next day when a Japanese soldier was missing at roll call, it was all the Japanese command needed. By the time that soldier returned from the local brothel, fighting had already broke out and in just a few weeks the Japanese crossed the Marco Polo Bridge into China proper. 

• Seven Years War

Frederick the Great of Prussia thought (with good reason) that the rest of Europe was gearing up to attack him. So in 1757 Frederick launched a preemptive attack against where his enemies would most likely strike, Saxony. Though the attack itself was perfect, unfortunately Frederick guessed the wrong country, and it turned out he attacked a neutral country without a declaration of war or a provocation. This made it easy for Russia, France, and Austria to declare war on Prussia. However, Frederick's tactical brilliance and huge war chest would keep the war going for years. 

Again, these are just a few examples of wars, and and only wars. That being said, we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves and curse past stupidity. Just because some of these wars started by accident doesn't mean they probably weren't going to happen at all. In many cases, one or both sides were itching for a fight anyway and it would have come to blows sooner or later, by accident or on purpose.

The point is that wars rarely, if ever, start from nothing. Tensions often grind on for years or even decades between parties, steadily escalating until someone makes one final provocation and someone else starts shooting. Long fuse or not, the spark has to be snuffed long before it reaches the dynamite.