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. 

My Top Four Favorite Historical Subjects

In my first post on this site, I explained that when it comes to studying history and learning from it, it's often the particular era's connection to the present that interests me the most. However, that's not to say I don't find history in of itself fascinating. If it wasn't for that, this blog wouldn't exist. So I thought today I would share my four favorite historical subjects/periods to study.

These particular histories strike a chord with me. They're so rich in content and so magnificently detailed that anyone could spend several lifetimes studying each period alone. Some of these capture my imagination so vividly that I can almost imagine I'm there. Some are so distant and seemingly so alien that it's almost hard to believe it took place on the same planet. However, in both cases, I feel the drive to discover and make connections between the past and the present more than ever.

1. The Victorian Era (UK) and The Gilded Age (US)                                                      
   These are fairly recent interests of mine, and despite taking place in different countries the overlap is so apparent  that I decided to include it as one. Though this usually isn't the case for me, what entices me most about these periods are the social histories. In fact, especially in the United States, the political history at this time is one of my least-favorites to study, largely due to a long string of mediocre presidents. However, with industrialization and the scientific revolution in full swing, the massive changes to life at that time in nearly every way is nothing short of remarkable. Soaring skyscrapers were matched by skyrocketing economic inequality, producing social movements that have until very recently been all but forgotten. Though I'm fairly new to the game, one of the best books to capture this new life of wondrous and horrifying possibilities is the Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson. It's a vivid snapshot of life at that time, with the Chicago World's Fair taking off at the same time as the first serial killer in American history claims his first victims. The same can be said for the Victorian era and its ubiquitous duality, prudishness in the front and madness in the back. Jekyll & Hyde and the Picture of Dorian Gray are two of my favorite books, and give me insight into an era that fascinates me but I would never want to live in!                                                        
2. Classical Civilizations
   
   This one casts a wide net, and I could never hope to get a firm grasp on it all. However, nearly every time I learn something, it changes my view of that civilization. This is the period from about 500 BCE to 500CE. Now, that does cover from the early days of the Roman Republic through to its fall, but I include the Chinese Han Dynasty there too. When I was in high school, my teacher made an extra effort to talk about the Han as much, maybe even more so than he did of Rome, to emphasize how important yet overlooked it was to history. My friend has extensive knowledge of this period, and he often tells me facts of Roman traffic jams and Han attempts at domesticating horses and I'm just astounded. These eras are almost an ocean of knowledge unto themselves.                                                  
3. The American Civil War
   
   How could I not be into this era? It's one of the few aspects of American history that even the most ignorant citizen knows is important. This is because the Second American Revolution is still right at our side. Just turn on the news and for any issue that pertains to citizenship, economic and social divides, war powers, or anything related to the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, each has echoes of the Civil War. It's not just its-more-than-usual relevance that captures me though. Whether it's the speeches and proclamations for or against slavery and the war, the incredibly idiotic or brilliant decisions on the battlefield, the political cage matches between politicians, or the fact that so many men-- and a few women-- gave their lives for a better country or a worse one still affects me very deeply. We owe an incredible debt to Abraham Lincoln. Had it not been for him and his incredible skill, courage, love, and humor, we could have lost it all.                                                   
4.  The Second World War
   
   I imagine this one is also hardly a surprise, given it's the biggest and by-far deadliest conflict in human history. You can thank Call of Duty for capturing my imagination and later my zeal for wholehearted study of WWII. The scope and depth of the war, in almost every facet imaginable, from military to political to technological to human stories is so vast that you could very well make new books, movies, shows, plays and video games from it over and over and never lose interest.
   
   I believe, however, that there's another reason that the war continues live in so much of the world's consciousness. Though it's hardly as clear-cut as most people make it out, there's really no denying it: It was a "Good War." Great evil was stopped. Great good came from it. It was a war worth fighting unlike few others. Humanity both then and now has been measured by this conflict, and proved capable both of horrifying evil and magnificent good. And the good won.
   
   Though I would never, ever wish for another war even close to its magnitude, at a time when it seems like there's so much senseless and unnecessary fighting, sometimes it's difficult to not be nostalgic for that clear choice between good and evil. Then I remember what led to that choice even being possible, and how much suffering resulted from it. That war was fought so that no other of its kind could ever happen again. We must continue to make sure of that.