Understanding History

As the final event of my trip to Europe this week, I spent the day with my family at Normandie.

Places I had studied... I stood in. Vierville. Caen. Omaha. Utah. Sword. We visited the Nazi defensive battery at Cauville-sur-Mer - which devastated US forces until it was knocked out and allowed US armor ashore. I stood where Reagan had given his famous speech of the "Boys of Point du Hoc". There were artillery batteries rusting along the French coast.

The guns silent.

We've all seen the movies. Saving Private Ryan. Band of Brothers. The Longest Day. We get an idea of what war must have been like from those movies.

For me - any ideas that I had was shattered that day - seeing terrain in person and trying to understand what it had been like.

The cliff at Point du Hoc was easily 120 feet... the terrain unstable - like clay. From where I stood, we could see nearly the entire beach - which means so could the machine guns. 225 Rangers landed by Higgins boats. From the cliffs the Germans had to have been able to see them all - the entire time. By the time they were relieved, less than 90 were combat effective, with nearly every ranger injured in some way, and 73 killed.

This wasn't the "Longest Day" of Robert Wagner and Paul Anka scaling the cliffs. It had to have been bloody and brutal - chaotic and confused.

Objectives that you saw dramatized or depicted in films, you stand in awe when you realize how difficult achieving those victories had to have been on that day.

Even Saving Private Ryan under dramatizes what the landing at Omaha had to be like. I say that sincerely. As "realistic" as that film was - I immediately understood standing at Omaha that the experience of that day had to be nothing short of hell.

You cannot appreciate the difficulty of the Omaha landings until you see it with your own eyes.

First - none of the batteries or pillboxes are damaged by bombs. They were completely intact. Unlike all the other sites we visited, Cauville-sur-Mer, the main artillery battery that would have provided artillery fire for Omaha's defenses, was completely untouched by bombing.

A 8 km bluff that oversees 20 km easily of beach's landing site with 180 degree fields of fire. For a weapon like the MG-42 - I have no doubt those teams ran out of munitions before running out of targets. Nazis would have slaughtered the 1st and 29th Infantry division troops by the hundreds per minute - with most killed perhaps a few yards from the landing.

The sheer volume of death you cannot appreciate until you see the terrain.

I went out to the beach - the sand soft (which is what made landing the armor so difficult). I stood from where most of the Higgins boats would have landed that day. It seems unbelievable.

You'd arrive seasick (the swells were 6-10 feet that day), shot at, under mortar, artillery, and machine gun fire from at least four directions. Assuming you're not killed as soon as the Higgins boat door dropped, you would have to run SEVEN football fields to the "shingle" - a tiny defilade of beach perhaps not more than two feet high.

Two feet. That's it. Two feet of a bump on the beach, followed by a trench that's about four feet deep, followed by a bluff that is easily 25 feet high that overlooks the entirety of the beach. That is what you ran to with all of the strength and conviction of the entirety of your life. That was the only respite from the machine guns at the bunkers.

At the shingle, you would be shot at by at least two and possibly three machine gun nests that were outside the bunkers. On top of that - the artillery at Cauville pounding the beach repeatedly with 105 pound shells.

You see it in movies like Saving Private Ryan - but you don't understand it until you stand there, at low tide, and you see it for yourself.

That deep soft sand that would have been like running in silly putt with 80 pounds of gear on your back, under constant machine gun fire. As I said to my oldest daughter "pick up your sister and run as fast as you can from the beach to the bluff." Everyone in our tour chuckled, but that was the reality for every American soldier landing at the beach.

It was surreal to say the least.

While studying the difficulties of the tactical approach, you're confronted simultaneously with the backdrop of the reality of the beach today. People having fun and windsurfing on a beach. A calm English Channel where French residents were enjoying a respite from the hottest heat wave in France. People laughing, enjoying the sun, and a vibrant peaceful community.

I was reminded in that moment of Churchill's words from his speech "Finest Hour":

Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

That was what I saw that day. While the countryside was pock marked with 1000kg bomb impacts, and the bunkers of the Nazi "Atlantic wall" still existed in the countryside, the freedom of the entirety of Europe had begun in that tiny strip of the landing sites at Normandie. Europe had been granted that life of broad, sunlit uplands.

And the price for that was the thousands of crosses and Stars of David in the memorials. Row upon row of everyday Americans, from every state, from every neighborhood. When I worked at the Pentagon, I had been to Arlington three times - twice for a funeral, and once with my in laws as a tourist. While Arlington is a somber place of impressive sacrifice, the American Memorials at Colleville-sur-Mer was beyond moving.

Again, people wandering around, talking, looking, enjoying the day with families and friends in peace, which was absolutely perfect - a slight breeze, 74 degrees, sunny.

Broad, sunlit uplands.

The entire cemetery is American. Virginia blue grass grows everywhere - perfectly manicured and maintained. Trees native throughout the United States are planted. It is unlike the rest of France or even Normadie. These soldiers are buried in a refuge of their homeland not far from where they gave their last full measure of devotion.

I was reminded by the request of the United States, to France, by General Clark:

If ever proof were needed that we fought for a cause and not for conquest it could be found in these cemeteries. Here was our only conquest: all we asked... was enough... soil in which to bury our gallant dead.

France granted those lands for the memorial.

Our tour guide, who was Parisian, said something that left me utterly speechless. He commented that Paris is very beautiful, but it will forever live in shame. That beauty was purchased with surrender, collaboration, and capitulation to the Nazis. He was right. Unlike many towns and cities throughout Europe, Paris shows no signs of war. There are no pock marked buildings. There are no hastily reconstructed churches out of poured cement. There are no scars on buildings like you'll see in Poland or Italy.

He said that the Americans had no reason to liberate France beyond its belief in freedom and that whatever debt we may have incurred from France assisting it in the American Revolution, that debt was repaid many times over in liberating France. France had never ceded land on its home soil to anyone but America in recognition of the sacrifice of the Allies.

I have seen our troops do amazing things. I had the honor of working with many of them in my time at the Pentagon. I have been to memorials and attended military funerals. They are all moving and all demonstrative of sacrifices.

But never had I been more moved nor prouder to be an American than seeing those places.

The Big Red One - No Mission too difficult. No sacrifice too great. Duty First. Three medals of honor awarded posthumously.

Rangers lead the way. The Boys of Point to du Hoc.

101st Airborne - Curahee! The funny memorial to John Steele (played by Red Buttons in the Longest Day) still hangs from the Cathedral in Sainte-Mère-église.

It's all there - and all in such vivid detail it is overwhelming.

Yes, it was Band of Brothers. Yes, it was The Longest Day. Yes, it was all those things you saw in the movies... but those movies are a faint echo of the grandeur, gallantry, honor, courage, and heart of the men who fought for our country, our prosperity, and our freedom.

The future that would unfold for the entirety of the world was forged in fire and blood on those beaches, in those towns, fighting across the bocage that littered the countryside. While they would grant us all the peace and prosperity that would shape the modern age, when you stand there you cannot help but realize the terrifying reality:

They were ordinary men - fighting for one another, to survive, and to come home in peace. That is what made them heroes. That is why they deserve our remembrance: to these we owe the high resolve, that the cause for which they died shall live.

From Steven Ambrose's book, "Band of Brothers":

Lieutenant [Harry] Welsh remembered walking around among the sleeping men, and thinking to himself that 'they had looked at and smelled death all around them all day but never even dreamed of applying the term to themselves. They hadn't come here to fear. They hadn't come to die. They had come to win.