Liberated in Normandy

Have you ever been somewhere and known it to be perhaps the most unhappy place you have ever seen, only to be reminded of the horrors that exist elsewhere around the world, horrors that you are too untravelled or too naive or too close-minded to have seen? It has been only a couple of months since I last went to Normandy, and going back I found it to be just as sad and heartwrenching a place as it was last time. It's not that the people there aren't happy (they are quite joyful, in fact) nor that the countryside is desolate and boring (rolling hills, dramatic cliffscapes, the most beautifully rain-nourished grass anywhere...), nor is it that anything horrible has happened there recently. Throughout it's history, though, Normandy has been at the center of the conflicts that have defined Europe, conflicts from William the Conquerer and his ride to the British Isles through almost every great war of history. Of course, worst of all was Normandy's involvement in WWII, Normandy's complete destruction by the bombings from it's "liberators" the Allies, the deaths of thousands of men on it's beaches and in it's ravaged villages.

In any case, the trip to Normandy was really quite enjoyable, but perhaps not in the normal sense of how you enjoy something. You see, I'm the type--and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this--who likes to experience things the way they were, to experience the horrible and the inhuman for what they were, to try to understand somehow how something so terrible could arise. I'm not talking about Hitler and the Holocaust, because that's hard enough to find in Germany let alone in Normandy, but more so about how young men can be driven so directly not only to kill and to destroy but also to criminalize and dehumanize an enemy in their minds to the extent that that killing becomes justifiable and right. I have trouble doing that in my mind, but I have to admit that if I had been told of Hitler's atrocities, I can't say that I wouldn't turn into a brutal killing machine myself (or, perhaps better, be killed 10 seconds after getting out of the boat on the beach at Omaha). Interestingly enough, the double viewing of Saving Private Ryan on our bus and the Caen Memorial and all of it were my favorite experiences in awhile because there were a few moments in there when I really felt a small hint of what it must have been like to be in that situation, to face that horror and fear and adrenaline. Then again, maybe I'm just a masochist.

Anyway, Normandy was, is, will always be amazing. It really reminds people like me, people of my generation how untouched by difficulty our lives have been. Since we were born, there has been no major threat from a Hitler or a Mussolini or any type like that, though numerous dictators have risen to power and ruthlessly killed their own countrymen just the same. The threat of nuclear warfare does not hang over our heads in the way it did during the Cold War, in the way that a major power seriously threatened to wipe out an entire landscape, though the situation with nuclear weapons has by no means become peaceful. The greatest fear we have faced is probably that of terrorism, but we do not have an enemy to focus all our rage on (despite what officials might say), we do not seriously need to adjust our lifestyle because we might go down in a plane crash...there's really nothing to do to prevent it, and if it does, oh well. I guess in the end, I feel like my generation is extremely lucky, but in some light we are also extremely unsure of what to do should something arise. Would we really recognize it, if something did come up? Would we really rise to the call, should we be called to defend abstract ideas like "Democracy" and "Liberty"? Or has the blunder of wars like Vietnam and now Iraq driven the unconditional belief in such ideas out of our heads? Would it be worth it to send all of our resources or all of our young men into a conflict, or have we reached an era and a technological advancement where that's no longer necessary? Is anything even in black and white, divided clearly between good and evil, anymore?

I don't know what that means, and I don't know if it's even necessary to reflect on it. Ideally war would just be erased from the human consciousness. But somehow I doubt that is possible. But I wonder, have we advanced further toward a lasting peacefulness, if not a denial of tensions? Or have we gone backward, unwilling to defend our core values because we no longer know how core they are? I'm not pro-war by any means, but I do sort of wonder what it means to truly believe that democracy, liberty, and hell even capitalism are the undeniably right way to live. Normands today still question the value of a a liberation that destroyed most of the historical buildings and towns of their region. Perhaps liberty isn't always the most important thing. Perhaps the outsider's judgement isn't always right. But then again, what would Europe today be like had the liberation failed? I don't want to know, that's for sure.