France: Memories of D-Day
by Joan Boxall
It’s Remembrance Day, 2014 and I’m interlocking the sleeves of my parents’ Air Force jackets. They are arm in arm once more, laid out on the bed. Mum, a coding and deciphering officer with the RAF, and Dad, an air observer/navigator with the 10th Squadron, Bomber Command, met at a dance in Gander, Newfoundland in December, 1944. They’d both already served five long years. I salute them. Then I hug their blue-gray wool serge, touch their caps, and straighten their belts.
What does it mean to be a descendant of war veterans? Do I carry their torch, as poet-soldier Dr. John McCrae, suggested in ‘Flanders Fields’? Do I carry it high and not break faith? The summer of 2012, my husband and I went to Bayeux, Normandy. Yet it was this summer, 2014, in Portsmouth, England, where we stumbled upon a broader truth.
Bayeux
Bayeux’s hub provides a restful base. The town, the Bayeux Tapestry and Notre-Dame Cathedral, all escaped WW2 bombardment unlike neighbouring Caen, Le Havre, Lisieux and Rouen: rebuilt after the war. The river Aure peels Bayeux’s sweet onion to uncover its Gaulish, Roman, Breton, Saxon and Viking layers.
We are picked up at the train station by the owner of our pension. The Aure is just beyond the locked gate. From our chaises longues, mewling gulls, meditating pigeons and cathedral chimes convoy clouds across cobalt-blue skies.
It’s a five-minute walk to the weekly farmer’s market for fresh fish and produce, to the bakery for morning croissant and to the Tourism Office for leaflets. Back at our accommodations, we peruse the pamphlets and consider bubbles in flutes of chilled apple cider, and relish local seafood cooked Normandy style in cream-butter-cheese sauce.
The Tapestry
Our first visit was to see the Bayeaux Tapestry that commemorates the day-long Battle of Hastings, September 12, 1066. It’s a 70-meter-long, 50-centimeter-high quintet of blue, green, terracotta, yellow and gray. Embroidered wool on linen cloth portrays William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy, claiming sovereignty from Harold II, the last Anglo-Saxon king.
William was born 200 years after the Viking invasions swept Western Europe. Normandy united with the French Crown in 1204, 100 years after William’s death. The Viking Normans eventually turned their expertise in weaponry and sea travel (William’s specialty) to decorative arts, architecture, music, literature, Impressionist painting and exploration of the New World. William, as founding forefather, waged an invasion to become William the Conqueror, King of England.
In William’s reign, Odon, his half-brother, (both pictured in the tapestry) held the bishops’ seat in Bayeux when Notre-Dame Cathedral was consecrated in 1077. Odon’s legacy was as patron of the arts, and it was likely he who commissioned the Bayeux Tapestry.
Liberation
Bayeux was the first European town liberated on June 7, 1944, one day after D-Day or J-Jour. It is ten kilometers from where the five-point allied invasion occurred. Utah and Omaha Beaches were the American points of entry to the west, and Gold, Juno and Sword Beaches were the two British and central-Canadian-beach accesses along Seine Bay. Between the ports of Le Havre and Cherbourg, earth-shattering events transpired on the dunes and limestone escarpments of Low Normandy, between the hedgerows and orchards.
Oh land of France, oh blissful, pleasant land,
Today laid desolate by such cruel waste!”
– Stanza CXL ‘Chanson de Roland’, 11th century epic poem
Omaha Beach
From Bayeux to Omaha Beach a trip for 75 Euros apiece provides a historical backdrop our first day including a three-hour van tour from Hotel Churchill’s courtyard.
The German occupiers took two of the four years occupying France to build the ‘Atlantic Wall’ with thousands of batteries to keep an invader out. If not for Hitler’s strategic error in diverting 3.3 million troops to Russia, and the conscription of young and old soldiers from as far away as White Russia, Korea, Croatia and Romania, the ‘wall’ may not have cracked. Jonathon points out the dome-shaped craters from ships’ bombardments and the aircrafts’ pockmarks.
Row upon row: nine thousand white crosses and Stars of David impact us at the American Military Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer. Sur-Mer tags ‘on the sea’ where we look out in silent attention. The Allies died in shock waves that killed 90% in the first wave and 40% in both the second and third waves. The beach dyed blood red: D-day’s heavy toll: June 6, 1944.
Notre-Dame Cathedral
A visit to Notre-Dame Cathedral’s Romanesque and Norman-Gothic edifice which pre-dates Mont-Saint-Michel was a must-see. It was consecrated in the fourth-century and flourished in King William’s reign. Its façade, chapter-house labyrinth, choir, as well as its fifteenth-century frescoes of angel musicians in the crypt, all captivate.
We go up… to the top. ‘Can you climb, m’sieur, m’dame? Are you claustrophobic?’ We coil our way up the dim shaft. Carroted wood timbers (this is a French verb for removing wooden wedges for dating purposes) determine how and in what order the green, uncured oak beams were positioned. Some of it is petrified, 1000-year-old timber.
Cecile, the oldest bell, rang last after its nine subordinate bells, in compliment to the liturgy. This two-ton bell exerts a five-ton force against the wood interface, lest its force smash through the stonework. Today the nine bells peal automatically on electronic timing.
An organ recital features the works of Vivaldi, Taglietti, Handel, Rameau and Bach. The organ has always had flexibility and grandeur to interpret Baroque music before orchestral music became popular. Arpeggios reverberate from the pipes, up the ribbed vault and down our own. Mozart called the pipe organ the king of instruments.
Port Winston at Gold Beach
A yearning to be in the open air brings us to Velos Location: We rent bikes for eight hours at 16 Euros apiece and are transported to countryside where we hear the farmer’s tractor mowing hay. Or are those really tanks approaching? The trees that line the roads look mature, but aren’t they uniformly pushing the seventy years since peace was brokered? In 1944, trees provided fuel or defensive barriers on low-tide beaches, and their removal meant less shelter for an enemy. Today, those same trees flicker from shadow to light like newsreels, transmitting ticker tape noises to our spokes, and crank us forward.
Port Winston was the British floating harbour or Mulberry ‘B’ at Gold Beach. The terrible storms that delayed General Eisenhower’s decision to invade by one day, returned on June 19, 1944 to sink and sweep Mulberry ‘A’, the ‘American’ installation at Omaha Beach, out to sea.
A Mulberry consisted of four protective breakwaters with concrete-filled caissons (twenty of these are still visible). Three pier heads or floating pontoons rose and fell with the tide, and two piers braced the tonnage of equipment and weaponry necessary to support the one million troops that landed by month’s end.
The D-day Museum near Arromanches-les-Bains is abuzz with tourists moving from demo table to panoramic window to compare models under glass with remnants visible outside. After a café au lait on the strand, we view Arromanches 360, a circular cinema, and its archived footage on nine screens.
In surreal stillness, picnics in hand, we spy children testing their training wheels in small sailboats that carve turns on a wide swath of low-tide sand.
Juno Beach
We chance upon the British Cemetery of War Graves of Bazenville-Ryes en route to Juno. Among its nearly 1000 souls, it shares the high ground with British, American, Canadian and German soldiers. The only borders here are lovely weed-free plantings of roses, oregano and lavender.
From up on the plateau, we parallel the north coast with only a fifteen-minute descent to the coastal towns.
Our Juno Beach guide, takes us on a 45-minute outdoor tour including the insides of a bunker before we load into a simulated LCT (Landing Craft Transport Carrier) which time-travels back to the 1930s and 1940s in film projections along its walls.
We’re in the circular space of a seven-room permanent exhibit which leads us from pre-war Canada to present day demography and socio-economic politic. The museum message relays the Canadian-British bond—comrades-in-arms through sea, sky and land battles. Their goal: to fight and survive. Ours: to remember and appreciate.
Longues-sur-Mer
Longues-sur-Mer, the German Battery, still houses a 150-millimeter gun and four bunkers. Martine conducts the tour of the only battery to retain its original naval gun. These powerful long-range guns could have devastated had they functioned properly. The four guns were up, ready and firing over the 20-kilometer range, but a sand dune blocked the telescopic view for the shiny new range-finder still in its box. Without a range-finder, the guns fired blindly like big barking dogs, until direct hits silenced two of them just before the surrender.
Our own range-finder breaks down in a patch of stinging nettles. Instructions read, ‘Accidental path; be careful’ at the foot of Mount Cavalier. A prickly one-kilometer stretch, but then we pass wheat fields sculpted into wheat-a-bix bales. Small villages, chateaux and churches appear. Voila! The laiterie or dairy offers up its flavours in creamy strawberry, raspberry, butter caramel, violet and passion-fruit scoops.
Back at the hub, the cathedral’s Mum-and-Dad towers point as if to say, ‘Asseyez-vous. Mangez… Sit. Eat.’ We comply with a double dessert of flan and tart, café au lait, and feel as if we’ve been filled to bitter-sweetness from Bayeux’s hub to the beaches on the rim.
We’ve spoken, gone to where the poppies blow. We’ve seen the war-like course of history: eleventh-century tapestry re-enactment of the defining battle of the 1st millennium, and the twentieth-century landing sights.
This summer, 2014, we visited Portsmouth’s D-Day Museum to view the recently-completed Overlord Tapestry that commemorates D-Day. I met Mary Turner Verrier, a 91-year-old Red Cross Nurse and veteran of Dieppe, Dunkirk and D-Day. Mary treated casualties of war, both civilians and servicemen, primarily for flash burns.
‘Everyone moved like a family…one fellow I kissed on the forehead, a German boy, died, and that cut yours truly down to size…What value is war, and what purpose served?’ said Mary.
Mary, twelve years younger than my mother, joined up at the age of seventeen. She saw the allied troops leave for the French coast on D-Day, directly across the English Channel or La Manche, ‘the sleeve’ as the French say, to await the wounded in the floating hospital, Queen Alexandra.
Speaking to Mary was like touching the past; touching my parents’ uniforms and treasuring, through her words and memories, the true meaning of sacrifice and courage.
‘The torch; be yours to hold it high,’ says the World War I poem.
In a dancing dialogue, one with the other, we hope it is enough.
We hope. It is enough.
Full Day Private Tour of Historical Normandy Sites from Bayeux
If You Go:
From London’s St. Pancras Eurostar/King’s Cross Underground Station via the Chunnel (Channel Tunnel) to Paris Nord (one-hour time difference). Cross the Paris underground to St. Lazarre to board the train to Caen. Transfer to a local train to Bayeux via Coutances.
Check websites www.eurostar.com and www.voyages-sncf.com for telephone access numbers, reservation and prepayment info as well as service in English. In order to crisscross London and Paris undergrounds, pre-purchase Metro tickets to save time. French ones can be obtained on the Eurostar, once aboard at the train’s cafeteria. English ones should be bought ahead-of-time and stashed for the return trip.
Private Tour: Normandy Landing Beaches, Battlefields, Museums and Cemeteries from Bayeux
About the author:
Joan Boxall is a poet and non-fiction writer with features in ‘Senior Living’ and ‘Coast & Kayak’ magazines. She’s published six you-tubes, including several on the topic of conservation. Her website is www.joanboxall.com. Twitter handle: @corkyjoan. E-mail: joanbxll@gmail.com.” Joan is working on her first book, combining her poems with her late brother’s artwork. She is a member of BCATW, Pandora’s Vox Vocal Ensemble and an Executive member with North Shore Writers’ Association.
Image credits:
Bayeux Tapestry by Myrabella / Public domain
All photos by Joan Boxall.
No one remembers its history exactly but there is some thought that the fair originated in the middle ages. In 1697 the historian Christoph Wagenseil, a native of Nuremberg, mentioned the Christkindlesmarkt in the second history of the town where he described the event much as it is celebrated today.
My wife and I are visiting with relatives and enjoying the brisk air. There are golden angels hanging everywhere. This is a very popular festival in Germany and one that is also enjoyed by tourists. We pass by rows and rows of colorful booths, each filled with such holiday delights as glittering Christmas tree decorations, clever toys from Nuremberg craftsmen, marvelous Lebkuchen, a cookie usually made from honey, spices, nuts, or candied fruit, and pungent gingerbread. Then are also figurines of the Christ Child in his crib, surrounded by Mary, Joseph, and adoring shepherds. Faintly in the distance there is music and as we draw nearer we hear the sound of a children’s choir performing a variety of Christmas songs. We linger awhile to enjoy the moment and the spirit of Christmas.
There are booths filled with such specialties as savory-smelling roasted sausages, delicately grilled herrings, and my favorites schaschlik (skewered meat usually lamb) and mulled wine. We partake of the mulled wine to help warm us in the cool winter air. There are sweets, of course, all kinds of traditional candies and all manner of cookies. The Nuremberg Christkindlsmarkt is full of wonderful sights, sounds and smells. It symbolizes for adults unforgettably beautiful childhood memories and it is little short of paradise for all age groups. However, it is also important to discover other Christmas markets in Europe.
The 
My wife and I and my cousin and his wife walked toward the Ljubljanica River. This year the Christmas season began on Tuesday, December 3, 2013 with the decoration of the town’s buildings and Christmas trees with lights that were switched on throughout the city. There was about 64 kilometers of lighting sculptures and light garlands installed on the trees and seven spruces located in the Preseren Trg (Market), at Figovec, in Levstikov Trg, Pod Tranco, next to the City Hall and in its Atrium as well as on the Ljubljana Castle. This was the beginning of the festive season that lasted until the December 31 New Year’s Eve celebration.
Along the banks of the Ljubljanica River there were wooden stalls set up, decorated with Christmas ornaments and the scent of sausage; pastries, roasted chestnuts, and hot mulled wine filled the air. Vendors were also selling an assortment of unique Christmas gifts. All around us the varied colored lights begin to sparkle. The Franciscan church of the Annunciation on Preseren Square its pink façade aglow and its statuesque columns were bathed in white lights highlighting the face of the church. On the steps there was a crowd of people exiting while others patiently waited to enter the church to view the nativity scene and numerous religious displays inside.
New this year to the festivities was an open-air life-size outdoor Nativity scene with a wooden manger, figures of the three Magi, shepherds, sheep and other animals all made out of straw. This was made by the Anton Kravanja Christmas Cribs Association.
Recognizable to any medieval citizen, the Baptistery and Duomo remain the heart of Florence. Dante’s ‘bel San Giovanni’ is one of the city’s oldest and most famous buildings. Medieval houses still line the Piazza Duomo, many still proudly displaying a stone coat of arms. Like many Florentines of the time, Dante was baptized in the large octagonal font of the Basilica. The building itself dates back to the 4th century. The 13th century mosaics covering the ceiling show with graphic detail the horrors and glories of the Last Judgment. Dante never saw Ghiberti’s famed doors, for they would not grace the building for another century.
For the hardy, 463 steps lead from the floor of the Duomo and up through a labyrinth of corridors and stairwells to the top of the cupola. (The most difficult part of the climb is over the arch; there is a spot here for lovers to place a padlock and throw away the key. In hidden corners remain marks left on the brickwork by the medieval builders.) The cupola soars to the height of the neighbouring hills. The view embraces the history of Florence, with many a medieval street following the course of their Roman precursors. Private palaces survive, and a few towers – or torre, outlawed in 1250 – still remain.
Dominating the Palazzo Vecchio, the Piazza della Signora has continued as the centre of political activity since the Middle Ages. Heavy traffic has been banned since 1385. The imposing façade of the Palazzo Vecchio has remained virtually unchanged since it was built (1299 – 1302) – Dante writes of how the houses of the Ghibelline Uberti were demolished after the triumph of the Guelfs, and the new Palazzo built on their ruins. (The Piazza della Signora is itself built over Roman ruins.)
Walking beneath the arch into the Via Santa Margherita leads past the 12th century Santa Margherita de’ Cerchi, where the poet married Gemma Donati (they were betrothed when Dante was nine). It is also where he first saw Beatrice Portinari, the woman he immortalized in his writing. Beatrice’s father, Folco Portinari, is buried here.
Standing near the site of the original Roman crossing of the Arno, this was the city’s only bridge until 1218. In Dante’s time the Ponte Vecchio was home to butchers and grocers; since the 16th C it had been the place to shop Florence’s most spectacular jewellery.
On the left of the church runs the Costa di San Giorgio; Galileo once lived at No 9. At the end of the road stands the Porta San Giorgio, the oldest of the surviving city gates (Florence was still a wall city in Dante’s time.) A steep walk away is perhaps the most unspoilt of all the Romanesque churches in Tuscany: San Miniato al Monte. It’s classical façade of green-grey and white marble has looked down over Florence since 1018.
As we stood outside the former monastic site at Glendalough, our guide, Joan, directed us to the 900-year old gateway and indicated that the original structure had two round-headed granite arches supporting a timber roof. This was the gateway to civilization at the time. The lands beyond the monastic settlement teamed with highwaymen and other dangers. I imagined terrified individuals running past us through the gate to reach the cross-inscribed stone set just inside on the right as Joan explained that Glendalough was a place of refuge. The so-called “Sanctuary Stone” defined the point of safety for those on the run. Once a refugee passed inside the gate beyond the stone, he/she was safe.
In the vicinity of the round tower, the remains of a cathedral, dedicated to St Peter and St Paul, consist of a 10th century nave and a 12th century chancel. The arch, once finely decorated, is constructed of limestone imported from Bristol, England. A wall cupboard and basin used for washing the sacred vessels used in the mass is still visible in the sacristy.
The postcard-like view of the upper lake features green hills gently rolling into the water on your left and trees at the water’s edge on your right. Opposite you in the distance, a stream descends the mountain into the lake. This tranquil setting greeted St. Kevin almost 14 centuries ago.
Walking on, you enter a grove of trees to find the derelict 11th century Reefert Church with its stone nave and chancel. This church was a major attraction for those on pilgrimage to Glendalough as St. Kevin’s relics were housed here after his death.
Slowly Diane and I climbed to the summit of the 300-foot high limestone promontory known as the Rock of Cashel. At the top, we were rewarded with a panoramic view of the green fields of County Tipperary below and the town of Cashel at the base. Despite the presence of the town below, the rock feels isolated.
Set next to the round tower, you find the shell of the second cathedral on site, dating to 1235. The current gray stone structure is cruciform with a central tower. The nave, which was never completed, is shorter than the choir. The north transept houses three sarcophagi, dating the 16th century, each with carved bas reliefs of the apostles around the periphery. The Protestant Church of Ireland abandoned this cathedral in the mid 17th century and then had the roof removed to collect the lead for ammunition. The cathedral lacks a roof to this day.
Inside the chapel, you find a white vaulted ceiling with plaster fragments falling off. The whitewash, dating from the Reformation in the 16th century, was used to cover the oldest frescoes in Ireland including those of the Nativity. An intricately carved sarcophagus at the back of the chapel might possibly be that of King Cormac himself.
On a previous visit to Paris, I had been soundly rebuked by an elderly French gentleman when I told him that I’d never visited Sainte-Chapelle, so on this visit I was determined to rectify my earlier omission. I’m so glad I took that gentleman’s advice, for Sainte Chapelle, with its glorious stained glass windows is a sight not to be missed.
My next port of call, still in the same Palace of Justice complex, was the Conciergerie, on the west side of the island, facing the Quai d’Horlage. The Conciergerie takes its name from the post of the Concierge, a high-ranking official who was placed in command of the Palace of Justice when Charles V moved his royal palace to the Louvre. Part of the Palace was converted to a prison in 1391 and, over the centuries, criminals from all walks of life whiled away their miserable years in the dank cells. The Conciergerie is best remembered, however, for those imprisoned during the French Revolution, when citizens suspected of being counter-revolutionaries were incarcerated in the Conciergerie while they awaited their turn at the guillotine. The most famous prisoner of all was Marie Antoinette, wife of the ill-fated Louis XVI, who awaited her execution in a tiny cell, only separated from her guards’ constant surveillance, by a curtain drawn across half the cell.
The Ile Saint-Louis was originally called the “Island of the Cows” but was renamed in honour of Louis IX. The connecting bridge to the Ile de la Cité was completed around 1628 and a bridge to the mainland was built in 1635. Once access to the island was accomplished, building began in earnest – all the nouveau riche – the wealthy farmers, merchants and members of the bureaucracy – hurriedly bought land and built beautiful hôtels on the eastern half of the island. Development on the western side came later, where the houses were built in the same elegant design.
