The colour of my day
Apr. 16th, 2006 06:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skyringCatching up.
A day of muted tones. The green-grey of the English Channel, the universal grey of low clouds, the dark French gris of the squared stone Norman houses, the German grau of concrete fortifications, and my own dark Australian thoughts.
Around me in this little Bayeux bar are the cheerful tones of tourists from Pennsylvania and Fort Worth, the bright highlights of the dying day, and the mellow gold of my blonde beer.
“Welcome to our Liberators” says the sign on the door of the bar, and the tourists are made welcome, sixty years and more after liberation. Bayeux was the first French town to be released from the grey steel German grip of occupation, and although nobody in this bar could possibly remember the day, the collective memory lingers.
The invasion or “debarquement” is everywhere here. Street names recall the liberation, road signs point to the sites and the museums, and memorials and reminders abound. The tour buses meet the incoming trains in the station yard under my window, the green “Battlebus” among them, and the tourists on their day trips climb aboard, heavy-set middleaged war junkies, their skinny wives and their bored children. And one or two old men with grey in their hair and a flame in their eyes. You just know.
I had had my petit-djeuner of coffee, croissant and baguette here – the bar doubles as breakfast room in the mornings – and planned my day with the aid of the tourist map found in every shop in the district.
I mentally ticked off the highlights, but as it turned out, the day’s route depended more on the chances of French intersections than any conscious strategy.
Somehow I turned off the ring-road one roundabout too early, and my silver-grey Opel was pointed on the highway towards Cherbourg without me intending it.
“Eh bien”, I thought to myself, and settled on a back-up itinerary that reversed my plan. I couldn’t really go wrong. From here all I needed to do was turn off to the north at any time and I’d strike the invasion beaches somewhere or other.
In the meantime, I got up to a cruising speed of 110kmh on the excellent four-lane road and experimented with the cruise control. The highway was good, almost deserted, well signposted and about as bland as any other road in the Western world. High banks and screens of trees blocked out most of the countryside, and what little I could see was universally green with occasional nondescript cattle or tractors. At last I considered that I had gone far enough west, and lacking a big sign pointing me at my exact destination, I pulled off at the next exit.
In an instant everything changed. From a straight, boring highway to a narrow winding lane, and here I was virtually driving through farmyards, solid old buildings bare centimetres away on either side. A sneeze and I’d be bouncing off them. I was surprised there were no streaks of bright hire-car paint about wing mirror height. If I met an oncoming tour bus I'd be in trouble and if two of them ever passed each other in one of these narrow gaps, they'd be wedged tight.
The road itself was narrow, literally a lane wide enough for one vehicle at a time, and any passing would have to involve liberal use of the verges. I stayed focused on the right hand side of the road, because if I relaxed, took the centre and found myself suddenly confronted with oncoming traffic, I knew that I would automatically pull to the left as the local driver went to the right and we would meet somewhere in the middle with devastating results to my insurance excess.
I was all at once intimate with the countryside. Here cows were no longer distant shapes, but peered over farmyard gates at me. I could have stretched out a hand and stroked them. A touch on the horn and they would have turned and run.
The buildings almost jutted out ionto the road. They were solid square buildings, standing as they had for centuries, and if a narrow muddy cart track was now bitumen it didn’t matter to them. They had seen the royal troops of the Ancien Regime, the imperial standards of Napoleon’s battalions, the camions of the republic, the Mercedes staff cars of the Germans and the American half-tracks. A cautious Australian grappling with the gearstick of a hire car was neither here nor there.
Which pretty much summed up my approach to navigation. I knew I’d get there, the road was marked on my map, as I discovered when I finally found a place wide enough to pull off for a moment, but where exactly I was, ah, that was a mystery.
It was picturesque, no doubt about that, and I could see how the bocages or hedgerows that divided the fields had proven difficult for the Allies. The English hedges that they had trained amongst had been flimsy things compared to these broad, high banks overgrown with brambles, bushes and trees. Sometimes there were two side by side with a laneway running between. Perfect terrain for concealment and cover, and the German defenders had extracted a heavy toll on the invaders.
Soon enough I was on the coast road and then it was only a matter of minutes before I was entering the car park of La Pointe du Hoc. During the war, this high-cliffed cape had been heavily fortified for a battery of six 155mm guns, guns which could wreak havoc on the invasion beaches to either side. An assault force of American Rangers had scaled the cliffs, overhelmed the defenders, and held the position for two days, sustaining fearful causualties in the process. As it happened, the guns had not yet been emplaced but they were discovered nearby and destroyed.
Sixty years ago? Sixty days seemed more likely, judging by the terrain, one continuous sea of bomb craters and shattered concrete fortifications. I hadn't set foot on an actual battlefield before, and I gazed wide-eyed at the effect of tonnes of high explosive on the scene. It must have been hell on earth for a short time in the dawn hours of D-Day.
I left a small book in a niche under one of the emplacements. Thomas Carlyle's On Great Men , my tribute to those who had climbed the towering cliffs under fire and then held on against massive counterattacks.
There was a slight touch of drizzle in the air as I climbed back into my car. I had a light jacket with me, but it was really only good against damp and wind.
A few kilometres east and the road dropped down to the beach, the western end of Omaha Beach, a long straight stretch of sand, pale against grey sea, sky and steeply rising land. There was a square memorial, a grounded caission from the long-gone artificial harbour, and a walkway out into the sea. I took the walk way and rested on the end, the water lapping boot deep below.
Bloody Omaha. On each of the other four invasion beaches the amphibious assaults had gone more or less according to plan, but here on Omaha, several crucial factors had worked against quick success, and for a time the outcome hung in the balance with the invaders pinned down between a shallow bank of shingle and the incomig tide.
I tried to picture the desperate scene. Explosions, whining, chattering machine guns, artillery and mortars flinging up sprays of sand, stones and blood, equipment abandoned, sinking or burning, and all around the cries of dying or terrified men.
Just a beach now. A place for swimming, walking, ball games and kite-flying. I really had to stretch to conjure up the nightmare images that opened the film Saving Private Ryan .
I sighed back into my car and found my way to one of the private museums that compete all along the invasion zone. A collection of equipment, uniforms, documents and dioramas describing the days of Occupied France, the Invasion and Liberation. At one end was a simulated beach, with muted explosions and machine guns on the soundtrack. In mt time I've heard the real and deafening roar of modern explosives, and I wondered if this faint echo of the real thing could conjure up the memories for the veterans who still visit here.
I wonder. It's a rare veteran that talks of the true hoprrors of war. They'll describe the poker games, the songs, the crowded, uncomfortable quarters, the chow, their buddies... Anything but battle.
But when they talk about their comrades, all of a sudden there will be a catch in their voice, and they will trail off into mumbles and shrugs.
A short drive up the road lies the American Military Cemetery, one of the three enormous cemeteries in the district. Here are the billets of those who didn't come back, row upon row sleeping under white marble crosses and Stars of David. Far too many.
Tall flagposts bearing the Stars and Sripes watch over the graves, and here and there are small groups walking quietly. I am alone, but I cal feel the presence of all those young men, and I can imagine them with me, joking about the chow, smiling over a card game, shooting the breeze with their mates.
It is a serene and beautiful place, set just above the long expanse of Omaha. I set down a book on the low stone wall that divides the carefully maintained grounds from the grassy slope down to the sea. The Greatest Generation Speaks , a tribute to those who served. It was later caught and journalled by a visitor, who described their surprise and delight at finding a book they wanted to read sitting on a stone wall in the middle of a rain storm.
For the rain had begun in earnest as I walked by myself through the avenues. I didn't mind. Rather parky here! I heard a British visitor exclaim, but I didn't mind. Many of those lying here had been cold, wet, seasick and unhappy. But they had pressed on, confident that the only way back home, back to everything they were fighting for, lay ahead, up the hills from the beach on through Normandy, France, Germany and victory. How could I, living in the comfort and security" that they had won for me, how could I complain about a bit of rain? So the drops came down, dripping over the brim of my cap and running down my cheeks.
A day of muted tones. The green-grey of the English Channel, the universal grey of low clouds, the dark French gris of the squared stone Norman houses, the German grau of concrete fortifications, and my own dark Australian thoughts.
Around me in this little Bayeux bar are the cheerful tones of tourists from Pennsylvania and Fort Worth, the bright highlights of the dying day, and the mellow gold of my blonde beer.
“Welcome to our Liberators” says the sign on the door of the bar, and the tourists are made welcome, sixty years and more after liberation. Bayeux was the first French town to be released from the grey steel German grip of occupation, and although nobody in this bar could possibly remember the day, the collective memory lingers.
The invasion or “debarquement” is everywhere here. Street names recall the liberation, road signs point to the sites and the museums, and memorials and reminders abound. The tour buses meet the incoming trains in the station yard under my window, the green “Battlebus” among them, and the tourists on their day trips climb aboard, heavy-set middleaged war junkies, their skinny wives and their bored children. And one or two old men with grey in their hair and a flame in their eyes. You just know.
I had had my petit-djeuner of coffee, croissant and baguette here – the bar doubles as breakfast room in the mornings – and planned my day with the aid of the tourist map found in every shop in the district.
I mentally ticked off the highlights, but as it turned out, the day’s route depended more on the chances of French intersections than any conscious strategy.
Somehow I turned off the ring-road one roundabout too early, and my silver-grey Opel was pointed on the highway towards Cherbourg without me intending it.
“Eh bien”, I thought to myself, and settled on a back-up itinerary that reversed my plan. I couldn’t really go wrong. From here all I needed to do was turn off to the north at any time and I’d strike the invasion beaches somewhere or other.
In the meantime, I got up to a cruising speed of 110kmh on the excellent four-lane road and experimented with the cruise control. The highway was good, almost deserted, well signposted and about as bland as any other road in the Western world. High banks and screens of trees blocked out most of the countryside, and what little I could see was universally green with occasional nondescript cattle or tractors. At last I considered that I had gone far enough west, and lacking a big sign pointing me at my exact destination, I pulled off at the next exit.
In an instant everything changed. From a straight, boring highway to a narrow winding lane, and here I was virtually driving through farmyards, solid old buildings bare centimetres away on either side. A sneeze and I’d be bouncing off them. I was surprised there were no streaks of bright hire-car paint about wing mirror height. If I met an oncoming tour bus I'd be in trouble and if two of them ever passed each other in one of these narrow gaps, they'd be wedged tight.
The road itself was narrow, literally a lane wide enough for one vehicle at a time, and any passing would have to involve liberal use of the verges. I stayed focused on the right hand side of the road, because if I relaxed, took the centre and found myself suddenly confronted with oncoming traffic, I knew that I would automatically pull to the left as the local driver went to the right and we would meet somewhere in the middle with devastating results to my insurance excess.
I was all at once intimate with the countryside. Here cows were no longer distant shapes, but peered over farmyard gates at me. I could have stretched out a hand and stroked them. A touch on the horn and they would have turned and run.
The buildings almost jutted out ionto the road. They were solid square buildings, standing as they had for centuries, and if a narrow muddy cart track was now bitumen it didn’t matter to them. They had seen the royal troops of the Ancien Regime, the imperial standards of Napoleon’s battalions, the camions of the republic, the Mercedes staff cars of the Germans and the American half-tracks. A cautious Australian grappling with the gearstick of a hire car was neither here nor there.
Which pretty much summed up my approach to navigation. I knew I’d get there, the road was marked on my map, as I discovered when I finally found a place wide enough to pull off for a moment, but where exactly I was, ah, that was a mystery.
It was picturesque, no doubt about that, and I could see how the bocages or hedgerows that divided the fields had proven difficult for the Allies. The English hedges that they had trained amongst had been flimsy things compared to these broad, high banks overgrown with brambles, bushes and trees. Sometimes there were two side by side with a laneway running between. Perfect terrain for concealment and cover, and the German defenders had extracted a heavy toll on the invaders.
Soon enough I was on the coast road and then it was only a matter of minutes before I was entering the car park of La Pointe du Hoc. During the war, this high-cliffed cape had been heavily fortified for a battery of six 155mm guns, guns which could wreak havoc on the invasion beaches to either side. An assault force of American Rangers had scaled the cliffs, overhelmed the defenders, and held the position for two days, sustaining fearful causualties in the process. As it happened, the guns had not yet been emplaced but they were discovered nearby and destroyed.
Sixty years ago? Sixty days seemed more likely, judging by the terrain, one continuous sea of bomb craters and shattered concrete fortifications. I hadn't set foot on an actual battlefield before, and I gazed wide-eyed at the effect of tonnes of high explosive on the scene. It must have been hell on earth for a short time in the dawn hours of D-Day.
I left a small book in a niche under one of the emplacements. Thomas Carlyle's On Great Men , my tribute to those who had climbed the towering cliffs under fire and then held on against massive counterattacks.
There was a slight touch of drizzle in the air as I climbed back into my car. I had a light jacket with me, but it was really only good against damp and wind.
A few kilometres east and the road dropped down to the beach, the western end of Omaha Beach, a long straight stretch of sand, pale against grey sea, sky and steeply rising land. There was a square memorial, a grounded caission from the long-gone artificial harbour, and a walkway out into the sea. I took the walk way and rested on the end, the water lapping boot deep below.
Bloody Omaha. On each of the other four invasion beaches the amphibious assaults had gone more or less according to plan, but here on Omaha, several crucial factors had worked against quick success, and for a time the outcome hung in the balance with the invaders pinned down between a shallow bank of shingle and the incomig tide.
I tried to picture the desperate scene. Explosions, whining, chattering machine guns, artillery and mortars flinging up sprays of sand, stones and blood, equipment abandoned, sinking or burning, and all around the cries of dying or terrified men.
Just a beach now. A place for swimming, walking, ball games and kite-flying. I really had to stretch to conjure up the nightmare images that opened the film Saving Private Ryan .
I sighed back into my car and found my way to one of the private museums that compete all along the invasion zone. A collection of equipment, uniforms, documents and dioramas describing the days of Occupied France, the Invasion and Liberation. At one end was a simulated beach, with muted explosions and machine guns on the soundtrack. In mt time I've heard the real and deafening roar of modern explosives, and I wondered if this faint echo of the real thing could conjure up the memories for the veterans who still visit here.
I wonder. It's a rare veteran that talks of the true hoprrors of war. They'll describe the poker games, the songs, the crowded, uncomfortable quarters, the chow, their buddies... Anything but battle.
But when they talk about their comrades, all of a sudden there will be a catch in their voice, and they will trail off into mumbles and shrugs.
A short drive up the road lies the American Military Cemetery, one of the three enormous cemeteries in the district. Here are the billets of those who didn't come back, row upon row sleeping under white marble crosses and Stars of David. Far too many.
Tall flagposts bearing the Stars and Sripes watch over the graves, and here and there are small groups walking quietly. I am alone, but I cal feel the presence of all those young men, and I can imagine them with me, joking about the chow, smiling over a card game, shooting the breeze with their mates.
It is a serene and beautiful place, set just above the long expanse of Omaha. I set down a book on the low stone wall that divides the carefully maintained grounds from the grassy slope down to the sea. The Greatest Generation Speaks , a tribute to those who served. It was later caught and journalled by a visitor, who described their surprise and delight at finding a book they wanted to read sitting on a stone wall in the middle of a rain storm.
For the rain had begun in earnest as I walked by myself through the avenues. I didn't mind. Rather parky here! I heard a British visitor exclaim, but I didn't mind. Many of those lying here had been cold, wet, seasick and unhappy. But they had pressed on, confident that the only way back home, back to everything they were fighting for, lay ahead, up the hills from the beach on through Normandy, France, Germany and victory. How could I, living in the comfort and security" that they had won for me, how could I complain about a bit of rain? So the drops came down, dripping over the brim of my cap and running down my cheeks.
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Date: 2006-04-15 09:21 pm (UTC)