The vast expanse of Juno Beach

Our trip to Juno Beach was a full, rich and slightly overwhelming one.  The beginning of our day at Juno Beach Centre can be read about here.

After leaving Juno Beach our guide Christophe spent the next 5 hours taking us from the west side of the beach (in Courseulles-dur-Mer) eastward, through Bernieres-sur-Mer and Saint-Aubin-sur Mer.    These three downs hold the majority of Juno Beach (which s I mentioned, is 7 km long).  Driving (and walking) up these beaches you see a few repeated patterns.  The first - memorials.  There are memorial plaques, stones, and flags at an unparalleled frequency.  Honouring different countries, regiments, and people.  Each one is similar, but yet different.  There was a moment where I found myself stopped wondering if these were just on repeat, or if they each had their own significance.  And each is unique - a testament to how many people fought, how many lives were lost, and how important this battle was to the future of the world (also known as our present).  There is the Canada house - the original house that was liberated in 1944, with names posted under it's front window.  There are bunkers, and anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns - still in the cement along the shoreline.  There are local restaurants with the bunkers still attached to it.  Tanks sit along side the street as a reminder, with plaques on them dedicated to various regiments and their impact they had on the invasion of Normandy.  

There was a moment along the beach where Mr. Becker, and shortly after, a group of our students, walked down to the water.  Placed their hands in the Atlantic.  As the group was leaving, Mr. Becker turned around and started running back up the beach to meet us.  When he got back he commented how hard to was to run up the beach.  And how much harder it must have been with 80 lbs on their backs.  Wet clothes and boots, thick military apparel, and of course, a gun in their hands.  "And then", he said to me, "I tried to imagine doing this while people were shooting at me." Trying to understand war is sometimes easier (and then again, harder) while being able to stand in someone else's shoes.  The is a large part of the reason we were here.  

After we finished our time at the Beach we had one last stop - the Beny-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery.  Over 2000 Canadian soldiers who died here at the Battle of Normandy are burried here.  Some of the same monuments we learned about from Steve were here (as determined after WWI by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission) - the Cross of Sacrifice, and the monument with the phrase "Their Name Liveth for Evermore."  

A lot of our students found this cemetery to be the most moving.  Opposed to the WWI cemeteries, the epitaphs found in this one were much more personal; this made them harder to read.  Lots of love for families, lots of sacrifice.  Honour.  Pride.  Courage.  And because of this, there were many more tears and aching hearts at the end of the day.  Some students walked around for almost an hour.  If we would have given them time to ready all 2048 headstones - many would have.  They wanted to understand.  And pay their respects.  And hear the stories.  If only we had time for them all.

And so our time in Normandy came to an end.  All too soon of course.  Until next time.

Juno Beach Centre

I've been working on this post for over a week now.  Going through 500 pictures trying to figure out how to share, explain and show what we learned, did and saw.  And there is lots.  So first off, I apologize for how long it will take for all the pictures to load, and secondly, you will find this broken into 2 posts.  There was just too much.

I wanted to talk all about the war, and educate you on the significance of every little thing we saw.  My brain is still struggling to process, and there were so many stories, battles, artifacts, places and names - too many for me to recount.  So if you need more information on D-Day and the battle that took place at Juno Beach, I know a great History teacher I can refer you to.  But for the purpose of this post I am going to simplify it - what we did, what we saw, why it mattered.  Our story.

August 31 was our WWII battlefield tour day - focusing on Juno Beach.  We had seen quite a bit from WWI, so this was a shift in the types of stories we were telling.  WWI was more about trenches and WWII was more about tanks.  It was interesting to see the shift in how wars were fought, as evident in the fields (and beaches) we visited.  War had changed drastically.  Looking back on both it could be too easy to see them as the same - just a first and second war.  But the 20+ years in between saw a lot of things change.  And these wars were definitly not the same.

We started our morning on the farm - loading the bus with our faithful driver Adri, as we journeyed 45 minutes to the town of Caen.  When we arrived it was raining heavily.  A few brave souls jumped out of the bus to take a photo of the Caen Memorial (Memorial de Caen).  This is a museum, but currently has a large statue out front of a sailor kissing a woman after the war.  The statue, 25 feet tall and officially dubbed "Unconditional Surrender" is rather controversial.  It was given to Caen as a 70th anniversary gift since the end of the war.  It is based on a picture from Life magazine from 1945 off a sailor who kissed a random women as a celebration of the end of the war.  This stature was created, because as the American who designed it said "A symbol of peace should include both men and women."  However, French feminists want it removed, and have argued that the symbol is actual assault (as coming up and kissing a random woman on the street in France would leave one charged with assault).  I didn't realize until reading more about it how controversial this image really is.

It was here in Caen that we picked up our tour guide for the day - Christophe.  He was our source of education to all things Juno Beach on this dark, somber, rainy day.  The rain did stop shortly after arriving at the beach, but the gray skies never lifted.  This didn't bother me though.  Somehow a sunny day with locals on the beach would have felt out of place for the war stories we were hearing.  The ominous skies were more appropriate, at least in my mind.

We drove from Caen to Courseulles-sur-Mer - one of the towns along the Atlantic Ocean that contains Juno Beach.  Juno is 7 km long - much bigger than I had ever imagined, and stretches through many seaside villages.  Courseulles-sur-Mer is the village that is home to the Canadian Juno Beach Centre.  It was hear that we had our first sight of Juno Beach.  We were able to get out of the bus, walk down into the sand, and watch the waves lap against the shore.  The sand is silky smooth, and unlike the farm fields full of shrapnel we met in the WWI regions, it looks more like a beach for sand castles than war.  Except the the shore line is littered with bunkers all the way down the 7 km beach.  Every once and a while you see a large block of cement in the same - evidence of something buried below.

We have an appointment at the Juno Beach Centre.  It began with an introductory film, followed by moving through a museum about the Canadian contribution to the war, here on Juno Beach.  There were so many video clips, sound clips, articles, posters and artifacts to see - more than we had time for in our 45 minutes.  This was one of the things we lamented at the end of the day - feeling rushed through the museum.  It was hard to rush, but also hard not to - we only had one day here and there was so much to see!  

Our museum visit was followed by a guided tour of the bunkers on the beach.  A representative from the Juno Beach Centre took us down below ground to understand how the beach and bunkers were set up in order to both protect themselves, and aid their offensive strategies.  The springs from the beds are still attached to the walls, and the floors are as cold and damp as they would have been in 1944.  As with our previous battlefield experiences, it is surreal to stand were they have stood.  To try and understand what it was like to have been there.  Not that much older than the students.  Maybe the same age as me.  Maybe younger.

After we left the bunkers we headed down to the beach with our Juno Beach Guide, while she told us all about what had happened here.  Maybe not ALL.  Between her and Christophe my mind is still swimming with information I am trying to piece together.  I had always imagined Juno Beach much smaller.  Like being able to see from one end to the other.  But it wasn't.  It went as far as the eye could see in both directions.  And then after Juno there was Sword Beach (to the east) and Gold Beach (to the west), with the British Forces.  And further west Utah and Omaha beaches, with the Americans.  This was not something you could observe in whole from a single watch tower.  It was a massive co-ordinated effort.  On the 6th of June, 1944, approximately 150,000 troops landed on the beaches in Normandy.  By July 4, it was over one million.  This is the largest seaborne invasion in history, and the beginning of the Allies reclaiming western Europe from the Nazi's.  I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it.

(Part 2 of the trip to Juno can be seen here)

A day in the life

A good friend of mine has a great travel philosophy - Big Day, Little Day.  The premise is simple - when traveling, alternate big busier days with little simpler days.  But I must confess, when traveling with students I often fail to adhere to this principle.  Don't get my wrong - I definitly try.  But when we get out on the road, when given a CHOICE between something, and nothing, the students choose something.  To quote a great number of them, "I'll sleep when I'm dead....there is so much more I want to see."  And that's the truth isn't it?  They've come all this way to Europe, and there is SO much to see.  Seems like a "waste" to take a break.  Except the part where a break is 100% necessary.  On day 6 students didn't think they were tired, until the day was over and they were grateful for our "normal" norman day.  On day 12 though they felt it.  Students falling asleep at the dinner table, and dragging their feet another 5 km.  I digress...

On day 6 we opted for a day of relaxation.  Kept it simple.  After breakfast at the farm (which in Normandy is a baguette, jam or marmalade, and tea or coffee served in a bowl), we took the 45 minute drive to Rouen.  Being that it was a Sunday, almost everything was closed, and the streets were quiet.  All except the local markets.  We broke into small groups of 6-7 and began to wander the streets.  My group headed to the Notre Dame Cathedral first, before walking over the Vieux Marche - or the Old Market.  It is located in the town square where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake.  Now there is a memorial to her, and a new church in her name.  The memorial has a wall, a garden, and a cross erected in the square.  Joan was burned at the stake in 1431, burned 3 times to ensure she was ash and that no relics of her body could be collected.  She was then thrown in the Seine.  Joan was considered a heroine in France during the Hundred Years War. Joan claimed to have visions from angels, that helped her aid Charles VII to reclaim France from the English.  She had great success, but at the age of 19 was captured by the English who put her on trial for a variety of charges - the main being heresy.

My group walked through he square and then the market - which contained only food and was frequented by locals.  Vegetables, Seafood and Fruit were popular, and stands with fresh Paella and other dishes were beginning to pop up.

We then headed for the biggest of the Sunday markets - Marche de la St. Marc.  Still a "locals" market, there were also stands with watches, underwear, chairs, records, used goods, clothing, cheese, dried fruit and more.  It was wonderful to be able to walk among the locals and see how they would spend their Sunday.  The regular shops of town were all closed, though we did stop at Monoprix, the local grocery store, in a hunt for something to drink.  And then there was the macaron shop - for our students first taste of a real French pastry.  It was also their first opportunity to be placing orders in French.  I was so impressed with their efforts, as were there, but of course equally overwhelmed by people responding in French MUCH faster than they were ready for.

After the market, it was time for lunch.  While some groups went for pizza, our group wanted FRENCH food - so we sought out a creperie. PERFECT choice!  What better way to start your time in France?!

After lunch we headed home.  The Monoprix was closed and markets were shut down by 1:00 PM.  Sunday's are quiet days with the family in France, and these was evident in the quiet streets of medieval Rouen.  So we headed back to the farm.  At this time a few students elected for laundry and a nap, another pair for a walk, and 1 for a run around the nature preserve.  The remaining 21 students elected for some good fashioned down time - at the BEACH!  Just a 10 minute walk from the farm was a local lake and beach.  Soft sand, cold water (which was nice given the muggy day we were having!), mini-golf, ice-cream, and fun with friends.  The beach was filled with locals and their families enjoying quality time together, and it was evident that we were the only tourists on the block.  It was fun to be able to let go and enjoy some relaxation and fun together while still engaging with the locals.

After the beach we had dinner back on the farm, complete with the best deserts you could imagine (still dreaming of their chocolate mousse!), followed up an improve game called props.  Thing group charades with random props, and much laughter.  In this game, the audience is always the winner.

So there is is.  A lazy European Sunday.  Market, lunch, beach, dinner, games.  Family.  Doesn't get better than this.