Echoes of Normandy

As the region prepares to mark the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings with official ceremonies, vigils and fireworks, JOHN FITZGERALD visits the blustery beaches and stately towns that coloured his father's wartime stories -- and pays tribute to an uncle he never knew

By JOHN FITZGERALD
Special to The Globe and Mail
Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - Page R14

CAEN, FRANCE -- While in Normandy, I carry a notebook for recording my impressions of the place. Lodged inside is a photograph of my father, who died 20 years ago. A prodigious reader and skilled storyteller, he many times recounted to his children the stories of the Blitz, Dieppe, the siege of Stalingrad, and especially the invasion of Normandy. Unable to enlist because of a heart ailment, he held an unwavering respect for those who fought and died.

Normandy is on a war footing this summer as the centrepiece of the 60th anniversary of what the French call les débarquements. The Allied D-Day landings that helped speed the destruction of Hitler's Reich are being marked in a round of official ceremonies, and thousands of veterans and other visitors are expected to attend. There will also be vigils, the laying of wreaths, and dozens of popular entertainments from fireworks displays to Big Band concerts.

But for reasons of vulnerability and loss that can be the bane, and salvation, of middle age, I'm caught up in the swirl of remembrance too. Because I'm sure my father would have liked to be here, I'm in Normandy partly on his behalf.

One afternoon, as I walk across the sand at Bernières-sur-Mer, which the Queen's Own Rifles of Canada stormed across on D-Day, I notice that my father's photograph has disappeared. It must have slipped from my notebook's pages and fallen onto the beach, and I find I'm immensely pleased about that.

Launched on June 6, 1944, with the most potent amphibious assault in history, the Allied thrust to free Normandy from German occupation and create the much-anticipated Second Front lasted almost three months and cost 5,000 Canadian lives. At its height in July, more than two million soldiers on both sides were committed to the fight.

Battered senseless was the city of Caen, where the remains of William the Conqueror lie buried in the abbey church of St-Etienne.

Part of the sprawling Abbay-aux-Hommes complex -- one of its reception rooms holds a life-sized mannequin of William, with a face modelled on Charlton Heston's and a tunic tailored by Dior -- St-Etienne is an expression of Romanesque and Gothic styles at their most compelling. Caught in the pale light of a damp morning last month, the church is a feast for the senses, with its sober knave and soaring stone columns. The tranquillity it offers is the tonic I need after rigorous days of sightseeing.

Except for an hour or so when I stop en route from Paris to savour Claude Monet's impeccable gardens at Giverny, the Norman weather I've encountered over the previous three days has been far from welcoming. There have been frequent downpours and the skies are cluttered with great, gloomy clouds. The early April chill, though, seems fitting, considering one of my main reasons for coming to Normandy, a region overlaid with luxuriant green fields. Moss-covered cottages and manor houses, stately and impenetrable, seem to appear after every turn in the road.

Tough roads they would turn out to be for many of the roughly 133,000 men, including 14,000 Canadians, who were transported on every type of vessel from Portsmouth, Southampton and other English ports 60 years ago.

Confronted with a deadly maze of mines, pikes, barbed wire and other obstacles, and under fire from German gunners, Allied troops disembarked at five designated beaches. The Americans, who provide the bulk of the D-Day invasion forces, land at beaches code-named Utah and Omaha, the British at Gold and Sword.

Four regiments of Canadians are assigned to Juno. It's a stretch of beach roughly 10 kilometres wide that takes in the small fishing port of Courseulles-sur-Mer in a sector called Mike, and to the east, in Nan sector, the villages of Bernières-sur-Mer and St. Aubin.

Opposed by the Germans, 574 Canadians are wounded in beach battles and 340 are killed. Thwarted in their attempts to capture Caen and its airport at Carpiquet -- one of the D-Day objectives that will take another month of vicious fighting to attain -- the Canadians nonetheless manage to push farther inland than either the British or the Americans, who suffer heavy casualties on Omaha Beach. Precarious though the Allies' hold is, Hitler's Atlantic Wall has been breached.

Sixty years on, the entire area around which the Battle of Normandy was played out is dotted with museums, memorials and final resting places.

The largest of these, the German military cemetery at La Cambe, located 26 kilometres from Bayeux, holds more than 21,000 graves. There are also bombed out bunkers, the remains of gun batteries, and of course, the beachheads that, even with raucous children scrambling after seashells near the dunes, strike me as sadly eloquent.

From Bayeux and Caen to La Pointe du Hoc where, on the morning of D-Day, American Rangers scale a 30-metre-high cliff to neutralize German artillery, the infrastructure of remembrance draws legions of veterans and their families, Allied and German, as well as thousands of visitors curious to see where history was made.

The trappings of tourism are evident everywhere. With three nine-hole courses, the Omaha Beach golf club I drive past is located only minutes from the site of the bloodiest of the D-Day battles, and the Caen Memorial, a cavernous museum that's dedicated to the pursuit of peace and the history of the 20th century, draws more than a half million visitors every year.

There are dozens of organized coach, minibus and taxi tours available that feature visits to the various sites of engagement. Souvenir shops, like the one called Overlord (after the code name given by the Allies to the D-Day operation) that I wander through briefly in Arromanches-sur-Mer, are stocked with miniature flags and postcards bearing battle images. Tiny toy tanks and model kits for Spitfire fighters and Heinkel bombers jockey for space with glossy, full-colour books chronicling the events of D-Day and the Allied liberation of Europe.

At Longues-sur-Mer, facing wind that feels like punches, I follow the lead of a group of high-spirited Danish teenagers -- in France on a school break -- and run my hand along the rutted concrete casement of one of the German batteries. Its thick, protruding naval gun was once capable of firing 20 kilometres out to sea, but the battery was surrendered to British troops on June 7 after an on-and-off duel with Allied warships.

In Arromanches, at the Musée du Débarquement, I examine the models of the extraordinary, prefabricated harbour known as Mulberry B that the British designed and built to move troops and supplies inland until the port of Cherbourg was secured. Sections of the two Mulberries -- the other was positioned in the Channel opposite Omaha Beach -- were made secretly in England and floated across the day after the initial landings. Each harbour consisted of 10 kilometres of flexible steel roadways that ran directly onto the shore. In the 10 months following D-Day, a guide tells me, the artificial harbour in the waters off of Arromanches was used to move four million tonnes of supplies and 2.5 million vehicles.

As I look out at the ocean, several of the concrete breakwaters, what remain of the artificial harbour, are clearly visible. I also visit the Juno Beach Centre, a new museum and cultural centre that overlooks the beach at Courseulles-sur-Mer in what was once Mike sector. Built with French and Canadian public monies, as well as individual and corporate donations, the centre's dramatic design features a pentagonal shape with sloping, interlocking walls and titanium cladding. Inside is a showcase for the values and culture of Canada, including its contribution to the war against the Axis that would leave 45,000 dead. A four-minute film that visitors see on screens as they stand in an approximation of a landing craft shows images of what troops might have seen as they drew closer to Juno Beach the morning of the invasion.

Watching this, I think of my Uncle Joe. Unmarried, aged 32, Joe was one of my mother's brothers and was killed on July 4, 1944, when he stepped on a land mine. My uncle's regiment, the North Shore (New Brunswick) was involved in the bloody slog to liberate the Caen airport at Carpiquet.

With 46 dead, it proves to be the North Shore's costliest day in the whole Normandy operation. After it's over, with the Canadians victorious, there is little left of Carpiquet but "destruction, bloodshed, suffering and death," according to a description later written by the Msgr. (Major) Raymond Hickey, the North Shore's wartime chaplain. Uncle Joe was dead before I was born. The only picture I ever see of him is a sepia one my parents keep with assorted other "snaps" in a rectangular-shaped cookie tin. Dressed in his uniform, the photograph shows him looking embarrassed and handsome.

Toward the end of my stay in Normandy, I find myself in the Canadian military cemetery at Bény-sur-mer. Immaculately maintained, with the backs of its 2,049 headstones facing the ocean, it's the smaller of two Canadian military cemeteries in Normandy, the other being at Cintheaux between Caen and Falaise. In my excitement about being here, I've checked the register of the dead once and not found Joe's name. Back in the car, feeling a disappointment that is surprisingly intense, I decide to take a second look. This time, I see his name immediately, on a page that keeps flipping back at the edges because of the wind.

Walking gingerly along the rows, I locate the gravestone. Without quite knowing what to say or even think, I simply stare for a while and touch the top of the stone briefly before backing away.

Pack your bags

Juno Beach Centre: Voie des Français Libres, Courseulles-sur-Mer; phone: 33 (2) 3137 3217;
http://www.junobeach.org. Open daily from 9 a.m to 7 p.m. during the summer months. From Oct. 1 to March 31, the centre is open from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Caen Memorial: Esplanade Eisenhower, Caen; 33 (2) 3106 0644; http://www.memorial-caen.fr. Open daily from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Battle of Normandy Memorial Museum: Bayeux; 33 (2) 3151 4690. Retraces the 80 days of fighting in Normandy that occurred after D-Day. The museum has an exhaustive collection of weapons, uniforms and other war material, including a section on Canada's role.

TOURS

There are numerous tours available of the D-Day landing beaches by chartered bus, taxi, and private guided tours. For more information, call the French government tourist office in Montreal at (514) 288-4264 or e-mail mfrance@attcanada.net. The following companies offer D-Day tours:

Perception Travel: 44 (1844) 290 635; http://www.d-daytours.com.

Battlebus: 33 (2) 3122 2882; http://www.battlebus.fr.

MORE INFORMATION

To see a list of the hundreds of events planned throughout Normandy this summer to commemorate the 60th anniversary of D-Day, visit http://www.normandiememoire.com.