A Bean Abroad: Day in Normandy

We got up early, took the train to a town called Bayeaux, met our tour guide, and visited the D DAY BEACHES. Our tour guide Francois was the best. He was extremely knowledgeable and so enthusiastic, you could really tell that he cared about teaching us the area and details of what went down (other than the obvious, D Day happened here). A few things he taught us that I didn't know was that after D Day, it took until the middle of August to fully liberate Normandy from the Germans. He showed us a garden in an abbey where a German Panzer unit executed 20 Canadians in secret whose remains weren't even found until after the war when the family who lived there moved back. He taught us about the German's use of slave labour (Jewish people, prisoners of war) to build their defenses along the Atlantic Wall, which ran from the French-Spanish border all the way up the Norwegian coast. He showed us the first house to be liberated by (Canadian!!) soldiers coming up from the beaches. The house is still there, still lived in, and it is now named Canada House, in honour of the Canadian soldiers who came 72 years prior. He explained how much it meant to the French and that they remember very clearly and are still thankful that we Canadians volunteered to come fight (read, not conscripted, he said that meant so much to them) from almost the very moment (one week later) than war erupted in Europe, And it's true, we visited half a dozen small towns that afternoon, and each one had a Canadian flag flying. The most touching part of what Francois taught us was how he impressed on us the importance that the French place on remembering the war, Day, and the Allied troops who fought on the beaches, fields and streets that we walked on. He explained about his grandmother would cry and shake during thunder storms when he was little and would visit, because the thunder was as loud as the planes that used to bomb. He also explained about the main city in Lower Normandy, Caen, was 80% wiped out from bombing. He said that after the war, the French rebuilt using the same bricks so that everything would look as close as possible to before the war tore their towns to bits.

The most moving part of the day by far though was visiting the Juno Beach center. It was all good and basically just a nice museum until the last part, where it hit you right in the feels. They played this little 15 minute movie about young Canadian men that went to fight. The way the movie was made was film taken during the war, with narrators reading real letters these men would have written home. And they weren't nice letters, it was about how scared, lonely, cold they were, how brave they were trying to be. The videos were chronological, and then when the film from D Day played, it showed the miserable weather they landed in and the fighting and the bombs and you heard these men, boys, within a few years of my age, fighting and shouting, and dying. The movie ended in fading from an old black and white video of the beach to one from now in colour, saying "When you walk the beaches, don't forget that they did too", and with print on the screen that said "they walk among us". Talk about a moving scene. I went out for a walk on the beach right after to reflect on all that I had learned and saw that day, and sobbed. Visiting was such a powerful and meaningful and emotional experience that I feel so grateful to have had.

That's it for now folk, it's 8 am, I've been up since 5, I'm going to get dressed and go talk to the front desk lady and get breakfast and see mom and papa at their apartment and hopefully knock my to do list out of the park so that I can stop stressing about all these little shitty details.