Opinion: Remembering the fallen heroes of Normandy's sacred bluffs
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Rows of white crosses and, now and then, a Star of David roll over the green bluffs at the U.S. military cemetery in Normandy. Part of the power is their simplicity and sameness. The headstones of 9,388 Americans, most of whom lost their lives in the Allied invasion of Normandy 80 years ago this week, are inscribed with name, rank, the division in which they served and the date on which they gave their lives - no hometowns, ages, or jobs, no details of how they died. It is not because those things are insignificant, but because every person buried there fell in a common crucial cause - the battle to free Europe and defeat Nazism.
Their families chose for them to stay there above the beaches in Normandy, where they fought and now rest together. Nearby cemeteries hold the bodies of thousands more - British, Canadian and commonwealth country soldiers who also died in Normandy that summer. I feel a personal debt to those soldiers, sailors and flyers. As a child, my late mother-in-law, Marie-Amelie Richard, and her family spent four years living in the cellar of their Normandy farmhouse. German staff officers had taken over their home.
Many of the young men buried in the bluffs of those cemeteries a few miles away were only a few years older than my mother-in-law and her teenage brothers and sisters. Those soldiers gave their lives for strangers in another country far from home. The American citizen soldiers knew the difference between right and wrong, wrote the historian Stephen Ambrose, and they didn't want to live in a world in which wrong prevailed. So they fought, and won, and we, all of us, living and yet to be born, must be profoundly grateful.
Our family spends a few weeks in Normandy every summer. We'll be there in a few days. At night, we walk that beach where there was such blood, fire, fear, courage and death 80 years ago. It's empty and majestic now. Our dog romps along the sand and plays with the waves. Our daughters run barefoot and pick up seashells. I feel that I owe my family to those soldiers who fell there and are buried just a few miles away. In a way, maybe we all do.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHEN THE LIGHTS GO ON AGAIN")
VERA LYNN: (Singing) When the lights go on again all over the world.
Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.