Thoughts from a German Bunker in France
I’ve always thought the French countryside is beautiful. Passing Paris the Eiffel Tower shrinks, first becoming a silhouette of lights protruding upwards like a huge spear, then fading into the cloudy sky completely. We are heading west past Moulin Rouge and Champs Elysee. Past the grey concrete houses and small, side street coffee shops with metal, lattice chairs and tables with daisy ornaments. The last time I was in Paris I officiated a friend’s wedding. I remember looking down on the city lights from inside the Eiffel Tower, watching lego-sized humans strut across slabs of concrete, and wondering how this city of love got it’s name. Paris doesn’t have the magical power to possess and give love, in fact the lackluster stone and rock are altogether unappealing. Without people and their love stories this place would just be another city located somewhere in the world. However, that is not what I’m here to discuss today. Not love, nor the culture of this eternal city.
Moving away from the French world of fashion, literature, art and philosophy, culture fizzles out and is replaced by fields of mismatched greens. Their clashing shades create harmony. Driving on, field after field filled with delicate colza flowers blur by, their school bus yellow petals playfully wink in the wind at passing cars. Roads cutting through these bright fields modernize the natural landscape. Roads that lead to, if you head far enough West, bloody battlefields and a struggle for the cultural empire of Paris.
Enter Western France, where strong winds from the English Channel chill you down to the core and grip your insides with icy fingers. But, maybe it isn’t the cold gripping me. Maybe my feeling of cold is a biological response to the anxiety I’m experiencing while standing on this yellow sand. Waves sprinting towards the shore roar with frothing, white faces and pummel themselves against the beach. Tall stalks of grass, stout deciduous trees and thorny vines form a dense thicket of vegetation which teethes back and forth with the strong wind.
Flat beach, then vegetation covering a slight incline, then a steeper incline about 30-50 feet upwards depending on the area–all of this (minus the vegetation) to run across, hide behind, crawl up and die on. This is land where soldiers died by the thousands fighting for conflicting ideals. This is a strip of beach, like four others, that represent the preservation of the mid-afternoon coffee and crowded streets, like Champs Elysee, where you can buy French chardonnay and the latest designer goods without considering the 2,500 plus soldiers who died in one morning on the west coast. Trying to fathom the size, contribution, pre-training and strategy of the allied invasion in Normandy will leave your head spinning, and, in par with human nature, causes you to forget and ignore what you don’t fully understand. Humans block out the adverse, the negative and that which doesn’t agree with their life view. It’s called the confirmation bias. We all do it, especially with emotionally intense situations like the destruction of a town of the death of thousands of people.
Years ago I would sit at a coffee shop in my hometown and write. The conversations I heard there stick with me today. One time, to my right, an elderly couple, both retired, hunched over from age and frail in movements and speech, were discussing whether a ten cent difference in the price of coffee from this place to another made the coffee better. Or, whether paying ten cents meant they were getting drip coffee here versus the other place. The semantics of the discussion irked me and I wanted to stand up and hand the old man ten cents saying, “here, now your debate can end and you can start talking about more important things like your happiness, how you are going to spend the rest of your life, or what effects current economic policy will have on your grandchildren.” But, I didn’t. Instead, I let my frustration grow and now I can’t help but wonder if this was the ideal that was “worth” defending.
For all of our advancements, our technology and ability to heal and better the lives of others we are infants in our relationships with other inhabitants in the world. Our civility is shown in the moments when we desire to kill, topple or destroy other nations. If an individual’s moral character and greatness is shown by his response to tough moments, so too is a nation, any nation, defined by it’s response to the most difficult of situations.
As a citizen of the US I have to wonder where this leaves my country and what kind of legacy we are creating? James Truslow Adams defined this ideological direction of America in 1931. His words, in the Epic of America were hopeful and expectant of a bright future where “life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement”(214). Sadly, this dream is dying, killed slowly by a lack of morality. My spirit rebels against the thought, shames me for having thought it, then slowly begins to give in to the idea.
Destroyed by materialism, hardly recognizable as the same pure desire Adams had for us. Amidst pork barrel legislation, deficit spending, rampant corporatism and advertisement created gender roles I struggle finding the glorious empire Adams imagined. This frustration was the reason that sent me out of the country. The reason I left in search of answers I did not even have questions for. Emotions are powerful and more so when tied to rationality. If you understand the relationship between the two the world will make greater sense. But in this case I was misled. My emotions yearned for a country where hard work, morality and justice could bring individual prosperity, but came at odds with the world I found. I write this piece for that reason; not as a history lesson describing the stand eight countries once took.
There have been books specifically devoted to this piece of history, many of which collect dust, lost by a generation more in touch with technology then the tangible world. Instead, I care about the now, this moment, and my relationship with the present. And right now I find myself standing in the yellow sand watching waves crash along the shore. I wonder how the hell my travels are going to help me come to terms with my expectations of the world and the reality I found, and I am stuck with a sinking feeling that if I cannot reconcile the two I will never move forward. Instead, like so many males my age, I will be trapped in my own potential. Stuck in an immovable position, as if with stone legs, with only formal training from an educational system that taught me nothing about life as a verb and my role as a man in this world. And so I do the only thing that has ever made sense to me in times such as these. I pick up my notebook and began to write.
This invasion was a perfect example of deceit; the ancient military strategist Sun Tzu would have been proud. Soldiers trained for months prior to the invasion and when D-Day came only the best of the best were selected. Seeing the size of the beach in relation to my physical stature I remember Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot. In the vast universe we are a mere speck in comparison to the blackness surrounding us. Is this a depressing or a heartfelt concept of humanity, I wonder. No more depressing, and in a twisted heroic sort of way, than pushing a boulder up a hill. But, is there a silver lining providing more consolation than creating meaning, albeit pointless meaning, in the sphere of humanity? And does it even matter? The sun above hides behind the clouds, turning the sky an off shade of silver. Just the color silver, I imagine, was seen during the allied invasion. Since a full moon was necessary for illumination and a good tide this left only a few days per month where Operation Overlord could be implemented.
The biggest problem for the Allied forces would be the Atlantic wall. The Atlantic wall was not a physical wall but a system of bunkers, batteries and other defenses protecting the Atlantic coast of France from invasion.
German bunkers, rebar fortified hunks of concrete, with little horizontal slits for pouring machine gun fire onto amphibious vehicles and disembarking soldiers below, were situated on top of hills with 50 cal guns aimed at boats further out in the ocean. Today the remains of these bunkers are an eerie reminder of the destructive force that once dominated the coastline. Dropping lead missiles on infantrymen and engineers these battery units were created for one purpose–to kill. Between the hills and the shore were the anti-tank obstacles, barb wire and farms of land mines. Obstacle after obstacle stood in the wall of invading forces. The Atlantic wall covered the beaches of Normandy and during the first hour of the D-day invasion claimed over 630 lives on Omaha beach alone. If that number is difficult to comprehend, as it should be, let this put the plight in perspective: Omaha beach, a distance of only several hundred feet from shore to battery units, took US troops all day to travel across. Having landed with the sun’s rise they took over the gunnery stations at the end of the sand by late afternoon.
The second great point of inspiration was the assault on Pointe Du Hoc–a beautiful place to watch a sunrise, but not when grenades are being dropped on your head. Why your head? Because the 1st Battalion Rangers mission had to scale 100 foot cliffs to get to this point. The German defense of Du Hoc was considered “unassailable” with its 165 mm guns, network of concrete bunkers and vantage point 100 feet above sea level.
The Rangers, after being lost at sea, were easy targets for 40 minutes as they travelled 3 miles along the coast while searching for their spot of entry–Pointe Du Hoc. With specially made guns they shot ropes to the cliff top and proceeded to climb ladders up the side of the cliff. German soldiers above would cut the ropes, drop down grenades and shoot bullets onto the heads of soldiers. Soldiers below were aided by covering fire from the shore line and artillery fire from further out. If you Google map Pointe du hoc, and look at the area of land in satellite you will see a golf ball. The dimples are craters in the ground. So many artillery shells and bombs hit this area that the landscape has been permanently changed, huge 20 foot craters scar the ground and the remains of concrete bunkers are strewn about. Pointe Du Hoc was strategically positioned for Axis soldiers to hit the rest of Omaha beach with their big guns.
The Rangers summited the cliff in 25 minutes then proceeded inland. In one story, two rangers stumbled upon the 155 mm guns aimed at Utah beach, the other American landing beach. While one laid down covering fire the other used thermite grenades to destroy the 5 guns they had found and hence aided troops invading the beach. American military at it’s finest. But, maybe this is the fear Eisenhower had in mind when he told Americans in his farewell address to fear the “military industrial complex.” Our greatest achievements as a country have always fueled our desire for more.
Today I’m here watching the sunrise. I remember all the sunrises I have watched. Some of the best were from back home. Waking up early in the morning the sun would slide upwards, pulled by Apollo and his chariot. With sand, similar to the sand I’m standing in now I would feel the breeze on my face and smell fish. The breeze was cool, untouched by the day’s sun and still affected by the chilly summer night. There was a feeling of something else in the air as well, a hint of warmth and expectation. This potential, coupled with the screeches emitted from the fat, white seagulls circling overhead and the waves floating onto the shore like mermaids drifting in the ocean, was fleeting.
With each passing second another part of my life vanished before my eyes; I felt the paradox between living deeply in a moment and wanting to get on with living and capturing as many moments like this one as I could. Clenching my cold hands I let the sun warm them and in that instant felt like I was in the shower with liquid warmth pouring over my body. Dripping off of my short, blonde hair and down the rest of my body warmth flowed over my muscles and pulled my tension out through my feet. The mornings were fragile, as the newness of the day still held the promise of goodness, but could be consumed by bad at any second. Cumulus clouds could move in and, suffocating the sun’s rays, bring down a cold rain. But, right now, the only concern was this second, this passing seagull overhead and this wave cresting in a small foamy top and lapping the shore’s sand like a dog. And this was life as I wanted to remember it, as I imagined it had always been.
“Of the 35 men in my unit only 6 of us made it up the cliff. That’s all I have to say.”–1st Battalion Ranger
These are the words etched in to a hunk of metal below the names of the men who died here. The only memorial given to the men who died here. This is their legacy. Their deaths bring a sense of mortality to my own life, the precious commodity it represents and how easily we often are willing to throw it away. Those who died in France during the invasion of Normandy, and throughout the rest of the war, are a reminder that one day each of us won’t have sunrises to look at, or a feeling of expectancy towards life. They didn’t have the chance to say “no” to breakfast with dad, or an extra ten minutes in bed with a loved one. As a survival mechanism from our ancestors we become desensitized to the norm. With so much in our environments to take in we prevent overload by ignoring the familiar and only focusing on the new. So walking past St. Peters Basilica in Rome becomes just walking to school.
Skiing in the mountains of Europe, just a pastime when you can get off of work. Golden statues lose their shine and flower gardens their breathtaking beauty. How do we reconnect? How do we remove the layer of grime smothering what once created in us excitement and a playful sense of wonder with all the world had to offer? What’s needed is a shock! An attack on our senses and intellect to once again put our heads on right. The type of thing that usually only happens when a time frame is put onto something, such as having a terminally ill father or the end of a school semester in Rome.
Amazingly, the world once again regains it’s former luster, as the flowers are worth pausing for and the statues are worth being blinded by. But, with this brings the returned paradox of having the current moment and it being finite. Is there a way to have this feeling all the time? Is there a way to live deeply and still continue doing what’s required for your survival as a human being? Is there a balance, or is threat of a thing becoming finite the only way to appreciate a thing once again? For me it’s fear that keeps me sliding down a river in a wet suit in Slovenia or drinking tea in a small restaurant in Russia. Not the fear of death, but the fear of having not lived. Of my life being over before I have had a chance to experience it deeply. Of saying “no” to life’s opportunities instead of “yes.”
The sun splatters pink, orange and blue through the sky and down upon the rubble of barbwire, concrete, rebar and remaining 4 miles of Omaha beach to the East. The 6:30 am sunrise was impressive, and I couldn’t help but wonder if this was the same sort of day the soldiers here would have seen breaking. Or, more than likely, if they could even enjoy the scene with the destruction around them. It’s sad to think that something so beautiful can also mean something so horrible. Thousands of soldiers struggled along these beaches, climbed these cliffs, were blown apart and suffered painful deaths so I could see this sunrise. And thousands dying is no exaggeration. There were around 10,685 casualties during the first week of D-day for the Allied Forces.
They gave their lives, I realize, so that the elderly couple in the coffee shop would have the freedom to discuss even the least important events as if they determined the rotation of the Earth. Instead of feeling anger I felt a sense of awe, as I finally understood the importance of having that freedom. Life is never meaningless if spent in a way that makes you happy. And dictating one’s use of freedom nullifies the concept altogether. They were exercising the American Dream, the right to become equal to all others in society. And what is a greater testament to that than having the luxury of discussing small matters as if they bear great importance. A luxury, no doubt, that at one time was deemed only for the aristocracy in a society. As I turn my back to the sunset and began walking these thoughts were fresh in my mind.