nous sommes tous 70 (we are all 70)

We look out at the beaches from the cliffs and grasp that it was reality, that hundreds of thousands of mostly young men just like us, with fathers and mothers, friends, wives and children, chose to wade from boats or parachute from planes, here.  Many had never set foot in Continental Europe, had no loved ones here to fight for, and still, they got off of the boats.  They jumped out of the planes. They died before they reached the shore, or as they scaled the cliffs, or hitting the ground too fast in the dark. Each was willing to be one of the lives given in a battle strategy that depended on having more Allied men than German bullets.

As we drove home from Normandy we stopped in Brussels for chocolate and a bit of shopping. Nearing the antique shop, I saw mounds of flowers and two barrel-chested men in uniforms standing guard, powerful weapons at the ready.  On the corner, a pair of ten-year-old boys whispered to each other with somber faces. My shop was next door to--shared a wall with--the Jewish Museum, where only a week earlier a jihadist had walked in and gunned down the visitors, killing four people.

The conflicts of Normandy aren't over.  They have just shape-shifted.

Still, we and the German friends that we were traveling with, grandchildren of sympathizers on both sides, stood on the cliffs of Pointe-du-Hoc and watched our children climbing in and out of bomb craters--now covered in brilliant green grass--together. Surely there is an answer in there somewhere?

See:  The Longest Day
Read:  The Origins of the Second World War, by A.J.P Taylor; The Atlantic, "How Many Tons of WWII Munitions are Found in Germany Each Year?"
Listen: The Romantic Hero, Vittorio Grigolo, Manon, Act II

(Header photo by Chief Photographer's Mate Robert F. Sargent, available from the National Archives and Records Administration. Thanks to Anne and Jörg for the article, use of their photos, and for the good company.)