It was the sense of tranquility and beauty that struck me most on our visits to Juno and Omaha beaches in Normandy. Which feels slightly unbelievable considering that these were both beaches that thousands of Allied and German soldiers met their deaths during the D Day landings on 6 June 1944, during WWII.
If you’ve studied accounts of the brutal and bloody fight that took place on the Normandy beaches , or have watched movies like Saving Private Ryan, or The Longest Day, or the series, Band of Brothers, you’ll probably have a sense of why I was so startled by the peace of the beaches now.
If you’ve never looked into the event, it was when more than 200 000 Allied forces attacked the heavily defended beaches of Normandy to start the liberation of France from Nazi domination.
With my husband’s interest in WWII, it was no surprise that we visited the sites of the landings. As we drove around the region where the fighting took place, we listened to a detailed audio guide of what happened on that fateful day. It was with the soundtrack of these accounts in our minds that we stepped out of the car and made our way to the beach known as Juno.
And how beautiful and tranquil it was – a slight breeze rustling the nearby trees and the sound of the rhythmic waves as they ebbed and flowed gently onto the sand. Although we knew we hadn’t taken a wrong turning and landed up at a different beach – the large gun housings, examples of the 2 million metal caltrops that had been scattered across the beaches to deter landing craft, and a replica of a landing craft that we were able to explore were all vivid reminders of the past.
Visiting Omaha Beach was much the same – the peacefulness of the area nowadays seeming almost incongruous considering the massacre that took place there on 5 June 1944. And yet, maybe that’s how it should be. Because it left me with a profound sense that peace, tranquility and beauty can eventually replace the horror and brutality of war.
