Thoughts on Forbach and Normandy

(First of all a quick note: I may very well get dates, locations, times, names, etc. very, very wrong. Please forgive me, I'm working off raw memory here).

So, we went to Forbach.

For those of you who don't know, the town of Forbach, situated near the German/French border in northeastern France was liberated by my grandfather and his company in WWII during the winter of 1944/45. It's a small town in a region known more for mining and blue collar workers than wine and cheese, and probably has more in common with nearby Germany than it does France.

In fact, it's a town that you're unlikely to visit as a tourist, much less an American tourist. Oh, it's a pleasant enough place, but compared to the more spectacular regions of France, it's nothing particularly special.

Well, to most people it's nothing special. I, on the other hand, made a special point to make sure we visted this small town on the German border so that I could try to get a sense of what it was like some sixty odd years ago.

I suppose what struck me the most was...how un-special everything was. When trying to locate certain locations, I showed old pictures of these places to the officials in the tourist office; they had no idea what I was talking about, even though the location I wanted was literally two blocks away. When walking up the Avenue General Passaga (an important street during the battle of Forbach--members of my grandfather's company had to advance down this street, battling the Germans step by step), school let out for lunch; the pre-teens and elementary school kids walking down that street likely had little idea that they were walking down the site of a pitched battle. A house that once sheltered my grandfather's platoon was indistinguishable from the other houses on the block. The building that once held a machine gun nest which nearly killed my grandfather (who managed to survive a head shot from said nest), was now a bank, and barely recognizable. The doorway in which they took cover before running across the square from that nest was now the doorway to a video game store. A jungle gym stood on the hill above the town which the company descended from. People ate lunch, conducted business, or otherwise went about their lives, no thought given to what came before.

Even the tourism office was more concerned with the trains of the region then some old battle. It was a typical small town day, in a fairly typical small town.

Normandy, was, to be completely honest, the same. Utah beach was fairly empty, and could have passed for any beach, except for the small museum, monuments, and the "June 6th 1944 Bar and Grill" (get your D-Day souvenirs here!!!) right outside the entrance. Omaha beach was empty, except for a monument, and Sword Beach was a collection of cheap gift shops, bars, mini golf, and museums. The entire area seemed to be dedicated more towards the idea of WWII, than what actually happened there (though I should point out that none of these criticisms apply to the Normandy cemetary which is an austere, majestic, and holy place). For all of the trappings of rememberance, I was honestly skeptical that many of the people who lived and worked there truely remembered or particularly cared what happened when they were selling calvados to the latest throng of tourists descending from their bus.

In fact, as we were walking back to the car from Sword beach, I distinctly remember saying, both jokingly, and with a little bit of cynicism, "I'm glad to know that so many people fought and died here to preserve the right to sell cheap souvenirs to gullible tourists".

And yet...

I have to ask myself...isn't that exactly right? Didn't our men and women, and the men and women of England, Canada, France, and all the allied forces, fight and die specifically for this? For the right for life to simply go on? Kids walking down the street probably didn't know or care that a battle had been fought right under their feet...but isn't that a good thing? Thanks to people like my grandfather, the people here and across Europe can go on with their daily lives, and sell their video games, their cheap souvenirs, their calvedos brandy. Life goes on, freedom endures, thanks to their sacrifice. For all our talk of lofty ideals, I think, at its most basic, that the war was fought, that so many people died, so that the kids could go to school, so that jungle gyms could be erected on battlefields, and people could have lunch in a town square where machine gun fire once rang out.

It was a thought that stuck with me as we went to the American cemetary at Normandy, and I looked out on the thousands of graves, all marked with a simple white cross or Star of David. All those people, who sacrificed so much, so that life could go on. It was, quite simply, an amazing experience, and put so much of what I had seen in the last few days into perspective. An amazing achievment, the likes of which have rarely been rivaled. A triumph of strategy, logistics, bravery, and sacrifice. I admit I even got a little teary at the sheer magnitude of what humanity was able to overcome, thanks to people like my grandfather.

But most importantly, life goes on. And I think that's the highest compliment I can pay.