This was October of 2001 and is the moment I decided I wanted to become a history major (and indirectly a history teacher). I was 18 years old and studying abroad in France for my first semester of college. My mother came out to visit me and she asked me if there was anything I wanted to do together with her. I'd already traveled to Paris and to the south of France and all around the Burgundy countryside, but there was one thing I wanted to see. I had seen pictures of Mont St. Michel and thought it would be neat. For those that don't know French geography, Dijon is on one side of the country and Mont St. Michel is on the other. My mother suggested if we were going to be on that side then maybe we should see Normandy. I didn't know anything about Normandy aside from it was the setting for the beginning of Saving Private Ryan. Despite making all As in my high school history classes, I didn't really have an understanding of what the context of that famous scene was. World War II, blah, blah, blah. I'm not proud to admit it, but I didn't really know much and didn't care.
My mom insisted we go, that it was something every American should see, so we went. First we stopped at a spectacular museum where we spent most of the morning. Then we traveled to Gold Beach, then Sword Beach where we saw a spectacular 360 video called The Price of Freedom, then we visited the American cemetery and lastly we journeyed down to Omaha Beach. I don't know how to describe what it was like being there. To stand there and look out into the water was so humbling. I didn't know much about the Normandy invasion, but thanks to Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg I knew those waves claimed a lot of lives. I didn't know 1/10th of what I know now - not who was involved or even the context of the invasions - but just thinking about standing there and looking into those waves makes me choke up.
Then when I looked back up the great expanse of beach, to the cliffs behind and the pillboxes still visible in the hillside...it was overwhelming. For a long time I just stood there and stared like I am in that first picture. All I could think about was how anybody could have possibly made it up that beach. We came at low tide and it was just this tremendous expanse of sand just to reach the seawall and then those cliffs...it seemed impossible. It was so awe inspiring and humbling and just completely overwhelming.
I had this weird realization
that the people who arrived at that beach, whether they made it to the seawall or even stepped onto the sand are the people who made World War II. And I had this larger understanding that the history I'd studied all through high school - presidents, kings, emperors - wasn't really history at all. Stepping on that beach made me realize that history is made by normal people like the people who landed that beach. And when I left it I bought as many books as I could on the Normandy landings and read as much as possible. To risk sounding cliche, the moment above changed my life. I developed a love of history that took me through 4 years of college, into graduate school, and now into my own classroom where I share the story of being on that beach.
1 comment:
That's so cool... I'm glad you had that moment! It's neat to have photos of a life changing event :)
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