Row on row

August 12 and 13, 2010

Throughout this trip we have seen countless vineyards, row on row of neatly planted grapevines making tidy lines across the landscape. Brilliantly green lush vines produce wines that breathe life into the economy and bring a liveliness to the dinner table.

Yesterday we saw more tidy lines, but this time they were row on row of neatly placed white marble crosses, 9,387 in all, each one marking the grave of a soldier who died on the D-Day beaches in 1944. The WWII Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial above Omaha Beach houses headstones of only forty percent of those Americans who gave their lives to free Europe on those beaches; the remainder were buried at home. We also visited the Juno Beach Centre where Canadian forces landed and toured the informative Visitor Centre there. Besides the sheer numbers of soldiers who lost their lives in that assault, most disturbing for me was a photograph of a boatload of young men just about to land on the beach. The fear in their eyes was haunting. I couldn't help thinking that had I been born fifty years earlier, one of those frightened boys could have been my son. I will post my photos on Facebook, but even a video can't capture the sheer size of this cemetery, nor the sense of loss.

Today we are making the first step in our long trek home. We are driving from Dieppe on the west coast of France all the way across the country to Strasbourg in the east, near the border with Germany. We will return our car there tomorrow, then take the train to Zurich where we will fly from on Monday morning. We're ready to be home now and are looking forward to seeing our kids, sleeping in our own bed, and eating lots of fresh vegetables.