Eighty Years

I write this on the eightieth anniversary of the battle of Normandy in Northern France.  It is hard to believe that World War II is already that long ago.  My parents were children when the war ended. I was not even contemplated for more than a decade.

Yet the event touches my heart every year.  This morning, I watched part of the ceremony, live, on the news.  President Macron of France stood close to President Biden.  The American armed forces present, ranging in age from around 20 to around 100, gathered in solemn tribute to those who had died, on and off the battlefield.  Regrettably, given the ephemeral nature of man, there will soon be no one who participated in the invasion and battle, still left alive to attend the ceremony. 

The soldiers saluted.  Their salute was not meant to honor the heads of state, but instead, was a sign of respect to the dead soldiers all around them.  Taps played and the camera panned the fields of white crosses, the last reminder of what so many have sacrificed for our country.  The beauty of that moment, commemorating shared sacrifice, nation supporting nation, was punctuated by the engines’ roar of the flyby. 

Though I never made it to Normandy in my early European travels, I do remember this day being reported on the German news.  President Ronald Reagan had come to Normandy, to commemorate D-Day.  He came to a mixed reception, at least among the students I spoke with. 

It was strange being an American in Germany at the time. We were not the most popular kids on the block.  The cold war was dragging on, a study in brinksmanship, and Germans worried that their country would one day become a nuclear battlefield.  Reagan loved to saber-rattle and many Europeans saw him as a wild card, someone they couldn’t trust. 

They were not to know that they were mere years away from a united Germany.  At protests, the placards read “Amis Raus” meaning Americans get out.  There were still plenty of American soldiers overstaying their welcome on German land.  Forty years after D-Day, plenty of American bases still protected our interests and, at least ostensibly, those of the German people.

Forty would have been a nice round number, like eighty.  But I remember Reagan coming the next year, on what must have been the forty-first anniversary of D-Day, in 1985.  That same year, forty years was also commemorated by many Germans, who had had their towns completely obliterated during WWII air raids and the fires that followed them.

I lived in Wuerzburg, West Germany.  The country was not united until 1990, well after I had left.  My stay encompassed the school term 1984-85 and part of the following summer.

Wuerzburg is one of those quaint German towns whose town center looks as if  it hasn’t changed since the Middle Ages.  There was a cobbled square in the center of town, a bridge with various saints lining it, crossing the Main River, a great ruin of a fortress and a confection of a chapel on the hills opposite the town. 

This area of Northern Bavaria was known as Franken or Franconia, and was known for its Frankenwein, a dry, white wine that came in a curved, stout bottle.   The hills were lined with vineyards, where many a foreign student picked up work during the season.

There was of course a university, the Uni Wuerzburg, where I had the privilege of attending classes. There was also a palace, the Residenz, which, along with the chapel, or Kaeppelle, on the other side of the Main, had incredible Baroque and/or Rococo ornament and styling.  The Residenz, which was quite close to where I lived, had a very nice walking park nearby, and a great gated formal garden, with raised levels and fountains and wrought iron and cherubs.  That year, in June, I went to the annual classical music event called  Mozartfest, in that lovely setting.

Another event I attended might remind you of the movie Amadeus, in which the young Mozart is driven to work himself to death by Scalieri, his more mediocre competitor.  This movie, which I had seen in English already in the States, was now in theaters in Germany. The Prince, was so wonderfully voiced in the German version.  “Too many notes!” is my favorite line.

Toward the end of Amadeus, Mozart writes a requiem, or funeral piece.  The image of the ailing genius, on the brink of physical collapse, frantically scribbling as he rolls a billiard ball across a pool table again and again, is haunting. The message seems to be that the requiem is for him. 

The event I went to in Wuerzburg was also billed as a Requiem. It commemorated, musically, Wuerzburg’s bombing in 1945.  Although Wuerzburg was hit many times, with hundreds of casualties each, on March 16, 1945 incendiary bombs were dropped in a major raid by the Royal Air Force, killing around 3000, with 2000 missing. 

In a twenty-minute raid, 90% of the buildings were destroyed, including much of the city center, which dated from medieval times. (Wikipedia “Bombing of Wuerzburg in World War II”) According to the article, the 170,000 incendiary bombs dropped on Wuerzburg destroyed it on an even greater scale than Dresden was destroyed in February 1945.

You can imagine that I squirmed a bit in my seat, as I watched and listened to this performance in a beautiful rebuilt church downtown.  In fact, the entire town was rebuilt, exactly as it had looked before.  Such fidelity to historical restoration is rare in our country and seemed amazing to me.  I had lived in the town for six months, believing myself immersed in history, when precious little around me was older than forty years.

I was squirming because of course Americans were part of the effort to destroy Germany and to crush its will, and extreme measures, ones that we might not like to think about in too much detail,  were used.  It was ironic that my friend from England was on stage playing an instrument, commemorating something that her countrymen (our allies) had personally carried out, forty years earlier.  Being in Germany in the eighties was full of such contradictions. 

I imagine that this experience of being in Europe, as the ghosts of WWII were being summoned, is part of why I feel so moved by the annual Normandy theater.  I do not come from a military family.  It was not until I met my husband’s father, a captain in the Navy, and learned of their itinerant life, moving from base to base, that I came to realize how much more military families sacrifice, than other families, especially in times of war.  My husband’s grandfather gave his life in WWII, like many in Normandy, though his was lost on an aerial battlefield on the other side of the world.  That fact forever changed his mother, who was only twelve at the time, and through her, my husband.

For the families, for the military, young and old, for our friends and foes in battle, the price is high on those occasions when it must be paid. 

May we always remember.

For an essay on the importance of travel and having an interest in people of other nations, read https://frlcnews.com/who-only-england-know/.