Last year, I went on a Fulbright Teacher Exchange to Bayeux, France. Bayeux is in the heart of Normandy, only a few miles from the D-Day beaches. When I found out I was going to Bayeux, I considered myself lucky - Bayeux is one of the few cities in that region which was not destroyed during World War II, so it boasts ancient architecture and quaint streets. Today, two days after Veteran’s Day, I am realizing that I was fortunate to go there for other reasons as well - reasons I had never expected when I signed up for the program.
When I applied for a Fulbright, I wanted the opportunity to teach in France, to compare school systems and methodology, to improve my French, to eat good food, to see the sights, and to make new friends. I did all those things. I immersed myself in the French language and culture. What I did not realize at the time, and which I had not ranked high on my priority list, was that I was also immersing myself in the history of Normandy.
My husband is a history teacher. I thought, last August, that it would be nice for him to visit all of those historic sites in Normandy. I knew I would see some of them, too, but I was far more interested in the Pont l’Eveque cheese festival, the Saturday morning market, and taking walks through picturesque villages. What I am realizing now, however, was that it is impossible to live in Normandy for a year and not be profoundly affected by what happened there in 1944.
Roads in France tend to be twisty and narrow. It is not uncommon, as you round a bend, to see a church spire in the distance. Each village, no matter how small, has its own church, and each church has its own war memorial. Sometimes the memorials are outside the church, depicting a soldier perhaps. Sometimes the memorials are inside the church, carved into the stone wall or on a plaque of some kind. But always, there are the names. Long lists of names - the dead from World Wars I and II. Multiple names, often, from the same family. Brothers, fathers, cousins, uncles, sons. I cannot express what it was like to see so many names, so many from each tiny little town, so many names which matched those of my some 160 students. Names which matched those of my colleagues. Real people who fought and died in those wars. Often there were memorials, too, in other places in the towns, in front of town hall or in the main square. So very many names.
My husband, daughters and I did a fair amount of exploring during our year. Often, we drove through cities which had been leveled during World War II, taken and retaken multiple times by opposing sides. The new construction was apparent. In Saint-Lô, city officials decided to leave one of the churches in partial ruin, as a reminder of the destruction of the war. Such ruins are everywhere in Normandy; you can neither avoid them nor ignore them. They are reminders of the horrors of war, and of the urgency of peace.
One of my French colleagues told me a story while I was there, about how her grandmother’s entire family was killed by American bombings during the war. She still has nightmares about it. The father of one of my students belongs to an organization that tries to find the remains of soldiers from the war who are still lost. Such stories are common. The war affected so many of the Norman people in so many ways; it seems no one was left untouched. Hearing such stories from people who are my friends, seeing the damage in cities I spent a lot of time in, affected me on a very deep level. I didn’t realize how deeply until two days ago, when, flipping through the channels on t.v., I saw some images of parades and services honoring the veterans from World War II. I have lived in Normandy. The tragedy of World War II is real. It is alive today, more than sixty years after the fact. What does that say about the wars that are going on now? If the effects of World War II are still felt by the people of Normandy today, how long will it take the people of Iraq to recover from the current war?
Generally speaking, I am not a very political person. I pay attention to world news in a very cursory way. When our faculty book group decides to read a historical novel, I inwardly groan. Today, however, I borrowed the LCD projector from the library and showed my students some slides. I showed them the beaches at Arromanches, where I sunbathed with my family, with the artificial harbor in view. I showed them la Pointe du Hoc, which is perhaps the most evil-feeling place in the world I have ever been after Auschwitz. I told them about how I had visited the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam and seen a map of Normandy tacked onto the wall, on which Anne’s father had tracked the progress of the Allied invasion - showing cities where I had gone to the market, visited a museum, gone to a festival - places in which my colleagues and students lived and worked, places I drove through every week. All of these things really hit home to me on Veteran’s Day this year, and I felt I had to share it, regardless of my curriculum. The students were attentive, unusually quiet. Some of them told me they had grandparents who had fought in World War II. One student, usually passive and unengaged, listed off the names of some of the beaches, recognized the kind of gun emplacement on one of the slides. Other students were a bit surprised by what I was doing - “What, no new vocabulary today?” - but seemed glad I had shared my experiences. A few of them did not even know what D-Day was before today.
Driving home from school today, I looked at the buildings, the houses here in Maine which have never had to be rebuilt because of a war. I think it is easy for Americans to take our country for granted, to be apathetic about wars which seem or have seemed so far away. But having lived in a place where intense battles occurred, I am much more aware of the reality of war. I was surprised at how much Veteran’s Day affected me this year, about my need to share what I had seen in Normandy. Watching the news clips of the parades, remembering the beaches the Allies had to cross and the cliffs they had to scale while German troops fired down upon them, I understand in a much more profound way why these people who fight and who have fought deserve to be honored. I will never approach Veteran’s Day the same way.
I will probably never know what effect I had on my students in Bayeux. At the very least, they know that not all Americans are fat, support George Bush, and eat at McDonald’s every day. But I do know that I have come away from my year with much more than I bargained for - a sense of history, of tragedy and of the courage of those who fought in World War II and their families. I did live the culture of France, and internalized it in a way I never would have predicted - to the benefit, I hope, of my American students and colleagues. I am fortunate to have the opportunity to share my experience; I guess that’s what the Fulbright program is all about.
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