Normandy on September 11th, 2015

Simply stated, what a powerful and emotional day.  

The children from France know at an early age what a pivotal and life changing event D-Day was because they see it and live it everyday.  The French people say "Thank you" to us.  I'm not sure I ever really learned it in school.  I'm not sure I really LEARNED it until I stood there.  Our guide was excellent....every American should go on that tour!!!!  I learned more about history and WWII in one day than I ever did in school.  Granted, Doc Rock, my world history teacher (that's what we called him, his real name was Dr. Stone) wasn't the greatest of teachers and was just biding his time until retirement.  The students of Rouen have to come to the American cemetery and adopt a service member for the year, they have to research what they did, who there family was, and how they died.  Some of them also contact the families of the soldiers.  

When we arrived we had a special presentation for our boat by a guide at the cemetary, the military (any branch, any year, involved in a conflict or not) men and women on our cruise were asked to step forward and face our horseshoe shaped crowd.  One by one they came out of the crowd...our crowd...my crowd.

 Now, we were asked to raise our hands if we knew the story of someone who was in WWII.  Lots of hands went up, and I proudly held mine high.    By this time, even the strongest of men were tearing up.  The director of our boat said a sincere word of thansks to the military men and women, we turned to face the flag and sang the Star Spangled Banner. If I didn't have my hand over my heart I would have taken a picture of the one lone bird flying around the flagpole.  Kind of like they staged it and timed it perfectly.  Then we turned to face the memorial, Taps was played and had a minute of silence....then a lone military flyover at the end.

In the cemetery there are 9370 graves and 1557 names on the wall of the missing.   There are 45 pairs of brothers and the average age is 24.  Just a year older than Matthew and two years older than Chase.  The noble men (boys) looked just like Matt and Chase and had absolutely no idea what they were going in to.  They thought they did, they trained for it, but the weather didn't cooperate, AND the systems they had in place when horribly wrong. If you don't know the detailed story, I bought a book with actual photographs, and I can recite it to you.  Basically, you already know that there were 5 beaches involved in D-day.  All were hit badly, however, Jeaneau beach was hit the worst.  On this beach they were mostly infantry and a lot of them were Rangers.  After riding in treacherous condidions they stormed the beaches, not exactly as planned, not exactly at all.  When they saw it wasn't working and the men were being killed one by one before they even got to the mountain-like WALL they had to climb to take the Germans, they wanted to call it off because the casualties were devistating.  General Eisenhower said no, we must continue...and continue they did boat by boat, man by man...Matt and Chase's age men.  They had nothing to hide behind, there were land mines all over the beach, and Jeaneau beach had the highest concentrated of German soldiers who were waiting for them like a ravenous mamma bear protecting her cubs.  

the houses weren't there of course, but that is the mountain our men had to climb to take the Germans in that area.  You can see remains of the bunkers the Germans were using.  Here is the beach....

actually that's just half of the beach because on my left was the same beach, just as long.

At the cemetary, we were each given a rose to place on a soldier's grave, and in my hand I held a rock from Tim to place on a headstone as a sign of respect.  With that many crosses surrounding me, I decided that I would place the rose on the first person I saw from Indiana, and the rock was placed on the first person I saw from Michigan.

We could've walked for hours and still not seen every cross.  It was time to go back to the memorial for another ceremony, one to honor the men and women who were involved in 9/11  It was a Proclamation written by President Obama, dated September 11, 2015 and read by the director of the cemetery.  Again we sang the Star Spangled Banner.  

On one of our stops we walked around actual bunkers with guns still standing.  

I could go on and on and show 100's more photos, but they each deserve an explanation.  

Anyway, you get an idea of the day yesterday.  I want to bring all of my family back here so they can see with their own eyes, and understand the impact that June 6, 1944 has had on all of our lives. The men (boys) who lost their lives, the moms who lost their sons, sisters who lost their brothers, and on and on and on.  Those lives allow us to live free and have a great and prosperous life that we have today.  

My parting coment today is another simple one.....THANK YOU Grandpa for being a part of the war that is keeping us free, and to all veterans who signed a blank check to the US Government for their life.  To one of my best friends ever, Tim Potts, who genuinely loves my daughter and me, for living in the swamps in Vietnam, having malaria multiple times, agent orange, PTSD, depression , jungle rot, and is still surviving those memories everyday. Something that I cannot imagine.