Normandie

 I have not written since we came back from Montpellier on Thursday. It was great to come home from vacation and still be in Paris! We were back home by noon (we love train travel) and spent the last couple of days trying to recuperate before our next big adventure. We took walks in the Luxembourg Gardens and along the Seine, and we visited the Louvre once again.

This morning (Sunday) we got up at 4:30, took the RER out to Charles de Gaulle airport, and met Vaughn Stephenson. Vaughn is an old friend—we met at Boy's State our junior year in high school, became friends at Ricks, went to both BYU and ASU, and now we both teach at BYUI. He's probably the only person in the world who gets all my jokes. We've been working together with Rick Davis, one of my old teachers, on this Humanities course that I keep posting about. Now he's come to join us on a trip to northern France, Belgium, and the Rhineland while we shoot video footage for the course.

Today we started with a whirlwind trip to Normandy. First we drove (and when I say we I mean Vaughn—remember, I forgot my driver's license) from Paris all the way across the Normandy peninsula to Mont Saint Michel. Mont Saint Michel is one of those places that is so unlikely it doesn't look real. We took some video footage of me talking in front of it, and you'd swear we shot it in front of a green screen. It's a monastery built atop a fortified island, designed by an Italian named William de Volpiano, who daringly placed the transept crossing at the top of the mount. In order to compensate for the weight this created, William built a series of underground crypts and chapels. It was this brilliant stroke that enabled the church to have such remarkable upward thrust.

The day alternated between lowering skies, an occasional shower, and glorious bursts of sunshine as we drove across the dazzling green countryside. It's dairy country, and for lunch I had a sandwich with so much butter on it that I thought my Grandma Linford made it for me. All along the way we saw the tall, thick hedgerows that made it so easy to defend and so hard to capture in the summer of 1944.


And speaking of 1944, I was not prepared for the waves of emotion that met me at the gate of Omaha Beach. I have been a World War II buff for as long as I can remember, an avid fan of Stephen Ambrose and The Longest Day. I expected to be moved. And yet to think of those boys riding in on the landing craft, wading through surf, huddling on the beach. To walk out and watch the waves roll in and then turn around and look at the bluffs our boys had to scale in the face of such murderous fire. Nothing went as planned that day, and in the end it came down to the initiative of individual company commanders who led their men up those draws, and the destroyer captains who disobeyed orders and steamed in to engage the German batteries at point blank range. I'm actually not sure what moved me so, if it was the heroism or the suffering or just the sheer drama of it all.

After visiting Omaha we drove up to the Pointe du Hoc, where US Army Rangers assaulted with scaling ladders the sheer cliffs to take out an enemy battery. They have left this place much as it was after the battle, with barbed wire, pill boxes, shattered gun emplacements, and gigantic bomb craters.

We are spending the night in Caen. Vaughn was up for twenty-seven hours and drove the car for about eight of them. He's now snoring peacefully in the loft above us. Ev's asleep too, and I will be soon. I will end with some Thanksgiving thoughts. I'm thankful for Evelyn and my family and my friends. I'm thankful for my country and my church and the people who lived and died for them. I'm thankful for the sun and the sea and the earth. I'm thankful for this trip to France. I'm thankful for life.