Our 2013 CBF contingent has now made the long return journey home, our tour having come to an end. I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have been included in year’s group. Alongside eleven other exceptional students from across Canada, our professors/tour guides Dr. Andrew Iarocci and Dr. Graham Broad, and, of course, van driver/photographer extraordinaire Amanda, I spent over two weeks journeying through France and Belgium. We covered a lot of ground, visiting most of the major (and minor) battlefields, memorials, and cemeteries of both the First and Second World Wars. We literally walked in the footsteps of the fallen, tracing their journeys across windswept fields, through overgrown trenches, and atop hills they once thought impossible to climb. We visited memorials and monuments that stagger the imagination – some whose size and grandeur are only eclipsed by the sheer number of names that adorn their walls, others whose simplicity speaks more of loss and remembrance than words alone ever could.

Our visits to the cemeteries had an especially profound impact upon us all. Row upon row of grave markers dot the landscape in this part of the world, reflecting words of love from family and friends or acknowledging the service of someone whose name we’ll never know. Whether large or small, these cemeteries are everywhere, they are full, and they are often overwhelming.

I would say that most of our strongest reactions to this entire experience were often felt in these cemeteries, regardless of the nationality of the soldiers buried there. Plenty of tears were shed, but I also think that our intense grief was at least matched in part by a sense of pride – in the individuals who gave their lives to serve their respective countries, and in the communities that these individuals formed and those subsequently preserved by their actions. Walking among these graves really brought home for me the fact that remembrance is about more than just recognizing those connected to us through family, friends, or patriotism. We are all a part of a larger human community, one in which sacrifice is both mourned and celebrated in equal measure, regardless of which side you take up arms for.

The last two days of our journey were spent in ceremonies commemorating the 69^th anniversary of D-Day and subsequent push to gain a foothold in France. We had the honour of participating in these ceremonies, laying wreaths at a number of different memorials and meeting those veterans who are still with us and able to make the long return journey to these distant shores. To have an opportunity to shake the hand of these veterans was a humbling experience for us all. I will never be able to adequately describe what it was like to stand on Juno Beach, on the anniversary of D-Day, beside veterans who were responsible for storming its shores sixty-nine years ago.

It saddens me to think that these few remaining individuals will leave us far too soon. I would like nothing more than to bring my future children here one day, to make this journey with them and to pass on the importance of remembrance. I know that these veterans will likely no longer be here when that day comes, to share in my children’s understanding of what remembrance really means. I only hope that we can continue to remember and celebrate our veterans – those who fought for our freedom in the World Wars, but also those who have made and continue to make sacrifices in conflicts around the world. Remembrance should not end with the last total war. And it should not be overlooked or impeded because of personal political views regarding the validity of any one conflict.

I would like to end this post by recognizing the important role that my 2013 CBF cohort played in making this journey more than just educational. While visiting the battlefields, memorials, and cemeteries certainly formed the foundation of our excursion, our shared experience is what truly made this journey exceptional. For a group of strangers who knew nothing of one another two weeks ago, we have become remarkably close (perhaps too close!… I refer to ‘storytime’ with Eric the Wise). We are all proud Canadians who share a common love of history and a special affinity for the World War period in particular, but we are nothing if not a diverse group. However, despite our differences in age and varied backgrounds we have managed to find a lot of surprisingly common ground. We became a family for the few short weeks we travelled together, and I know that the genuine, honest, and heartfelt openness shown by my tour-mates during this journey was what truly made this experience profound.

I want to thank you, my new friends, for making this experience so meaningful. I haven’t laughed this much, cried this hard, or felt so at home within a community for a long time.

Thank you.

(Editor’s Note: This eloquent reflection by Katie Domansky, a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary, concludes the 2013 Canadian Battlefields Foundation student blogs. Read them together from the beginning, if you can. They constitute a powerful rejoinder to the claims, often made, that the quality of students is in decline.)

 

 

Just keep breathing. In and out, in and out. The moment had come. There we were standing in front of the La Cambe German War Cemetery. Why was I nervous? I knew this site was on the itinerary, and I knew I would walk in without shame, without reservation. But so much had happened on this trip, so much had affected me that I couldn’t be sure of my academic self anymore. But it was now or never, and so I took the plunge and entered the gates of La Cambe.

My academic background could be considered controversial at best. I study Nazi Germany, and in particular I have always been fascinated by the issue of collective guilt, and how the Germans have dealt with their WWII legacy. When someone says “Hitler was crazy, that’s all,” I am the first one to list off the reasons why Hitler and his henchmen were not crazy, and were in fact relatively rational individuals with terribly immoral goals. I don’t do this to defend Hitler and leading Nazi Party members, but to resist the notion that there is an easy answer to the many questions we have of National Socialism. Once we begin generalizing, we then also begin to omit portions of the historical record. As a historian, I can’t allow that. During my undergrad I realized how enraged others become when you challenge their traditionally held view of the Nazi period, and I knew I had to find the truth these commonly believed generalisations.

This path led me to study the issue of German war guilt, and now, completing my MA degree, I find myself mired in the complexities that constitute the question: how guilty were the Germans? Again, generalisations abound. “All the SS were monsters!” “The Wehrmacht murdered thousands of innocents on the Eastern Front!” Undoubtedly, there were SS officers and Wehrmacht soldiers who committed unthinkable atrocities in the name of National Socialism, Germany, or simply for themselves. We know this is true. But we also know, that Hitler Youth members of the 12^th SS Panzer division were born and raised completely indoctrinated in Nazism. Christopher Browning’s watershed Ordinary Men illustrates in part that some men did not want to kill Jewish women and children on the Eastern Front, and their reasons for doing so were complex, and must be understood. This is not to say these men deserve our forgiveness or are excused, but we owe it to ourselves, the victims and the Germans to understand the complexities behind the generalisations. This is the academic path I walk, and though I often face controversy, in the end I cannot turn away from the details hidden within the historical record. I must understand. I must look history straight in the eye.

Before this trip I knew who I was. I knew I would walk into La Cambe – not to forgive or lament, but to face history dead on. The men in La Cambe include members of the 12^th SS Panzer division, who murdered Canadian POWs after the Normandy beach landings; SS-Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann, who was present at the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre on 10 June 1944; Wehrmacht soldiers who killed not only Canadian soldiers in combat, but also French civilians. We know these men are buried in La Cambe, along with soldiers, some as young as 16 years old, who wanted to defend their country, or sought glory on the battlefield. German men of all kinds are buried in La Cambe.

A professor I greatly admire, told me not to go into La Cambe, knowing full well I planned to go in anyways. When he visits the battlefields, he declines to enter the German cemetery. Initially, I couldn’t fully understand why a historian would actively refuse to enter a site like La Cambe. After visiting the numerous cemeteries and reading the sorrowful epitaphs, imagining how I would feel if my partner, brother or father had been killed in the war, I began to more fully understand why my professor and others choose not to enter La Cambe. I do not condemn their decision; in fact I respect their conviction. At the gates to the cemetery, I began to lose my nerve and found myself questioning my motives, and wondering if I was right to enter the site.

The night before our planned visit to La Cambe, a discussion took place amongst a few of our tour members at Le Moulin Morin. The discussion was heated, as so many good academic debates are, and touched on core issues surrounding La Cambe. Could we go in there just for the sake of the Germans who did not commit atrocities? Why is La Cambe on the itinerary if some professors won’t even go in? What purpose does entering La Cambe serve us? Why would someone want to see those graves? The answers to these questions, if there are any, are deeply personal, and we certainly did not reach a consensus on any of them. But that’s okay – in fact this episode confirmed for me that this historical debate is far from over, and I hope against hope that the Canadian Battlefield Foundation keeps La Cambe on the itinerary so the discussion can continue.

All this talk of why and how led me to wonder about the families of those buried in La Cambe, and what controversy they faced when visiting their loved ones. For decades following the war, Germans carried the collective shame of having participated in the Nazi-initiated war, and the utter destruction of the Jews and other groups deemed a threat to the Aryan race. In the end, regardless of how much restitution is paid, memorials are raised, or apologies are given, Germany’s history will always contain the atrocities of the Second World War. It will always include l’Abbaye d’Ardenne, Auschwitz, the Einsatzgruppen and the Warsaw Ghetto. Though the methods and messages have altered throughout the last 70 years, Germany continues to publicly remember its past, not only for the sake of the victims, but for the sake of Germany’s future.

When I came back to Canada, I discussed this portion of the trip with my friend Matt. He didn’t come on the trip, nor is he a historian, yet he has an unsettling ability to say in a few sentences, what takes me several paragraphs. I bluntly asked him if I was wrong to want to go into La Cambe, and I told him about the different types of Germans buried there and the controversy surrounding the site. Matt eloquently described exactly why I feel it’s necessary to visit the German cemetery: “If we choose to judge the Germans based on the worst of them, then we have no right to judge another group, or ourselves any differently.” While this interpretation leaves ample room for debate, I think it accurately describes how I felt at that moment, at the gates of the cemetery. I walked into La Cambe because while my confidence had been shaken, I knew I had to face the worst, the young, the brave, and everything in between.