In the original 1960s Charlie Brown Christmas special, Charlie Brown laments that Christmas has become too commercial—so much so that even his dog Snoopy is participating in a lights and display contest. I was reminded of that when looking at many of the products on display in Normandy in different gift shops over the last few days. I would generally hold to the principle that if a particular product would be in bad taste if offered in relation to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, it is probably inappropriate to have for D-Day. While one can respect that tourism is a major industry in this area, there is something off-putting about seeing so many products about an event where so many men died. It is one thing to have T-shirts that say “I survived D-Day,” but when you see stores offering posters with scantily-clad cartoon pin-up girls superimposed over images of the battle, the line of good taste has already been crossed. Seeing such things, one might ask for someone to come out and explain what D-Day is about, just as Linus did for Charlie Brown.

However, today we attended a number of different D-Day ceremonies, and these came closer to capturing the truth of what the day means. We attended two local ceremonies on the beaches in the morning. The first one included a wreath-laying and different poem recitations; in the second one, small crosses were laid on the sand. This ceremony was effective (and more religious than its predecessor), although when we listened to the national anthems of Britain, Canada, and France, there were audio problems with the French anthem. At the much-larger ceremony in front of the Canadian museum for Juno Beach, wreaths were also laid, but the most effective part involved the living veterans who were brought out and each given ovations from the audience. After the ceremony, we got in line to shake their hands. One of them said to me he hoped that June 6, 1944 had been worth it. It was like a challenge.

We also attended ceremonies at a graveyard for Canadian soldiers in Normandy. Small Canadian flags were placed at all the headstones, but most of them were put there by locals from France who appreciated what the Canadians did. Then, in the last ceremony of the night, all the attendees were given symbolic flowers to toss into the waters on the beach. That was an emotional experience for many people in attendance.

While these ceremonies were moving, one image from that day does not come from any of them. But it does capture the meaning of this day. The final late night ceremony did not start until 10:00 pm, so we had some time to pass before that, and during this time, around 9:15 pm, I took a look at the beach. At that time of night, it was still light outside, although the sun was setting. The tides on Juno beach were quite far out. You could walk over the sand and seaweed a great distance before reaching the water. Before the tide returned to the shore, I saw a large number of French children had gone out into this area and were playing on the sand and laughing.

Seventy-two years after Canadian soldiers fought and died in that exact place, French children were playing there in the sunset.

I think if Charlie Brown had asked Linus to explain the meaning of D-Day instead of Christmas, a description of this image would have done the job. We remember the sacrifice of these Canadians who enabled the children of France to have that freedom.

By Robert Revington

Our entire day today was focused on the actions of Canadian troops on D-Day and the Normandy Campaign. We traveled down the various sections of Juno Beach (where the Canadians landed), beginning the day at Saint Aubin-sur-Mer and ended the afternoon with a visit to the Juno Beach Centre in Courseulles-sur-Mer. While in Saint Aubin we were approached by a local man, Monsieur Meyer who asked if we spoke French. Upon finding out that we were Canadian and at least some of us spoke French, he proceeded to share his story with us. He lived in the village during the war and was there on June 6th, 1944 when the Allies arrived, he remembers the day well. After the attack slowed in the early afternoon he wandered out to the beach and saw something he had not seen in four years, a box of chocolate. Being only 9 years old at the time he, of course, decided to get some of this chocolate. On the way he tripped on something and immediately excused himself; it was a dead body. M. Meyer, without pause, continued with another story.

What I found especially striking, other than the fact that he was a civilian child in the midst of a large-scale invasion, was how M. Meyer told this story, he recounted it without hesitation or apprehension that one might expect someone to feel as a small child coming across a dead man on his local beach. This could be a factor of the number of times he has told this story over his lifetime, or perhaps the emotion associated with the experience has simply lessened in the years that have since passed. In any case, it was strange for me as a young person with no personal experience with horrors such as those of the Second World War, to hear them recounted so nonchalantly. I cannot imagine nine year-old Brianna continuing on a quest for chocolate after tripping over a dead man, in fact I’m rather thankful that I cannot. M. Meyer then went on to tell us about how he became a sort of ‘mascot’ for the Régiment de la Chaudières who were stationed in the area, following them around and riding in their vehicles and the like. He said that when one or more of the men didn’t return in the morning that he was told they had ‘run out of luck’ rather than that they were killed, it was some small attempt to shelter the boy from the harsh realities of the war, or at least to protect him from experiencing more than he already had.

Our new friend M. Meyer also expressed his displeasure over the fact that there are a number of German bunkers and machine gun posts that are preserved along the beach in Saint Aubin and the surrounding towns. He said that the war is over, they serve no purpose anymore. He thought that they should be destroyed, or, at the very least, nature should be allowed to take its course and erase any traces of the war on the land. Unlike many people, of his own generation and younger, who strive to commemorate the war and the efforts of the thousands of Allied soldiers in the Normandy campaign,  M. Meyer wanted the daily reminders of this tumultuous and tragic period in history to be allowed to fade into obscurity.

In contrast with M. Meyer,  were the hundreds of men and women we saw today who were dressed up in period army, navy, and air force uniforms, complete with tents, jeeps, ‘gucci kit,’  and even a dog’s Red Cross uniform. They conveyed an atmosphere of celebration echoed by posters inviting everyone to a “D-Day Festival.” The vast majority of these people would have been very young, or not even born during the time of the war, but were representing its participants in a very public and (arguably) over-the-top fashion. Coming from a rain-soaked and foggy week studying the WWI and a particularly sombre day at Dieppe and its heart-wrenching cemetery, the jovial mood of the WWII re-enactors and enthusiasts was especially jarring. Keeping in mind that all of the towns we visited today were small coastal towns that rely on tourists, it still didn’t seem right that the brutal deaths and woundings of thousands of men in pursuit of the liberation of France (and the eventual end of WWII) should be commemorated by grown men and women playing soldier on the very beaches on which they died. I can only hope that the atmosphere will be more subdued once the official D-Day ceremonies begin.

They shall not grow old
As we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them
Nor the years condemn;
At the going down of the sun
And in the morning
We will remember them.

-Laurence Binyon, For the Fallen

Brianna Spiess, University of Lethbridge