Normandy and Verdun: A look back at pain and awe

Ken Burns' new public television documentary "The War" will remind us once again of the carnage and heroism war engenders, as well as bitter consequences aggressors must bear. I faced results of that carnage when I visited World War II and I sites in France last May with an American Red Cross group that had worked overseas. Six women, now in their 90s, who served in World War II, were with us and visited the battlegrounds for the last time.

World War II

"I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish": anguished words etched into the chapel that overlooks a sea of white crosses 9,397 of them at the 172.5-acre Normandy American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer. Another 1,557 names are engraved on the wall in the Garden of the Missing soldiers whose remains were not recovered or identified.

June 6, 1944, is a ubiquitous date on the graves when most of the soldiers died. How scared they must have been that day! With courage few of us will ever have to muster, they hit the beach and ran headlong into Nazi bullets streaming from overhead bunkers.

At this hallowed site, you are immediately wrapped in their bravery and the sadness of their undeserved fate. Now they overlook Omaha Beach from their cliffside graves. Another engraving in the chapel attempts to give solace: "Think not only upon their passing. Remember the glory of their spirit."

What I was not prepared for was the cemetery's utter solemnity, stillness and magnificent setting. France named the adjacent beach areas "Omaha," a code word in World War II, in honor of the Americans. Though stormclouds hovered in the distance, warm sunshine washed over us in stark contrast to the D-Day weather, unfurled by the heavens to test allied will and endurance.

The American Battle Monuments Commission, responsible for the cemetery, is an independent agency of our U.S. government's executive branch. Its Normandy staff, reverent and sensitive, couldn't do enough for us. As though for the first time, the senior Normandy historian and other staff accompanied the six elder women to the grave of Elizabeth Richardson, a young Red Cross worker killed during the war one of four women buried there and the only civilian woman. The women laid a wreath at her grave while carillon bells chimed our national anthem. It was lovely to the point of tears and shivers.

A perfect gesture, sand from Omaha Beach is rubbed into the engraved letters on the crosses and Stars of David to bring out the soldiers' names. This is done at all U.S. battle cemeteries worldwide. You can't help but wonder if there isn't a blessed stratum of DNA from blood washed and buried deep under that Normandy sand.

Utah Beach and Pointe du Hoc are an easy drive further down the coast. The French erected the Pointe du Hoc monument to honor men of the U.S. 2nd Ranger Battalion who famously scaled the 100 footcliffs using hooks, ropes and fierce determination to end Nazi strafing of Allies below. You can climb around the bunkers and see the bomb craters in these battles scarred acres pretty much as they were left on June 8, 1944.

Incessant bombing destroyed beautiful St. Lo, the "Capital of Ruins" near the Normandy coast, in early July 1944. On a retaining stone wall supporting an upper city tier are the words "A Memorial to the Victims." Civilian casualties were enormous. On July 18, the U.S. began the Battle of the Hedgerows among flora and sunken roads that divided woodlands and hampered the allied offensive and its armored vehicles.

On the coast between St. Lo and Caen (pronounced like khan), British and American allies constructed Mulberry A and B prefabricated harbors at Arromanches des Bains to support the invasion. Piece by tonnage piece, 600,000 tons in all, was towed across the channel at 4 mph. As if this weren't difficult enough, on June 18, 1944, a Force 9 gale destroyed Mulberry A, but B managed to cling together. More than 2 million men, 500,000 vehicles, and 400,000 tons of materials and armament entered France here. The Musee du Debarquement sits low on the beach where you can still see pieces of the harbor in the water.

Caen, population 200,000, also was leveled during the invasion. Le Memorial pour la Paix, Caen's strikingly modern peace museum, profoundly engages you. Amid the books and impressive displays, invasion planes hoisted to the ceilings overpower you with their wings painted in vivid black-and-white stripes. I hadn't seen these planes before and naively asked the purpose of the stripes. I was told: To tell the troops below that these were allied planes and not to shoot them down.

The museum accommodates 400,000 visitors a year, but the piece de resistance is the French-made film "Le Battile de Normandie," the finest, most exciting, clear and tragic film of battles I'd ever seen. A split screen shows the allies preparing for and fighting the Normandy battles while the other side depicts simultaneous German activity. At the invasion, men dropped everywhere, dead and wounded, as allies stormed the Nazi bunkers from the beaches.

Next, we drove across northern France through Champagne country to Verdun, population 30,000, in the Alsace Lorraine. Verdun is lush with greenery, hills and its scenic river, the Meuse, where today people stroll, eat, sun and chat. Interestingly, the twin towers on the city's Tower Bridge were taken as the insignia for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

World War I

World War I was a slaughter close to 10 million soldiers died and the worst happened around Verdun. Barbara Tuchman's book "The Guns of August," required reading for this war, taught John F. Kennedy how folly, stupidity and arrogance can start wars. The battle of Verdun was the worst in history. More than half a million soldiers died here. They were told to hold their position and they did. Verdun was destroyed in 10 months and restored in 10 years, only to fall victim to World War II.

In the city's midst, the 17th-century citadel was recast in World War Ias an underground logistical center a maze of brick-lined tunnels deep in a hillside that sheltered 10,000 troops, ammunition, water, wireless and a large baker, among other necessities, to supply "the front."

The tunnels were cold as we trundled through on a mini trolley and looked at filmed actors re-enacting war strategies and the discouragement soldiers felt so deeply. It was hard to catch your breath in such a remarkable place, but it's well done. It reminded me of the Chu Chi tunnels in Vietnam.

In the historic Salons d'Honneur in the offices of the mayor of Verdun, officials with great kindness, courtesy and ceremony awarded a medal to two women in our group for their great-grandfather who had fought there. This l'hotel de ville, built in 1623 and restored after both wars, is a small, lovely, very French museum itself with war portraits, a hall of decorations, and a room with the Golden Book of famous autographs and books containing names of all of the identified World War I soldiers who died in Verdun.

One of the saddest sites of all near the city was the Ossuaire de Douaumont a World War I memorial to dead French soldiers, almost an entire generation. Across the horizon, crosses mark the graves of 15,000 soldiers. Inside are the remains of 130,000 unidentified soldiers that alone speak to the savagery of war. Forty-six vaults symbolizing battlefields line two large cloisters on each side of a chapel; and 4,000 names of fallen soldiers, most in their prime of youth, are engraved on stone blocks lining the cloisters' sides and ceilings.

We were told that Americans paid for one of the cloisters to honor the valor of these soldiers. The Ossuaire staff held a special ceremony for us with candles, music, silence for prayers, and words of tribute before a soldier's statue. A World War II veteran who visited the Ossuaire at the same time had come from Utah Beach to Verdun under Patton. It was his first visit here since World War II.

Further down the road is a magnificent monument to the Jewish soldiers who died for France during World War I, but that is another story.