Susan Keezer: Normandy cemetery a place of terrible beauty

Visitors’ voices and footsteps cannot penetrate the vast silence at this site. 

Crosses march in place to silent drums. White and pristine, they mark the last place so many American troops stopped. The men who didn’t come back to their wives, children, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and friends. The area carefully nurtures over 9,000 graves of men who fought and fought and fought until they dropped to the soil that would cover them.  

It is important to note that there are four American women who are also buried here. They were WACs who worked in postal services to ensure letters from home reached soldiers eager to receive them. 

These Americans are honored at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer, France. It rests on the site of the temporary cemetery set up by the U.S. 1st Army on June 8, 1944. It was the first American cemetery established in Europe in World War II. 

It is difficult to imagine that landing at Omaha Beach so long ago when so many men died because this day in October last year is sunny with no clouds in sight. The darkness of so many deaths seems impossible on a day such as this.  

This well-tended garden of the dead is set aside for visitors to honor them. It doesn’t matter how many years have passed since that time. Grief doesn’t respect the passing of years. It simply waits for acknowledgement. Low discreet fences keep visitors from wandering among the crosses. 

Staff is available to escort people to the burial sites of family members. 

Each cross represents the story of one life unfinished the way it should have been. 

One man who intended to teach, another to farm, or another to be a doctor. Maybe one hoped to be a singer or an actor or a novelist. Many were too young to know how they wanted to shape their futures. Maybe they got into the service by lying about their ages. 

All these biographies that would never be written. All the children who would never know their fathers. All the parents who would cry at night, knowing their sons or daughters would not be back. 

We are told how diligently people worked to ensure that family members who died were buried next to each other: fathers and sons, brothers, cousins or uncles. 

We are told about a woman in Iowa who got that awful telegram in the morning saying her son had been killed. In the afternoon, military staff knocked on her door to tell her her husband had been killed in the same battle. 

They are buried next to each other. There are many others who have been laid to rest 

next to a loved one. 

There is a Garden of the Missing. The search never stops to try to find these men. 

All the visitors on that bright day were walking slowly on the grounds or visiting the colonnade to study maps and listen to the narratives of the military operations. 

The cemetery is a thing of terrible beauty. The reason for its existence is horrifying. 

It is impossible not to think about the unending effect of war when you see all those crosses and know what they represent.  

I wept. 

*Suggested: history.com/news/d-day-casualties-deaths-allies

Susan Keezer lives in Adrian. Send your good news to her at lenaweesmiles@gmail.com.