EDIT:
As I have been finishing this article, I am heartbroken by the disaster that has befallen Notre Dame. We have visited this magnificent cathedral on several occasions, and are due to return May 7. A great loss.
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I will be returning to Normandy May 24-26 and will witness some of the celebrations commemorating the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landing and the liberation of Normandy and the subsequent liberation of France and the rest of Europe, and the defeat of the evil German Nazi regime.
In particular I’m looking forward to being among the first to view the film The Girl Who Wore Freedom being shown in Sainte-Marie-du-Mont very close to the Utah Beach landing zone. I’ve been in contact with the producer of this film, and also the daughter of The Girl Who Wore Freedom and am looking forward to meeting them and other French citizens. I have also been invited to be a guest blogger on this site, although I’ve not as yet been given the go ahead.
The sculture at the top of this post is seen as we enter the small village of Sainte-Mere-Eglise. Upon first seeing it, and in the days and weeks following, I’ve come to see it as if I were one of those it represents – a captive in that small French village, and in a larger sense — the condition of humanity.
We see the gnarled and tortured hands reaching out to the falling parachute – chains are falling off the reaching hands – we see the cliffs and a ladder where US Army Rangers scaled from the rocky beach below – the rusty defunct machine gun – we see a church and the hanging paratrooper, a warrior for liberty.
And we see the flame of liberty flowing from the base of the falling parachute.
The US Army 82nd & 101st Airborne Divisions dropped into this area, and into the small village of Sainte-Mere-Eglise which became the first of many villages and cities liberated by the Allied landings. If you recall seeing the movie The Longest Day (1962) you may recall the scene where a paratrooper is hanging from the church bell tower. Well, he’s still there after 75 years (in effigy of course). When I first visited Sainte-Mere-Eglise in 2017, I was struck by the very many and prominent displays of remembrance and gratitude I saw there. The sculpture shown above is my most memorable.
Such were the conditions on 6 June 1944 and the days to follow.
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A great evil had captured the land.
* Evil came in columns of trucks and tanks across the roads of France. It came as columns of soldiers marching through the farms and villages. It came as bombers in the skies above.
* Evil killed. It captured. It put men, women and children into rail cars and deported them to death camps to be gassed by the hundreds of thousands.
* Evil moved into homes that weren’t theirs. It took food that wasn’t theirs. It destroyed what it couldn’t use or have.
* Evil came, and evil stayed.
* Evil sought to destroy culture, sovereignty and history – to destroy a sense of who they were, and it intended to replace it with something quite foreign.
* Evil had a name – National Socialism: Nazism
* Evil had a flesh and blood leader – Adolf Hitler.
* Evil had a god – Satan.
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France 2019 