"Nothing is the same"

(Photo by Don Dale, 2004)

The three veterans of the Normandy invasion in 1944 who accompanied us on a 60th anniversary tour made it somehow more authentic. All we had to do was look at any one of them and remember that they had been there, they had risked their lives, they had experienced the horrors.

As our bus approached the coast of France one morning, they agreed to pose for a picture. The experience seemed to make them slightly uncomfortable. They weren't seeking attention, and none of the three was comfortable with the word "hero."

But they couldn't escape the fact that they had been there 60 years before, under circumstances that were nothing like those of a group of tourists in 2004 who viewed D-Day as history and not as a personally terrifying, ever-present reality that still shaped 21st-century thoughts and feelings, and even yet provided a framework for viewing the world.

I am deliberately not using their names or hometowns: I neglected to seek their permission then, and I have since lost touch with them. If they are still alive, the youngest would be in his mid-80s.

They were three distinct personalities.

One rarely talked to anybody on the tour other than his wife. He would exchange pleasantries if prompted, but beyond that -- nothing.

Another was gregarious and hearty, full of the excitement of seeing Normandy again for the first time since he was a teenager. He socialized with anybody who wanted to strike up a conversation and enjoyed telling stories. He, his son and I enjoyed too many snifters of Calvados one evening as he told stories of 60 years ago.

The third D-Day veteran was one of the first people I met as we tour participants gathered in a hotel dining room in Paris on the night before our excursion began. His wife chattered away, excited about our upcoming visit to Omaha Beach, where her husband had landed. As is the case with many veterans who had horrific experiences, he never told her much about what had happened to him that day. For their anniversary, she had booked the tour. He, she said, had been reluctant to come along. She, however, had finally persuaded him, but it was clear that he didn't share her eagerness to see Normandy again. For him, the memories were best left in the past, undisturbed.

Several days later, when we arrived at Omaha Beach, I saw him at the end of a long pier stretching out into the English Channel, standing alone, apparently lost in thought. I wanted to walk out to the end of the pier myself to photograph the beach as it might have been seen by those wading ashore. But I was reluctant to disturb him. Instead, I busied myself for a while reading inscriptions on a nearby monument, chatting with others on the tour, and taking a photograph of the -- to me -- incongruous "Omaha" miniature-golf course just across the road.

Perhaps 20 minutes passed before I again looked out to the end of the pier, and he was still there, still alone. I made my way out to where he stood, apologizing for interrupting. "Are you okay?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. He sighed deeply.

"I was trying to figure out where we landed. I can't find any landmarks. It's all been built up. Nothing is the same. I just don't know where I was."

And with that he walked back along the pier to the beach. I took a few photographs and followed him back to the shore as the waves lapped gently on the sand.