History Speaks to Us
I was not a big fan of history in my teens and twenties. No history class ever made the factoids we had to memorize feel real or relevant to the world I lived in.
The History Buff
Then I married a big fan of history, and through his eyes, his love for that old stuff began to come alive for me, too.
Mont-Saint-Michel
In 1999, we traveled to Normandy together. I’d spent my junior year in college in France, and I remembered Normandy mostly for the delicious crepes and hard apple cider the region is known for. And of course, for the wondrous sight of Mont-Saint-Michel rising from a sea of tidal sands.
But I had never toured the D-Day beaches there, where the tide of World War II began to turn. Of course, my history-buff husband very much wanted to see them.
No Hollywood Movie
Most people have experienced film versions of the war, including depictions of D-Day. But no matter how “real” the filmmakers tried to make the movie, nothing—not the enormous scope of the effort, the danger involved, the bravery of thousands of young soldiers—nothing ever hit me in the gut, until I saw what those intrepid souls were up against on that day, and all the days after.
Already under fire from the German guns positioned atop the cliffs that loomed above the beach, they somehow mustered the fortitude to leap out of their landing boats, race for their lives across the vast beach past their dead and dying comrades, and scramble up the sheer, vertical cliffs. And if they succeeded, what then?
How did they do it?
Knowing that they faced more guns and possibly hand-to-hand combat if they were “lucky” enough to make it all the way up, how did they push on? It gives me chills to think about it.
As he does every year, last weekend my husband took a sealed jar of sand from the shelf and set it out on a table to commemorate those long-gone soldiers and their unimaginable courage. It’s the sand we had gathered from the beach in Normandy. It still looks as it did in 1999.
We enjoyed the whole of our trip to France that year. But the memory that lingers is of the site of that fateful day in 1944. And I will never think of history the same again.
Has history ever come alive for you? How?
Please share your experience below.
Gay Yellen is the author of the multi-award-winning SamanthaNewman Mysteries include The Body Business, The Body Next Door, and The Body in the News!
Contact her at GayYellen.com
Gay, want a humbling educational opportunity you were granted. Mine is not so sobering. My husband and I visited my cousin in Key West, and when she dropped us off at our bungalow on Duvall street, she seemed taken aback. This is where you’re staying she asked? She was surprised because it was on the street they grew up in and the same place my mother stayed when she was pregnant with my brother and my dad shipped off to Okinawa.
I’ve always loved history. But a talented history teacher can make it come alive. So does the History Channel. Beautiful blog. Thank you.
I love it when history comes full circle, Donnell, like it did for you in Key West. You’re right about the importance of having a history teacher who makes history come alive in class. My husband had one, and it turned him toward a lifelong fan.
I’m wondering if Don and I might have shared the teacher who instilled the love of history in him (since we attended the same high school). Who was he/she?
I lived through three historic events that still bring tears to my eyes. The first was the day Kennedy was shot. The second was the day the Challenger exploded. The third was the day I watched in real time as a plane flew into the second World Trade Tower and the subsequent collapse of both buildings. None, of course, come close to what those brave servicemen encountered on D-Day, but the trauma of those events has stayed with me.
All three tragic events you mentioned live in my psyche, too, Lois. I never thought it was part of history until years later. Funny how the years make us wiser.
Gay, My father was in the 3rd wave at Omaha Beach, thank goodness, or I wouldn’t be here. When I visited, I walked down to the beach, stood on the sand, closed my eyes, and the ghosts of those brave heroes surrounded me. I still tear up thinking of it. And thinking of my father, as a young man, dodging bullets and the bodies of his comrades-in-arms as he ran to do the job he’d been sent to do. Thanks for posting that. The past week or so has been an emotional one for so many patriots.
BTW, I wasn’t a fan of history when I was a youngster, but I sure enjoy historical novels now. (and the HIstory Channel).
Your father was incredibly brave, Susan. Something to be very proud of. Thanks for sharing his important role in American history.
I haven’t been to Normandy yet, but everyone I know is so moved by it that they claim never to think of WWII in the same way. I did go to Pearl Harbor, and will never forget what I saw there. Standing with several hundred visitors, I was amazed by the utter silence. Whether one is a history buff or not, no one can deny the sheer power of a momentous event that transforms the world.
So true, Saralyn.
Interesting how we see things (history) through different eyes. I still remember specific things about the day Kennedy was shot, but I also found learning the history of WWII through my parents’ eyes and where they were in their lives also has had an impact on me.
I agree, Debra. It’s interesting how we connect ourselves to history, whether learning about it through close personal ties, or having lived through it ourselves.
It is unimaginable what those soldiers went through. I just finished reading Mous (Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel, the story of a Holocaust survivor through the eyes of his son). The author pulled no punches, either about telling his father’s story or his complex, rocky relationship with his father. Those brave young men at Normandy were doing far more than fighting enemy soldiers. They were saving humanity from itself. War is a terrible thing. It seems rarely worth while, all that death and horror, but WWII was an exception in my mind, anyway. Our world would be vastly different (for the worse) had those soldiers not done what they did.
So true. Thanks for your thoughtful comment, T.K.