France, Part 22 - Saint James and Bayeux

Saint James Cemetery near Bouceel is not any grand memorial.  It is a simple, beautiful and austere place.  From the outside it is protected by stone walls with a stone church in the center.  Inside the church are illustrated pictures of Operation Overlord, the Normandy invasion, and the beaches.  There are displays with quotes and stories of men who were there.   Outside are rows upon rows of headstones stalwart and silent like soldiers filed neatly upon the grass.  They are all graves of young men, many younger than I myself as I write this.  

I am no stranger to a military cemetery.  As a kid and cub scout, it was my distinct honor to place flags on Memorial Day at graves in the military cemeteries in Los Angeles.  At the time, it was a “fun” game to me, and the gravity of the place did not settle in.  When I was older and more mature, I visited Arlington Military Cemetery in Washington DC.   There I saw the many thousands of graves, the solemn parades, the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknowns.

Saint James was different.  It was a quiet place, graced only by the sun, by birds, and by the wind.   There are doves everywhere here, as if a holy spirit watches over this place.  Nearby, at the keeper’s house, I caught sight of a young girl skipping rope.  She seemed perfectly happy, at ease.  She probably couldn’t have been older than ten, but it put a thought of my own experience as a kid in my mind.  This girl had the freedom to be a normal child because of the lives lost, the souls enshrined beyond her doorstep.

George Mick's Grave

We passed down row upon row of tombs, and fount the one Reggi referred us to back at his home. It read: “George Mick, Tec 5, 25 Cav, RCN SO, ARMD DIV.  Wisconson, Sept 5, 1944.”   A few words, a few numbers to mark a life.   There was already a bouquet of the same flowers and we laid ours atop their and took a moment to reflect.   The man, the boy, had only been 24 when he died.   There were others nearby as well.   21 year old from Texas, 23 year old from Indiana.   There were Jewish stars next to Christian crosses, and one tomb that simply read “Here rests a brother in arms known only to God.”

Jewish grave

We stayed a good while at the Saint James, a sobering place and a quiet reflection on the lives we found there.   Thinking back on it now, it is not hard to be overwhelmed with emotion.   The men here, they were involved with the story of my own freedom, the story of Reggi and his father and the stories we were to experience later on.   We drove away, bound for our next destination but with all of these things in mind.

I pause here to reflect.  This is just a fraction of the dead, of those who gave their lives so that others could live.  It was the tip of the iceberg, the spearhead of a flood of places and emotions that were to come on Normandy.  When one stands there, among the silence, among the honored dead, you become a different person.  We left Saint James, and our little offering of flowers to George Mick's grave behind.  Somehow that image of the flowers and the gave will stay with me above a lot of Paris and many other places, wonderful though they were.

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The town of Bayeux and the Hotel Lyon D’Or served as our lodgings for the Normandy coast itself.   The town itself was a charming little castle town, and we had a room up near the rooftops that made mom feel like we were living out of a scene in Mary Poppins.  There is yet another lovely cathedral of Notre Dame here, and like the others its design and form were beautiful inside and out.  I personally thought the stained glass was the finest we’d yet seen.  The way the light filtered into the church, it created a heavenly landscape of colors, soft and inviting.  It seemed to me like God smiled upon us after our gesture at the cemetery.

The only thing I would skip at the church was the crypt, which was very creepy and had a distinctly unpleasant feeling.   From there we went to visit the tapestry of Bayeux which tells the story of William the Conqueror's rise to power.  It is magnificent and huge at over 700 meters long, all embroidered.  It depicts battles, horses and people involved in the Battle of Hastings and the Norman invasion.  The whole tapestry is hundreds years old, the oldest tapestry in the world.   We listened to the story through English translation in a device provided, and were doubly pleased to arrive there on a day when all museums in France were free.  There is a certain poetry in seeing this tapestry upon the eve of seeing the Normandy beaches.  The Normans fought and died here too hundreds of years ago (though not on the same spot.)  Seeing the images upon the cloth, one reflects later images from photographs.

Scene from the Bayeux Tapestry

After that we visited a small museum in the town which showcased exhibits of the planning, vehicles and people involved in the landing.  It was a simple museum, and nothing grand.  Thankfully most of the exhibits were in English, but the crowds of high school students made it hard to take in the true gravity of some of the things we saw there.   Dinner was extremely simple, no three course meal, but just a sandwich ordered at a local café.   We were tired of the long meals and the longer trek, of crowds and the jostling of bodies.  We retired to the hotel to rest and ready ourselves for the next day when we would visit the very beaches of Normandy.