To Run With the Swift

by Gerald N. Lund

  “I won’t say anything,” he said.

  I felt a nudge on my other arm. I turned to see Cody grinning at me. “Hey, Sis. You know that hoodie you bought with the Eiffel Tower on it?”

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “I really like that.”

  I gave him a strange look. What was he looking so cocky about? “Yeah, so?”

  “You give me that, and my lips are sealed about Le Gardien. I heard every word you just said.”

  Originally, we had planned to make our first stop to the east of the memorial and visit the line of German coastal shore batteries that lined the bluffs along the Normandy coast. Cody had been really excited about seeing those, with their massive cannons and their three-foot-thick cement bunkers. But as we reached the coast, the sky to the north was visibly growing darker, and Dad and Grandpère decided they would have to wait until tomorrow. We’d go first to Omaha Beach, where American forces had landed, and then the cemetery. The visitors’ center was close to both, so if the weather turned on us, we could get inside pretty quickly. There weren’t a lot of cars in the parking lot, so Dad parked the van close to the gate and we went inside.

  As we started down the path that leads from the bluffs to Omaha Beach, the first flakes of snow came skating down on the light breeze off the water. To the north, out across the channel, the clouds were darker, but above us they looked okay, so we decided to press ahead. We stopped and read the interpretive signs as we made our way down to the beach.

  The water looked like gray slate because the sea was surprisingly calm. Fortunately, there was not much wind. In a way, it looked like any other beach. But knowing what had taken place here some sixty-seven years before made it so much more than that. The beaches of Normandy were heavily defended. Hundreds of men had died in the water without ever reaching the beach. Many of the wounded drowned in the surf because there was no one to pull them out. Grandpère softly described what took place in the early-morning hours of June 6, 1944, which only added to our somber mood.

  Unfortunately, we had only been down on the beach a few minutes when Cody started complaining of stomach cramps. Mom was asking him how bad they were when he suddenly gave a low cry, then darted into the bushes and started heaving up his lunch. When he finally finished, he was pale as the gray skies above us. Mom admitted that she was feeling kind of queasy too, but at first we thought it was from seeing Cody barf up his lunch. But then Dad admitted that his stomach was also a little unsettled.

  We had no choice but to turn around and head for the visitors’ center and its restrooms. By the time we were back up on the bluffs, Mom was pale as a ghost, Dad kept swallowing hard, and Cody was half bent over holding his stomach. All three of them made a dash for the restrooms. Then, to our further dismay, Juliette began complaining of nausea and stomach cramps too, and we knew that this was more than just a touch of the stomach flu. Fortunately, to this point, Grandpère, Rick, and I were all feeling fine.

  With Cody lying on a bench with his eyes closed, and Mom sitting beside him, her head in her hands, we held a council. Juliette, who so far had managed to hold her lunch down, leaned heavily on the back of the bench behind them. Dad had gotten some Pepto Bismol from his overnight bag in the van, but it wasn’t doing any of them much good. He had thrown up a couple of times too, so things were not looking good. So the question was, what now?

  “I think we just load up and get our walking wounded back to the hotel,” Grandpère said to Dad. “Even if we get the vomiting stopped, you’re too wasted to be sightseeing, especially on a day like this.”

  Cody raised his head in protest. “We’re not sightseeing, Grandpère. This is school, remember.”

  We couldn’t help but laugh. But for me, the disappointment was like a blow. I had been looking forward to this particular part of the trip almost as much as Grandpère. I could see that Rick was pretty bummed too.

  Mom’s head came up. “No, Dad. This is what you’ve been waiting for. We’ll wait here for you. We’ll be fine.” She managed a wan smile. “As long as we are close to the bathrooms.”

  “I agree,” Dad said. “Take what time you need.”

  Juliette spoke up. “I think it is something we ate, probably the box lunches. We kept the car pretty warm coming up. Chicken and mayonnaise don’t do well in heat.”

  “I didn’t have chicken,” Cody said.

  “It could also be a touch of stomach flu,” Mom replied.

  “Perhaps,” Juliette went on, “but the fact that it came on so suddenly suggests food poisoning. Which means we should be fine by this evening. So I have a suggestion. Four of us are sick, three of you are well. It is a shame that the three who are fine should have to quit because of the rest of us.”

  She paused for a moment. “You probably noticed a few taxis out in the car park. Many people don’t like to drive in an unfamiliar place, so they come out here by taxi. I’m sure some of them out there are waiting for returning passengers right now.”

  “Are you saying ... ?” I stopped.

  “Yes.” Then to Grandpère. “We’ll take a taxi back to Caen. You and Danni and Rick stay here for as long as you wish.”

  “I may need a plastic sack,” Cody said.

  Thanks for that vivid image, Code. But all I said was, “We have some in the glove box of the van.”

  Mom straightened. “That’s a great idea. We’ll be all right. This is what you’ve been wanting to do for years, Dad. So do it. We’ll go back to the hotel. Then we’ll be fine.”

  “I think that’s a good solution, Grandpère,” I said. “You need to do this.”

  He was torn. You could see that in his face, but finally his head bobbed. “All right. Yes. Thank you. We shall do that, but only on the condition that we all come back tomorrow and do it right.”

  As the taxi drove away, Grandpère turned to Rick and me. “I need to get something from the van. You go on to the visitors’ center. Get out of the cold. I’ll catch up.”

  I shook my head. “We’ll wait. I’m not cold.”

  “Me neither,” Rick said.

  Which was true. Both of us were bundled up pretty well—winter parkas, gloves, scarves, and stocking caps. The snow had increased slightly, but not enough to stick on the ground yet. I wanted to be at Grandpère’s side for every part of this experience. He shrugged and started for the van.

  When he returned a minute or two later, I was a little surprised to see that he carried a small duffel bag that was stuffed full and, judging from the way he carried it, somewhat heavy. “What’s this?” I asked. “More winter clothing? We’re fine. Really.”

  He shook his head but said nothing more.

  Nearly two hundred acres of land on the bluffs above Omaha Beach were donated to the United States by a French government grateful for the sacrifice that freed them from German occupation. On that two hundred acres, America had built the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial with an accompanying visitors’ center. The visitors’ center building is a long, one-story building with a flat roof. It is nestled in a wooded area east of the memorial pavilion. Once inside, Grandpère indicated that he needed to go into the restroom and left us to wander.

  We started with the exhibits, which took up almost a third of the entire building. It was fascinating. There were excerpts from accounts from various participants in the invasion, dozens of pictures, short videos of actual war footage, and many artifacts from the war.

  About ten minutes later, as I was leaning over a display case, Rick poked me. “Uh ... Danni. You may want to see this.”

  I turned in the direction he was looking, then gave a low cry. “Grandpère?”

  For a moment, I barely recognized the man coming toward us. The beret was gone. His winter coat and scarf were gone. In fact, everything he had been wearing just moments before was gone. What I saw before me now was a man fully decked out in the World War II co
mbat uniform of an American GI. My grandfather had somehow transformed himself into a man identical with the dozens of pictures we saw all around us: round metal helmet; field jacket with a sergeant’s stripes on the sleeves; ammunition belt around his waist; khaki trousers tucked into heavily scuffed, brown combat boots. All he lacked was an M-1 rifle over his shoulder.

  All around us people were pointing at him and calling for others to look. I saw one of the staff members nodding in approval. One couple, who looked American, called their teenage boys over, and the father started explaining something to them as he pointed at Grandpère. To their delight, Grandpère saluted them, and they saluted back. Through it all, Grandpère stood there quietly, his face impassive, almost as if he were one of the mannequins on display.

  When we finally joined him, I said, “Grandpère! This is incredible. Where did you get the uniform?”

  “I bought it a few years ago, when your parents and I came over for the sixtieth anniversary of D-Day. There were a lot of groups doing reenactments that year, and I decided I wanted to be part of them.”

  “So this is authentic?” Rick asked.

  “Right down to the brass belt buckle.”

  Then a thought struck me. “But why an American uniform? You’re French. And your father was part of the French Resistance. Why not a French uniform?”

  “Think about it,” he said softly.

  My forehead wrinkled. “Is it because you’ve been an American for all these years?”

  He sniffed in disgust. “I may have lived in America for all these years, but one never ceases to be a Frenchman at heart.” Then he shook his head. “Have you forgotten so soon? On August 24, 1944, my father was being taken out of Paris to be executed by the Gestapo. And my mother, who had come to Paris to look for him, had been captured by one of the officers in the Gestapo and was destined for the same fate.”

  My eyes widened. “Monique and Pierre. Of course. And that was the day,” I whispered, “that the Americans entered Paris and saved them both.”

  “Yes,” he replied softly. “I wear the American uniform—as do many of my countrymen in these reenactments—as a way of saying ‘Thank you’ to America for coming to France.”

  It took almost a half an hour for Grandpère to get the exact location of the grave of Lieutenant Arnold Fitzgerald from the sexton’s office. When we went outside, we found the clouds darker and the snow coming down more seriously now. With that, and knowing that the cemetery closed in less than an hour, Grandpère suggested we go right to the cemetery and see the memorial on our way back if there was time. And if not, we would see it tomorrow.

  We did pause briefly at the base of an impressive bronze statue that was more than twenty feet high. It was of a young man, his muscular body naked except for a loincloth, arching upward as he rose from the sea. One arm was raised to the sky, the other outstretched to the side, and he was looking over his shoulder at the heavens. It was as if he were leaping free from the grasp of the water. On the base of the statue were the words: MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY OF THE COMING OF THE LORD.

  Grandpère spoke from just behind Rick and me. “It is called The Spirit of American Youth Rising from the Waves. It symbolizes all of the young soldiers, sailors, and airmen who gave their lives here. They are rising from the sea in the Resurrection. Thus the lines from ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic.’”

  “It’s beautiful,” I breathed. And I meant that in so many ways. It was pretty amazing, actually, especially once I knew what the figure signified.

  We continued on past the long reflecting pool to where the cemetery itself actually began. Without any of us saying anything to each other, we came to a halt. What an incredible sight lay before our eyes. Stretching away from us in three directions were row after row after row of crosses, brilliant white even in the subdued light. The rows were perfectly aligned and the grass surrounding them was so immaculately trimmed it looked like a putting green.

  Something swept over me that I can only think of as a mixture of awe, reverence, and humility. I just stood there, letting my eyes take in the perfect symmetry of each row while my mind tried to comprehend what the crosses represented.

  According to the signs we had seen, there were 9,387 Americans buried here—almost ten thousand men, two thousand of whom had died either in the water or on the beaches. It was more than I could take in. Hanksville had a few more than two hundred people. Here before us were fifty Hanksvilles.

  Rick and I hung back as Grandpère led the way into the cemetery. We moved more slowly, reading inscriptions as we passed. Some were not actually crosses but Stars of David, signifying that a Jewish soldier was buried there. Here and there, clusters of flowers had been placed at the base of the markers. Some were freshly cut. Some were silk. Some were plastic. But all were meant to honor and remember the fallen.

  I stopped in surprise at the grave marker just before me. Without consciously being aware of it, I had been thinking of the dead as being men. Now I read, ELIZABETH A. RICHARDSON, AMERICAN RED CROSS, INDIANA, JULY 25, 1945. I’m not sure why that hit me so hard, but I stood there staring at it, wanting to cry. How old was she when she went to war? She had to have been a nurse. I was thinking more and more seriously about being a nurse. Did she leave a boyfriend to go off to war? A little brother, like Cody? And did she recognize that by choosing to go she might never return, never find someone to love, never be a wife, mother, or grandmother? Of course she did. How could she not have known all that? And yet, she came. Those thoughts swirled in my mind as I stared at her name.

  I turned as Rick called to me softly. I went two rows over and joined him. This was a different inscription, but it hit me with a similar emotional impact. HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY, A COMRADE IN ARMS, KNOWN ONLY TO GOD. Hard enough to die, but to not even be identifiable? How sad for them. How sad for their families.

  I shook my head, trying to grasp the enormity of their sacrifice.

  Up ahead of us, a movement caught my eye. Grandpère was holding the piece of paper he had been given by the cemetery sexton’s office. He studied it for a moment, his head lifting now and then to check his surroundings. Finally he moved four rows to the left and started down the row, walking more slowly now. About five crosses down, he stopped, then half bent down to peer at the marker. After a moment, he slowly straightened. He folded the paper and put it back in the pocket of his field jacket. Then he came to attention and saluted the grave marker before him. With that done, he removed his helmet and went down on one knee.

  “I think he found it,” Rick murmured.

  “Yes.” I started forward, but then stopped. “Let’s wait for him back at the statue.”

  That took Rick by surprise. “But I thought you wanted to see the grave too.”

  “I do. But it can wait until we come back tomorrow.” He nodded, then took my hand, and we started back the way we had come.

  “If you’re cold, we can go inside the visitors’ center and wait there.”

  I was cold, but not terribly so, especially not with him holding my hand. “No. I’m okay.” I took out my phone and checked the time. I looked to my right, past the reflecting pool to where the cemetery was. With the swirling snow, I could barely see the dark shape of my grandfather, but he was still standing motionless in the sea of crosses. “We’ve still got twenty minutes until closing time. Are you okay? I don’t want to go inside.”

  “Sure.”

  We sat together on one of the stone benches near the statue of the American youth. Rick had turned now and was studying it. “What are you thinking?” I asked him.

  “Did you notice how most of those buried here were our age or a little older—eighteen, nineteen? I even saw one who was seventeen.”

  “I know. And their lives ended here on the fields of France.” Then I decided to share something else with him. “Last night, when I was trying to get to sleep, I was thinking abou
t Thanksgiving. Usually my Grandma and Grandpa McAllister come down, and Mom’s brothers and sisters, and we have this huge Thanksgiving dinner. And it made me sad that we might not be back for that this year.”

  “Yes.” I could tell he wasn’t quite sure where I was going with this.

  “So, as we were passing all those crosses, I started thinking about Thanksgiving Day, 1941.”

  “Why 1941?”

  “Because that was about two weeks before Pearl Harbor.”

  “Oh.” He began to nod very slowly.

  “And I was thinking that there were kids our age all over America having dinner with their families. Eating turkey and pumpkin pie. Everything would have seemed perfectly normal to them. They were going to school, playing baseball in the sandlots, hanging out at the local soda shop. They had jobs. Girlfriends. They were preparing for college. Some were even getting married. They had no idea that the entire world was about to change for them forever.”

  “And two weeks later it did,” he murmured.

  I turned to face him. “What if something like that is waiting for us, Rick? Not two weeks away. I’m not saying that, but sometime in our future. Like what if someone smuggled a nuke into the U.S. and exploded it? That would be so much worse than Pearl Harbor or 9/11.”

  He thought about that for a moment, then nodded. “If that did happen, I’d go down to the Army recruiter the next day and enlist, just like they did.”

  “I would too, especially if I were a nurse.”

  Man! This was heavy stuff.

  Part of me wanted to change the subject. And yet, strange as it may seem, I wanted it to be heavy right then. I wanted to know what Elizabeth Richardson had felt like. Or Lieutenant Arnold Fitzgerald. I wanted to know if I had the courage to offer my life for the freedom of others. “But I’m not sure if, when it came right down to it, I’d have the courage to do it,” I said aloud.