Continued from a previous entry…

That night, we had dinner at a Normandic… er Normandish… a restaurant serving the cuisine of Normandy (gracieusement paid for by Sweet Briar). To describe the food of this region, you only need one word: cream. Everything has cream in it or has a cream sauce on it or is somehow creamy. This makes it a bit heavy, but still quite good. Mushrooms are also pretty well represented here, as are potatoes. Dessert, however, was not so much a creamy dish as it was a dish that had whipped cream on it… it was a (delicieux) pear tart that didn’t have a creamy soul like our dinner, but was complemented well by the topping.

After the jump:
Drinking & a girl on her knees, beatboxing & a local bar, and an architectural marvel & the ride home.
Read the rest of this entry »

I have not updated recently for two reasons:
1. Extended Modblog downtime
2. Site blocking by ISP? other mysterious party? …I kept getting “connection refused” errors. Even David, who is behind the great firewall of China could access it, while I couldn’t… Qu’est-ce que c’est que ca?

I’m here now because I’m using Privoxy. It slows down the speed of downloading webpages a bit, but at least I can access my blog.

Last weekend (the 8th & 9th)
I spent last weekend with 40 of the Sweet Briar peeps in Normandy, the northern coast of France upon which the Allies landed on D-Day. I was overjoyed to find that Normandy hasn’t been commercially exploited in the least. Sure, you see a sign to visit a D-Day museum every once in a while, but there are definitely no WWII theme parks or hokey touristy shit. The countryside is still beautiful and unspoiled, the restaurants serve regional food (rather than catering to Americans or British), and the beach memorial is solemn and respectful. Because of that I could imagine the American GIs from 60 years ago looking around the corners of buildings, marching along the roads, charging out onto Utah beach in a hail of ordinance. Most of you reading this have seen WWII themed movies or played computer games, but to actually be there just makes the whole thing so real. You stand on the sand and look out to the sea, then turn to the see how the Allied soldiers had to fight their way up the hill and onto the shore. Thoughts run through your head like “My grandfather landed here, killed men here, bled and died here.”

There’s a time capsule in one corner of the WWII memorial on Utah beach, filled with film clips and articles by journalists of the day, that will be opened on the 100 year anniversary in 2044.

We walked a bit further to a place where the shore meets the sea as a low cliff, rather than a beach, where a group of Rangers was killed as they scaled the cliff to meet German machinegun fire. Allied ships had shelled the cliff, hoping to destroy the bunkers there (the place is full of shellholes… it’s like walking through an egg carton) but they just didn’t hit them, and the Rangers were massacred. There, you can walk in and on the bunkers, there are no guards or caution signs… just the cliff as it was years ago. You walk down into a concrete bunker, passing by a little window where a machinegun must have been mounted and it’s a pitch dark, rectangular room. We “saw” the room by taking pictures with a flash and examining the picture to understand the layout, though in some bunkers a little daylight crept in. Whatever furniture or lighting was there must have been removed, but you still feel a nervous sort of fear, a residual “oh god I hope the next shell doesn’t hit” that the German troops must have been thinking. When you’re outside and you can see the sun and the beach, the German troops are just the Wehrmacht, Hitler’s army and the force that let him carry out his evil work. But when you walk into a bunker and you see the rusted doors and the machinegun windows and the stark walls and floor, they’re just scared guys about our age holding rifles with white-knuckle grips and hoping to make it until dinner that night.

I’d like to note that the Wehrmacht and the SS were two separate institutions: the Wehrmacht was the German army, while the SS was mostly in charge of running the death camps and was the organization implementing Hitler’s “Final Solution,” though they did do some fighting. Because of this, I can still picture German soldiers in the human way described above. They were still Nazis of course, but reasons for joining the Wehrmacht were quite different from reasons for joining the SS. (If you find any inaccuracies or points you’d like to clarify, Nic, let me know).

I’ll split this entry into two parts for easier digestion.

-Vic

EDIT: Please read Nic’s comment to clarify the role of the Wehrmacht in WWII. I have apparently not given credit where credit was due and have revised my rather lenient opinion above.

 ***Original comment on this post***

RE: Normandie, 1e Jour
Posted by: Nicster
Date: 10/17/05 at 12:16 AM (2w5d ago)
The wehrmact was responsible for many atrocities. For a long time this was not apparent, because the experience in the west was very different from the west. Historians of the second world war were primarily reliant on german sources, particularly ex-werhmact generals, in constructing the history of the eastern front, so it was not apparent exactly how widespread atrocities were in the eastern front until recently (although they were always recognized to some extent, i believe.)

Sure those soldiers at normandy were not the butchers in charge of death camps, and in the west they did not commit atrocities to the extent as in the east. However, I’m not sure on this, but im pretty sure that many of the units defending normandy had been involved in the eastern front. And in the east they had committed various atrocities (i.e. systematic killing of prisoners.)

To address your quote…
“Because of this, I can still picture German soldiers in the human way described above.”

Anyways the point is that those German soldiers in the Werhmact are more closely connected to the German soldiers in the SS than is commonly supposed. Because of the imperfections that our historical memory is created, the Wehrmact and particularly their generals get a “free pass” from the whole nazi thing, which should not be necessarily given. I feel an urge to go off on a tangent here, but i think i’ll save that for my own blog. P: