I love history. I almost took a history minor when I started Redeemer just because I loved it so much. All the studying that I have done of the World Wars always gives you a reminder of what happened in our world not 70 years ago. But I must say that actually walking along the D-Day beaches where the fighting actually took place and walking through the same streets that Canadian soldiers and tanks liberated made it a whole lot closer to home.
5 of us left Paris early on Saturday morning on the train to Caen in Normandy. I didn't learn until later that day that Caen was a huge place of fighting in the battle for Normandy and it took the Canadians a month to get from Juno Beach to Caen when it's only a 20 minute drive away from the English Channel. We took a bus to Courseulles-sur-Mer and walked to the Juno Beach Centre. The day was cold and cloudy and threatening to rain and the tide was out - two things that were parallel to when the soldiers landed on the beach on June 6, 1944. There was a bit of national pride as we saw the Canadian flag blowing in the wind, as well as seeing an entire shelf in the souvenir shop full of maple products! The museum was very well laid out, informational, clear to follow, and the guided tour that we took explained quite a bit. We went outside to the bunker that the Germans had occupied while they protected the coast and I must say, they were stinkin' smart people! Their tactics and defenses were incredible!
Juno Beach is bigger than I thought. Out of the 80 km of coast that the Allies attacked on D-Day, 8 km of that was designated to the Canadians at Juno. Since the tide was out, we walked for a good long time, dogging puddles, across the beach and out to where the English Channel actually started. As dismal as the day was, there was a sort of beauty about it and awe at what the soldiers actually accomplished. These past couple days have made me so much more thankful for our freedom. It sounds like a simple statement, but there is so much weight behind that. Seeing footage and pictures and then the real thing is humbling and sombre.
Justine, Sara and I spent the night at a B&B in town. Cutest little town! Cutest little B&B! They left the key for us, since they weren't around the night we got there. We met Isabelle the next morning. Sweetest lady ever! She showed us a picture of the Canadian soldiers and tanks that were right in front of their house! Crazy to think of that as we walked out that morning. She was so kind and drove us 15 minutes farther west to Arromanches, where Gold Beach is - one of the beaches designated to the British on D-Day. Here we saw huge concrete slabs 2 km out in the water. These are the remains of a make-shift harbour that they secretly brought across the Channel in order to provide supplies for all the soldiers along the Normandy coast. The sheer genius of it and the scale of the task and the detail that went into it was incredible! I suggest you Google it because I had never heard of it before Sunday and there was so much information! The tide was in when we got there but went out again later that day and so we could walk out to one of the closest concrete slabs that helped to make up this road on the water. Kind of intimidating to be so close to it, but so amazing. I'm really not giving any of this trip justice with my descriptions, but incredible is an over-arching word I will use to describe it.
So in short, freedom. We are so blessed! We really can't forget what happened during this dark time, even though none of the fighting ever took place on Canadian soil. We still played an important role in the war and we have freedom because of it. I've thought so much about freedom of all sorts these past few days. I'm free to walk around and run and jump and do what I want because I am not detained in any way and my body is healthy. I'm free to speak my mind and talk about what I believe in because I live in a free country here in France and I come from a free country in Canada. I'm free to live for Christ, free from the bondages of sin, because Jesus has redeemed us and washed us whiter than that cold, white stuff we get in winter, and I'm free from the restraints and burdens that society and media puts on people. And I'm free to write this blog. You are free to read it. We are free to live each day in peace and joy.
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