My journey is taking me through the beaches and fields that were the site of the Normandy Invasion and D-Day back in June of 1944. I am not into military history, only by osmosis through my brother and father's great interest in it. Nonetheless, it is proving to be a remarkable experience.
Most recently, I visited the first bridge that was liberated in the early morning of June 6th by a daring attack by British gliders.
I thought of my Grandfather. During the war he had been one of the lead engineers behind the construction of American gliders. The British gliders were so successful that I couldn't help but think they had borrow some ideas from my Grandfather! He was known in his firm as 'The Uninhibited Mind'.
The story of the British seizing of the bridge is pretty amazing.
The bridge was liberated by a daring team of British gliders and paratroopers. They used their gliders to swooped in soundlessly on the Germans. They crash landed in the nearby swamp, got out, attacked and caught the Germans by surprise. They were able to capture the key canal bridge only two minutes off schedule.
Amazingly the Germans didn't even have a chance to blow the bridge-- which had been set with explosives. The Bitish troopers radioed in their success, and the rest of the Allied invasion began to roll in onto the beaches of Normandy.
I have now passed through and visited places like Utah and Omaha beach, the American war cemetary, the villages where the American and British paratroopers landed. I have spoken to farmers and Frenchman who remember the war and its aftermath and have told me all sorts of stories-- stories of destruction, but also of hope. I have even camped on top of old German pillboxes-- remnants of the German's formidable Great Atlantic wall!
It is a challenging juxtaposition as I work on my World Oneness Mandala and pass through the vestiges of war. More on this in my next entry.
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