La Cambe German war cemetery in Normandy. Photo by Bertram Gordon.
The end of May and beginning of June are marked by war-related commemorations, notably Memorial Day, on the last Monday in May, and D-Day, the anniversary of the 1944 Allied landings in Normandy that led to the defeat of Nazi Germany during the Second World War.
The celebration of Memorial Day dates back to 1868, shortly after the Civil War, when it was known as Decoration Day, and I recall going to parades in Brooklyn on that day as a child. My more recent recollections are of D-Day, especially in 2009, when I was invited to write an article for the French newspaper “Libération,” in Paris. Little did I realize then that during a visit to Normandy in 2017, I would be invited by a friend, Daniel Letouzey, a retired secondary school teacher there, to visit the local military cemeteries with him.
The tour with Daniel included the American military cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer and the German military cemetery at La Cambe. Daniel was acquainted with the cemetery officials and introduced us to the director at La Cambe.
At La Cambe, the director told us stories of some of the relatives of German soldiers and sailors buried there who would visit to honor family members at their gravesites. One story stands out. It was the account of a German woman whose son had been killed during the Normandy campaign and who would visit annually, on his birthday if I recall correctly, to honor him. She knew exactly where his grave was and the director would usually let her walk to it, unattended. One year, she visited and the director, who was not especially busy that day, offered to accompany her to her son’s gravesite.
When they reached the gravesite, she broke down and told the director that, as she was getting older, it would no longer be possible for her to continue her annual visits to her son’s grave. Would it be acceptable, she asked, to bring some soil from Germany and place it there as a kind of memorial? Of course, he said “yes” and was thereby able to honor her request the following year. This memory has stayed with me since 2017 as another reminder of the human cost of war.
Bertram Gordon is professor emeritus of history at Mills College as well as an OLLI member, faculty member and volunteer. His most recent book War Tourism: Second World War France from Defeat and Occupation to the Creation of Heritage grew from his discovery of German-language tourism magazines published for German soldiers during their Second World War occupation of France. His next book, Tourism and War: Their Links through History, will be published by Routledge Press. He can be reached at bmgordon@berkeley.edu.