The view from the train window traveling from Paris to Bayeux started to resemble a World War II movie. Rolling hills and open fields punctuated by streams and ribbons of trees. As I would do often in my two days on France's north coast, I tried to imagine what it was like sixty-some years ago. I think the closest I ever truly came was imagining what a movie of a war would look like here.

Bayeux is a small town and a nice break from frenetic Paris. I booked into to the hotel right next to the train station, which at sixteen euros a night was also a nice break from Paris. (Never mind I would later discover the place is infested with bedbugs.) It was the most beautiful day I'd seen in France. It was sunny and warm, and I walked around with just a sweater. I decided the next day I'd rent a car and drive up to the beaches and cemeteries, enjoying the weather. I was about to get a harsh introduction to winter in the North Atlantic.

"If the bedbugs hadn't forced me to sleep on the floor..."
I could hardly believe it when I awoke to a frigid room with rain and snow pelting the window. If the bedbugs hadn't forced me to sleep on the floor, I might have gone back to sleep and waited for better day to head to the coast. But I plunked down a little over thirty euros for a car barely bigger than me and drove north. First stop: Omaha Beach.

Omaha Beach

There's now a summer vacation village and golf course at Omaha Beach. The latter is actually called "Golf Omaha Beach." How bizarre that one must be for an old veteran coming back to see the place.

"It would be impossible to wade ashore and attack the hillside."
But much of it has been left untouched, which with a few mental flashes of "Saving Private Ryan" make it possible to ponder what it might have been like. Imagine the barbed wire and obstacles on the beach, the Germans and their guns dug into the bluffs... where many of the fortified positions remain. It looks like it would be impossible to wade ashore and attack the hillside. I didn't linger long on the beach as it was freezing cold and the wind was blowing so hard it nearly knocked me over a few times. Not surprisingly, I was the only one there.

The American Military Cemetery on a hill just above Omaha Beach is maintained by the U.S. government on land still owned by France, but dedicated for American use "in perpetuity," as the sign says. I didn't know any of this and was a bit surprised to see a smiling photo of George Bush peering down at me when I opened the door of the visitors' center.

I flipped through the guestbook and was surprised to see visitors from so many countries. Some that weren't even directly involved in the war. In the "comments" column was an emotional example of the paradox of war. Some visitors wrote simply "Peace." This would then be misunderstood by other visitors, usually Americans and often victims' relatives, who would write their comment in reply, "Without their sacrifice there would be no peace." On one page of the book there were two splotches where the ink had run under a drop of water. Someone had been crying just signing the guestbook.

The American Cemetery

"It struck me as strange."
The visitor center is on the east end of the cemetery, and as I walked from there into the field of crosses I noticed I couldn't see the names. They were all on the other side, facing away from me. I kept having to stop and look back to see who someone was and where they were from. In the driving rain and cold this was a little bothersome and it struck me as strange. Then I realized: they're facing home.

There are 9,387 dead buried at Omaha Beach. Walking through the cemetery there's a point where you're completely surrounded by the familiar white crosses stretching off in perfect, seemingly endless rows. Spin 360 degrees and nearly your entire field of vision is filled with the identical markers. If I were trying to illustrate in a movie what this feels like, for an instant... poof... instead of white crosses you'd see the actual 9,387 soldiers just standing there quietly looking at you.

"80,000 enemy soldiers."
I had no idea there was a German military cemetery just up the road. As an American this struck me as terribly odd. So far as I know none of the Japanese shot down at Pearl Harbor are buried there, and plenty of veterans would have something to say about it if they were. But I think that aversion is a luxury of a country that's had so few battles fought on its own territory. What else are you going to do when nearly 80,000 enemy soldiers were hastily buried in your soil during the war?

A surely unintentional but symbolic visual impression, the crosses that mark the graves at the German cemetery are black rough-hewn rock, in stark contrast to the smooth, bright white of the crosses at the American cemetery. There are more than twice as many Germans buried here there are Americans at Omaha Beach.

The German Cemetery

"What it was like to have been on the wrong side."
The small museum, focusing on a message of peace, tries to portray the human side of war. I'm not sure how well it does this, but I was particularly intrigued by a written account of the D-Day invasion from a German soldier's perspective. He talks of their horror at seeing the enormous fleet massing off the coast, knowing they could only hold their positions so long. History is written by the winners, so we often have no idea what it was like to have been on the wrong side.

The brochures for all the military cemeteries talk in one way or another about how they serve as monuments to peace. That they remind us of the price of war and make us think twice before turning to violence. I'm not so sure. Scary, nasty things happened on those beaches but, entirely appropriately, it's been cleaned up and made into a solemn memorial to the dead. What we see now is not the horror of war, but a tribute to the courage and valor with which it is fought. I'm not suggesting that the memorials here should be anything but what they are, just that I question whether reminders of wartime sacrifice can be monuments to peace. I don't leave wishing the war had never been fought; I leave grateful to the guys who died so we could win.

For the first time, World War II seems like a modern war to me. Maybe it's that I've picked up a European sense of history. Growing up in a young country like the U.S., we get the idea that anything older than our parents is ancient history. The Revolutionary War, Civil War, the World Wars... often they all go in the same category: the black and white wars. If the pictures aren't in color it happened forever ago. But everything here happened about the time that my parents were born. The whole world was completely screwed up, people getting shot and blown up by the tens of thousands, barely sixty years ago. I'm not sure I ever really grasped that.

"An uphill fight against a vicious crusade."
The people who make previews for D-Day movies love to call it "The last great battle of the last great war." Was it also the last war that made any sense? Was it really as simple back then as it seems now? World War II as we know it seems to have been the simplest case of good versus evil one can imagine. An uphill fight against a vicious crusade to kill off entire chunks of humanity, rule the world, create the "master race." Hollywood couldn't conceive of a better villain for the "Allies" to go up against. Man in black hat versus man in white hat. Everybody gets it.

View from a German fortification.

By comparison today's world seems to have as many shades of grey as the November issue of Esquire. The good guys aren't always good and the bad guys aren't just tough to assign a color... it's tough to say who they even are.

An act of terrorism committed against civilians is, of course, purely evil... as much as an attempt to stop a specific attack is absolutely good. But those things hardly ever happen. In the "War on Terrorism," the questions aren't as easy as "Are you a Nazi?"

"What about Musharraf... or Iran?"
Are the Saudis good guys or bad guys? What about Musharraf... or Iran? Was John Walker Lindh evil for having connections to al Quieda? Was Saddam worth a war even though he didn't? It seems that when people were dying on these beaches it was so much simpler. These guys didn't want to die, but they did know what they were dying for. Can soldiers today, while no less heroic, say the same thing? Sadly, I'm not sure.

But I'm really asking a question here. I took history classes and have read some books, and you're generally left with the conclusion that the Allies saved civilization as we know it. Even modern films like "Saving Private Ryan" that take on the ugliness of war still end with the same message. Good triumphed over evil. Tom Brokaw managed to find enough different ways to say this that he filled three books and sold tens of millions of copies. Was it really so simple, or was it at the time as nuanced and confusing as what we face today?

I went for a walk when I arrived in Bayeux, passing the war museum that's open every day of the year except for two weeks: the ones that I'm in France. Just down the road I happened upon the British war cemetery. It's one of many in France for the Brits and all the other Commonwealth countries. With a uniquely European feel of history, a sign notes the sacrifice the soldiers made to liberate those who had, in 1066, been their conquerors. It was that beautiful, warm, sunny afternoon... and again I was the only one there.

"The average age was late twenties."
Walking among the four thousand graves of English, Aussies, Canadians and Kiwis, I found myself noticing the ages, surprisingly moved. Unlike most grave markers, each of these note the age at which the person died. The average age was late twenties. I lingered a bit whenever I spotted one that said 29.

I've written here before about this trip showing me how lucky I am. Today showed me another. How amazingly different is the world I see at 29 compared to the world they died in at the same age. And only because I came along a few years later. Still not peaceful, increasingly more dangerous and bewildering, but in my world rather than carrying a heavy backpack and getting shot at, I carry a heavy backpack and take photos of the places where they got shot.

Each of the markers at the British cemetery is inscribed with a short message composed by the deceased's family. Some talk of the survivors' love and promises to remember. Some mention hometowns or life accomplishments. The ones that most struck me, though, were about sacrifice for future generations. I stopped at the grave of Private K. J. Forester of Doretshire, 26 years old, killed four months after my father was born.

Forget not, you and they. For your tomorrow we gave our today.