Skip to main content

Transition

The family of the student I accompanied to Normandy in 2017 was gracious enough to invite us to her graduation party this weekend. Lauren and I came to know one another so well, we even got one another toys (for me a game, for her a Lego rendition of the Arc de Triomphe). I was also able to get her a copy of her superb paper for 2018 NHD that surprised her a bit.

Lauren was surprised that the published version of her paper was just that, rather than a published copy of this blog. 

Years later I'll look at this picture and smile. One of the best from my career. 
Lauren mentioned something at the party, though, that made me just a bit jealous. She asked me if I was following the happenings of the 2018 Normandy Institute crew. My answer was, no (my passivity with Facebook has recently become outright laziness). Then she admitted that she was a little jealous seeing new people in our places from last year.

And now, so am I.

I guess it's time, finally, to complete my Normandy odyssey. Lauren has now graduated, her academic work involving the institute is complete. Part of the academic hangover for me is the intrigue I still find in memorializing and honoring the dead from the war. The haunting fascination that I felt so deeply when visiting La Combe last June still pushes me to learn more. And it's time for me to be grateful that fifteen other teachers and fifteen other students are getting the chance to come home with a profound experience in understanding sacrifice.

I hope, also, they get the chance to bond like our group of students and teachers. Okay, perhaps I hope they don't bond that well.

So, where is my academic work going next? Well, formally it's continuing with work on the Korean War. I'm currently researching two Marines who served in that conflict. When I'm done learning what I can about those two (Bruce and Vic) it's time for me to start investigating my own family's past. My grandfather, after all, has personnel files, too.

This journey continues pretty soon, though, for I'm off to Hawaii, where I'll reunite with many of the grown ups I traveled with last year. And I guess it's time for this blog to record that story now, too.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Some Thoughts on Liberation

One of the markers placed by the French and Belgian governments to mark the path of the liberators.  My greatest takeaway from this most recent trip involves some refined feelings about liberation. I'm writing this post in a time of high cynicism. And the were matters of which one could be cynical back in 1944, the year in which Charlie fought and died. This trip, however, left me with renewed appreciation for what our country did back in that war, helping me refocus on what I've had the chance to see and do the past few years. Christopher is the military historian who accompanied us on this voyage. In one of our webinars this spring, he made an offhand reference to a piece of scholarship about the Holocaust he said was worth reading. It's entitled Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. It's heavy. I can't say I read every chapter. But I read most of it on our bus rides this summer. And I'm glad I did. My unassigned reading. Saying that Bloo...
1 comment
Read more

Day of Days

It's the seventy-third anniversary of the Normandy Invasion, D-Day. That means it is also the seventy-third anniversary of Bill's death. Bill, of course, is 1st Lt. Edmund William Duckworth. A map Lauren uncovered in her research.  To learn about the circumstances of Bill's death, I have done a lot of reading to better understand what led up to and took place on D-Day. I saw a post today on Facebook that discussed, quite well, the anxiety, unease, apprehension, and even frivolity that characterized the soldiers on the night before the invasion. D-Day was months in the making, and the soldiers who landed on those five beaches on June 6 had been preparing for the invasion for weeks or even months. In the immediate week before the invasion, they were queued up in embarkation areas and on ships, awaiting their chance to go. They were penned up for days. Knowing this adds more weight to the very difficult call General Eisenhower had to make, whether or not to go on June 6...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Navy Cross

Staff Sergeant Bruce Mathewson, Jr., distinguished himself on his last day with actions and leadership that earned him the Navy Cross . It was awarded to him posthumously: the medal itself was given to his son, Earle, who had just turned two before his father died. Accounts of Bruce's final day constitute the most fascinating components of his personnel file and other documents I've received from the National Archives. The citation for Bruce's Navy Cross.  The citation for Bruce's Navy Cross doesn't come up until page 330 of his 530-page OMPF, and I first came across the faded type-written document back in May when I was furiously skimming his files. A few pages later, there is a "Combat Award Recommendation Card" that offers a few more details of the event. It mentions that Bruce died of three gunshot wounds to his left side, that he was operating in a place with "Little concealment" and acting as a light machine gun section lead...
Post a Comment
Read more