CR Le cagnard de Cresserons

A lot of things can happen in a week.

Believe me.

Or you can just ask the boys that landed at Sword and Pegasus back in '44.

There's one or two left. Just ask.

Sword and Pegasus eh ? Where's that you say?  

Take a look and learn your history: 

Chateau de Lion sur mer (Wermacht infested)

Great grand ma's house (sadly no longer in the family)

Great grand ma's street... 200m to the beach!

76 years later we stood insignificantly, some of us barely crawling where so many of them shit themselves but stood tall and held their ground. Others sprinting their bodies forward into flying metal and hurling agony. Many falling. Crying and taking cover. Others capturing terrain, lunging, limping, tumbling and inching forward. Inch by tiny inch. Literally everywhere we stood, 76 years before, every patch of earth around us was a war zone.  The sand. The hedgerows. The farmhouses. The outhouses.  The little stone walls bordering the orchards. The roads, the paths, the fields. The woods, the treeline, the sea and the horizon. All of it an occupied, fortified, heavily mined war zone. 

There was none of that now. 

But the flags remained.

French. British. Canadian. American. And more. 

Waving through the air. 

That same thick damp Normand sea air that stole the last breaths of so many dying lads. Choking them into the ultimate blindness of a salty humid oblivion.  Their fears would never be measured. Their balls would never be weighed. Their youth would never be relived.

Our stay would never do them justice. Mind you, we weren't there to pay our respects. There was no way we would live up to their sacrifice. Besides, their ghosts weren't expecting another endless stately homage.  They'd already seen enough. 

Nevertheless a lot of things would happen that week.

Our stay would be pleasant. 

Holed up in the old domestic quarters of an old stone manor in a little town called Cresserons about a dozen km north of caen just a little bit inland off the "côte de nacre". 

Things were tranquil. 

Things were as you'd want them to be. 

Unrolling at a blessedly slow plant pace.

The pace of the seasons. 

The pace of peace. 

The race was over.

We could eat. 

We could swim. 

We could play. 

We would just say thanks. 

We would just enjoy the beach. The oysters. The wine and the cheese. 

 

The beach was luminous and smelled like popcorn and cotton candy on a hot summer afternoon. The atmosphere was vibrant and musical. The youth oblivious and carefree. The past never weighs heavily on their young shoulders. The war now a distant memory. The scars barely noticeably. 

The feeling is sincere. 

The pain is no more. 

But the wounds were real. 

And the gratitude is palpable. 

(To be continued... zero)