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THE BEST OF CULTURE, TRAVEL & ART DE VIVRE

Spring 2014

Bad-Boy ArtistJean-Baptiste

CARPEAUX

FARM to (very cool)

TABLES

Remembering

D-DAY

T H E

L O N G E S T

D AY

L I V E S O N

Seventy years after the Allies’ historic landing on the beaches of Normandy,

the sacrifices of those brave young men still profoundly move visitors. x On the

following pages, Dan Carlinsky gives us an update on how the memory of the war

is lovingly preserved in Normandy and reviews the latest developments in World

War II tourism—which to everyone’s surprise continues to increase as the years go by.

x We also take a look back at some of the extraordinary people we profiled during our coverage of the 50th anniversary of D-Day,

once again sharing their remarkable stories.

x In this historic image taken at

dawn on D-Day, Robert Capa captures the first wave of

American troops coming ashore at

Omaha Beach.

Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks released Saving Private Ryan, and Tom Brokaw published The Greatest Generation—both wildly suc-cessful. A few years later, Spielberg and Hanks collaborated again, this time with Band of Brothers, a blockbuster 10-part TV miniseries destined to rerun often and sold on videotape and DVD. The effect is still being felt in this 70th-anniversary year.

Nowhere is this more evident than at the Normandy American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, which looks out over Omaha Beach. About one-and-a-half million people come each year to this solemnly beautiful place where 9,387 GI graves lie beneath an immaculately tended green field dotted with white marble crosses. The nearby Pointe du Hoc, where U.S. Rangers scaled sheer cliffs under heavy enemy fire, has seen visitors double to about a million a year.

Shane Williams is director of operations for both sites, which are maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission. In re-cent years, he says, many people have come because they’ve watched and read some of the history and want to see for themselves. “They have a good sense of the importance of the events and the places,”

the beaches of Normandy was marked by more parades, speeches, reenactments, special exhibits, fireworks, general hoopla—and traf-fic jams—than ever before. In the run-up to the observances, organizers, tourism officials and journalists on both sides of the Atlantic

all agreed on one thing: This would be the last big one. After all, vet-erans of the Allied forces and civilians who had lived through the war were pushing 70 and older. Everyone said that as fewer and fewer of those who remembered June 6, 1944, could travel to Normandy, interest would fade.

Everyone was wrong.As it turns out, World War II tourism has transitioned comfort-

ably to the next two generations, fueled in part by family connec-tions (“Let’s go see where Grandpa fought during the war”) but even more by enormously popular television, movie and book treatments of the conflict’s high points—a sort of “Greatest Generation’s Great-est Hits.” In 1995, The History Channel launched with such a steady menu of WWII documentaries that some took to calling it “The Hit-ler Channel.” Its spinoff network, Military History, and competitors have kept the drumbeat going round-the-clock ever since. In 1998,

them the Normandy Tank Museum in the tiny commune of Catz, near Carentan, and the Overlord Museum across the road from the entrance to the Normandy American Cemetery. The Overlord Museum—“Overlord” was the code name for the Battle of Normandy—grew out of the collection of a buff who had gathered thousands of items of period militaria, notably vintage Allied and German vehicles.

Even today, the flotsam and jetsam of battle still turn up in attics and barns, in fields and on beaches. Several years ago, a British col-lector made perhaps the find of all finds when he stumbled upon a forgotten German gun battery in Grandcamp-Maisy, a few kilome-ters from the Pointe du Hoc. There were cannon mounts positioned to pound the beaches as Allied troops came ashore on D-Day, plus acres of underground bunkers, a radio center, storage rooms, offices and hospital areas, all overgrown with weeds and brush. He bought

36 FRANCE • SPRING 2014 FRANCE • S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 37

Tx Above: A vintage map

depicting the routes, battles and key dates of the

two-month-long Battle of Normandy, from the D-Day

landing to the decisive battle of the Falaise Pocket that cleared the way for the Liberation of Paris. x Right:

The remains of the British-built Mulberry artificial harbor, created to resupply Allied troops, can still be seen at

Arromanches-les-Bains.

Williams says. “They’re helping to keep the memory alive. It’s won-derful. It’s the way it should be.”

Other key attractions in both the American, British and Canadian sectors have experienced similar upticks. Two of the most popular on the American side—the Airborne Museum in Sainte-Mère-Eglise and the Utah Beach Landing Museum in Sainte-Marie-du-Mont—have responded by investing millions of euros in ambitious expansions. Charles de Vallavieille, deputy mayor in charge of the Landing Mu-seum and son of the founder, explains the goal: “My father’s number-one interest was remembrance. That is still the aim of the museum: to preserve the memory with respect and gratitude.”

With the 70th anniversary quickly approaching, museums and monuments throughout the region are rolling out fresh video presenta-tions, smartphone and tablet apps, and GPS-guided itineraries. Both the Caen Memorial and the Juno Beach Centre in Courseulles-sur-Mer have cleared portions of underground German command posts and tunnels on their properties and opened them to the public for the first time. New privately owned museums have also sprung up, among

With the 70th anniversary of D-Day quickly approaching, museums and

monuments throughout the Normandyregion are rolling out fresh video

presentations, smartphone and tablet apps, and GPS-guided itineraries.

HE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE D-DAY LANDINGS ON

cemeteries in the region. “We might look silly with our little wildflow-ers,” a volunteer told France 3 television last year, “but these flowers are priceless, like the lives of these men. They gave their lives for us. These flowers are our way of saying to them, ‘un grand merci.’”

There are also groups that traditionally help find hosts for visiting veterans at anniversary time; now they have begun to extend their ser-vices to vets’ families. Anouchka Leblon-Maro has been welcoming American veterans and their families to her home in Carentan since 1995. “I have three young children,” she told Ouest-France. “It’s im-portant for us to remember what happened in ’44. It’s a way to pass this along to future generations.”

The big worry now is not that interest will fade but that in time, the physical remains of the Nazi occupation and the battles that over-came it will disappear. Eric Delouche, a photographer from Barfleur, has snapped 6,000 photos of the vestiges of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall still scattered among the dunes and nearby fields. “We see blockhouses every day,” he explains, “but we tend to forget them. They’re bound to disappear, mainly from erosion. We have to keep a record as evi-

dence for generations to come.” In Arromanches-les-Bains, concrete blocks visible offshore—remnants of the famous Mulberry artificial harbor—suffer from storms and the perpetual whipping of the tide. Officials are lobbying for inclusion of all the landing beaches on the UNESCO World Heritage List, hoping that the honor would help attract the money needed to stabilize the remains.

Anyone watching the D-Day ceremonies this June will notice an-other important development since the 50th anniversary: Germany now has a place in these annual events, with German veterans joining in the ceremonies and German paratroopers taking part in reenact-ment jumps with their American and British counterparts. “You’ve got to forget sometime,” one American D-Day veteran told an inter-viewer after watching a German military band play at a ceremony at La Fière battlefield. “It’s good that they are here. Maybe the world will be better off.”

Regularly updated listings of 70th-anniversary events are available at http://us.rendezvousenfrance.com/minisite/celebrate-normandy.

and surrounding fields and streets, the two cared for some 80 wounded soldiers, American and German, as well as a French child. Today, new stained glass windows memorialize the episode, and heavy bloodstains remain on some of the

pews—an ongoing reminder of the Americans’ sacrifice. Each June, the mayor leads a ceremony of tribute in the shadow of the church. Other Norman towns hold similar observances, frequently with a visiting veteran—or, these days, more often a veteran’s children or grandchildren—in attendance.

American and French associations also help to keep the heroes of the Battle of Normandy in the public consciousness by decorating graves of U.S. soldiers buried in France. The American Overseas Memorial Day Association, a nonprofit group whose motto is “Lest We Forget,” an-nually places flags on graves of U.S. soldiers killed in both World Wars and buried in Europe. French citizens honor their liberators through an adopt-a-grave group called Les Fleurs de la Mémoire, whose 4,000 volunteers decorate specified graves at the two large American WWII

the land and turned the place into a tourist site. There are some dis-coveries, though, that even the most avid collector would prefer not to make: Scarcely a month goes by without an unexploded shell or bomb being uncovered somewhere in Normandy, often in populated areas.

Annual ceremonies are another indication of the continuing inter-est in D-Day and the Battle of Normandy—the largest are attended by heads of state and witnessed by incongruously huge throngs in what is still a largely rural region. Often lost in media coverage, how-ever, is the fact that even the smallest villages have their story to tell and their way of remembering. Tiny Angoville-au-Plain is a good ex-ample. On D-Day, two medics parachuted in and set up a field hos-pital in the hamlet’s 12th-century church; Bob Wright was 20, Ken Moore 19. For three days, as fierce battles raged in the churchyard

x Top row: Reenactors in Carentan wave flags at last year’s D-Day commemorations; a view of Omaha and Gold beaches from Longues-sur-Mer; a diorama at the Omaha Beach Memorial Museum; Café Gondrée in Bénouville, celebrated as the first house to be liberated on D-Day. x Bottom row: A German gun battery; the Caen Memorial; the U.S. Navy Memorial at Utah Beach; reenactors at last year’s commemoration assemble at dawn to pay tribute to those who fell at Omaha Beach.

38 FRANCE • SPRING 2014 FRANCE • S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 39

f

Annual ceremonies are another indication of the continuing interest in D-Day and the Battle of Normandy. Often lost in media coverage, however, is the fact that even the smallest villages have their story to tell and their way of remembering.

40 FRANCE • SPRING 2014 FRANCE • S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 41

Henri LevaufreAUTHORITY ON THE U.S. 90TH INFANTRY DIVISIONK E E P E R S

O F T H E F L A M E

In 1994, France Magazine devoted a special issue to the 50th anniversary of D-Day. That coverage pre-dated our electronic footprint, but in anticipation of the 70th-anniversary celebrations, we have put much of that content online (francemagazine.org). x Along with articles explaining the history of the invasion, you will find “Keepers of the Flame,” profiles of five men who played an exceptional role in honoring those who gave their lives during Operation Overlord: two former members of the French Resistance, the superintendent of the Normandy American Cemetery, a historian and a museum curator. x We attempted to contact them all for this issue and were deeply saddened to learn that three have since passed away. Here are two of their profiles along with updates.

NORMANDY, 1993: Late one afternoon last September, I followed Henri and Janète Levaufre into a cornfield near their home in Périers, a small town in west-ern Normandy. As we made our way through the towering stalks, Henri talked excitedly about what had transpired there half a century before.

Suddenly, he stopped. We had arrived at a rectangular space covered with only

a few scrawny stalks, none more than a foot high. “This is where Jim Flowers’s tank burned,” he explained. “Even today, nothing will grow here.” From the yellowish dirt, I scooped up a few shell casings, amazed that traces of the inferno still remained. I cradled them in my palm as Levaufre told the tragic tale: The tank was hit, and Flowers jumped out, dragging his gunner with him. That was when he real-ized part of his leg was missing. The next day, while Flowers was still waiting for help, U.S. artillery took his other leg. “But today,” says Levaufre, “he walks like you and me. He’s the most upbeat, positive man you could ever want to meet!”

Flowers is but one of some 1,500 Americans, mostly veterans, who have visited the Levaufres during the past two decades. This extraordi-narily generous couple has welcomed them all, inviting them for dinner, giving them a room for the night or putting them up with neighbors.

What brings them to the Levaufres’ doorstep? “Nostalgia,” says Lt. General Orwin Talbott, a veteran of the battle for the liberation of Périers and a close friend of the Levaufres since the late ’70s. “Henri knows the area and can show veterans where they fought, where they were wounded, where they lost a friend. But he’s also a great psycho-logical help; he’s always there to hold their hand.

“The best man at my wedding, Captain Harvey, died on June 15, 1944,” continues Talbott. “I remember seeing him carried away on a stretcher. Thanks to Henri, my son and I were able to return to the spot where he died and pay our respects to him.”

According to Levaufre, it is not uncommon for veterans to sud-denly grieve over losses that occurred years, even decades, earlier. “During the war, there was so much death, soldiers simply couldn’t allow themselves to mourn. When they come back here and see their friends’ graves or the places they died, it suddenly hits them that those people are dead.”

Levaufre’s efforts on behalf of veterans and their families have earned him the Army Department’s Distinguished Civilian Service Medal—the highest honor bestowed on any civilian, American or foreign. They have also earned him the undying affection of hun-dreds, if not thousands, of Americans. “I’m 75, and I’ve met a lot of people in my lifetime,” says Talbott, “but Henri is truly unique.”

Levaufre’s initial interest in the war was circumstantial. He and his family lived through it, losing relatives, neighbors and their home in the process. Levaufre remembers that when he was 13, he and his younger brother sneaked out to the fields where U.S. and German troops had engaged in tough combat only a few weeks before. “Of course my parents didn’t know,” says Levaufre. “There were lots of mines and although we were careful, we could’ve been killed.”

What the boys found was a jungle. The earth was ripped up, blood

x Above: GIs walk through Périers’s bombed-out central square in July 1944; almost entirely destroyed by

Allied bombing, the village has since played host to innumerable Amer-ican veterans. x Inset, right: Henri

Levaufre in 1994, visiting the scene of a bloody WWII battle near Périers.

was everywhere. They picked their way through the detritus of war: scattered helmets, broken rifles, used syringes, abandoned K-rations. “There were cans of cheese,” remembers Levaufre. “We kept the white cheese, but we threw the pink cheese away. Years later, I found out it was pink because it had ham in it.”

After the war, Levaufre kept everything he found in the fields around Périers—shells, gas masks, rifles and other memorabilia. As his collection grew, so did his curiosity about the war. Armed with the detailed maps he used for his job with the electric company, Levaufre began the painstaking chore of canvassing every inch of land in the vicinity. “On Sundays, the kids and I would go out to the fields,” relates Levaufre. “I would go down one side of the hedgerows, they would go down the other. Every time we found a foxhole, trench or other trace of battle, we would mark it on the map.”

Soon, Levaufre began to have a detailed picture of where battles had taken place, but he still had no idea of their chronology. “The breakthrough came when I sent ‘Lightning Joe’ Collins a photo I had taken of him in Normandy,” relates Levaufre. “Along with the photo, I enclosed a note telling him that I would like to learn more about what had happened at Périers.” Collins forwarded Levaufre’s letter to the office of the Chief of Military History, who in turn sent Levaufre a reading list. Levaufre devoured the suggested books and then wrote to veterans’ associations, telling them he would like to meet someone who could tell him more.

Two weeks later, the U.S. 90th Infantry Division, which had liberated Périers, published Levaufre’s request in their newsletter. “That’s when it all started,” says Janète Levaufre. “And it hasn’t stopped since!” exclaims her husband delightedly. “Now we know thousands of Americans!”

The Levaufre’s “first American” arrived in 1969. He was Frank Fultz, a used-car salesman from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Levaufre drove to Cherbourg to meet Fultz’s ship but couldn’t find him in the crowd. Levaufre heard his name paged, and when he answered, he found Malcolm Latta waiting for him. “Malcolm didn’t speak French and I didn’t speak English, but somehow I made out that he had been with Fultz during the war, and that they were supposed to meet in Cherbourg. Well, I had come for an American, and I wasn’t about to go home without one, so I took Malcolm with me.”

Figuring Fultz had missed his ship, they returned the next day. “Malcolm hadn’t seen Frank since July 4, 1944—the day Frank was wounded,” explained Levaufre, and he was getting a little nervous. “While we were waiting, Malcolm said, ‘When Frank arrives, the first thing he will do is this,” and he put his hands up to his head, imitat-ing flapping elephant ears. ‘He always used to make fun of my big

ears!’” A few minutes later, they saw Fultz walking toward them. The moment he recognized Latta, he put down his suitcase and, grinning broadly, repeated the mocking gesture from 25 years earlier. Latta dis-solved into tears.

Latta had made it through the war without a scratch, saved, it seems, by his proclivity for alcohol. “He used to tell me that when the bombs zigged, he zagged,” laughed Levaufre. But his memory of those days wasn’t very clear. Fultz, however, recognized everything.” When Levaufre took them to a farm where they had fought, Fultz remembered exactly where bullets had hit, where a German soldier was buried—even where the cider was kept. Levaufre introduced his new charges to the farmer, who invited them in for coffee and Cal-vados. Later they went out back, and the farmer picked up a WWII helmet that he’d been using to hold chicken feed. “You could still see the 90th’s insignia!” exclaimed Levaufre. “The farmer took it over to the pump, washed it off and gave it to them. You can’t imagine how happy they were!”

Levaufre has been escorting U.S. vets through the Périers coun-tryside ever since. “If you can tell Henri the company name and the date something happened, he can immediately tell you, within a few hundred yards, where the event took place,” marvels General Talbott. “With more research, he can almost pinpoint the exact spot.”

Some requests, however, are not quite that easy. It took Levaufre several months, for example, to help one veteran locate the German doctor who had shown kindness to him when he had his leg am-putated. In those cases, Levaufre leaves no stone unturned, consult-ing the National Archives, researching French and German records, writing letters and following up every possible lead. In the process,

he has amassed dozens of vol-umes of documents and is now considered the leading authority on the 90th Division.

He shares what he knows with the locals, who jokingly refer to him and his wife as les Américains. “When I tell them what happened, they always want to do something,” says Levaufre, who likes to show visi-tors the many small plaques and monuments in the fields and woods around Périers. All were put up by villagers wanting to

thank their American liberators. But Levaufre’s proudest achievement is the 1979 meeting he

helped organize in Heidelberg for the Americans and Germans who had faced off in battles near Périers. “There were 120 Americans and 80 Germans,” recalls Levaufre. “A number of the U.S. vets had been wounded during the war—one of them had been blinded a few days after D-Day. Many of the Germans attending had also lost limbs.... When they shook hands for the first time, it was very emotional, there were a lot of tears. It was the happiest day of my life.”

Many friendships made that evening have endured to this day, and Levaufre expects to see several of those same veterans during the 50th commemorations. Thanks in part to his urging, Germans are officially invited to all the ceremonies in Périers. “I know they haven’t been in-vited to the events involving the heads of state,” shrugs Levaufre, “but it’s been 50 years. If we can’t make peace now....” —KAREN TAYLOR

NORMANDY, 2014: Now 83, Henri Levaufre still resides in Périers with his wife, Janète, and the two still open their hearts and home to veterans and, in-creasingly, their children and grandchildren. “Of course, given their age, we see many fewer veterans than before, maybe two to five every year,” says Levaufre. “One is a preacher from Indianap-olis who was wounded in Périers; he comes every year with 50 of his parishioners.”

Despite the decline in visitors, he has remained devoted to his mission of preserving the memory of the 90th Division’s role in World War II. In the 1990s, he launched a fundraising drive to finance a bronze statue of “Les Quatre Braves”—life-sized likenesses of four men from the 90th who died during the battles to liberate

Périers. All are buried in the American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer. One soldier is shown wounded, with another caring for him while a third watches over them and a fourth gestures for his tank crew to advance. The inau-guration took place in 2000 in the presence of the soldiers’ families, many of whom wept openly. “One woman from Hawaii said, ‘For the first time, I am seeing my father,’” relates Levaufre. “Her Dad was killed six months before she was born.”

Levaufre has also written two books, We Were at Normandy (published by the 90th Division’s veterans association in 2008) and the newly released Nous étions tous en Normandie (Editions Eu-rocibles). And although he has re-signed from his position as official historian of the 90th Division, he continues to collect documents—official records, maps, letters, photos, books, newspaper clippings—compiling a collection that long ago outgrew his home office and now has outgrown the

new office he built in his back-yard. One day, he says, all will be donated to the departmental archives. “I want all these items available to the families of veter-ans who never spoke much about the war while they were alive.”

Meanwhile, he is using those ex-tensive resources to make the case for having a stretch of countryside where 72 Americans died on July 26, 1944, classified as a historic monument. “The battle took place just outside Périers. The Americans wanted to attack the Germans, but they were on the other side of this swampy area. The Americans couldn’t use their tanks to advance, but the Germans used theirs to fire on the GIs as they struggled to make their way across on foot. In addition to those killed, another 180 were wounded.” This summer’s 70th-anniversary celebrations in Périers will include placing a granite marker and a plaque on the site to commemorate the Americans’ sacrifice.

Levaufre notes regretfully that few of the survivors of that

heroic advance are still alive or well enough to attend. In recent years, he has lost many good friends from the 90th, including Lt. General Orwin Talbott, inter-viewed in our 1994 article, and Lt. Colonel Edward Hamilton, whom he befriended in 1970. “Ed was wounded three times during WWII, lost an eye and spent a year in a hospital. He was incredible, indestructible really—he even survived throat cancer. He had an impressive career and died about five years ago. He’s buried at West Point.” Levaufre proudly adds that his name is on Hamilton’s tomb. “We were like brothers. The in-scription says, ‘In memory of my French brother Henri Levaufre.’ Some of Ed’s ashes are in a time capsule under the Four Braves monument here in Périers, and some of mine will be scattered over his grave.”

Reflecting on his friendship with Hamilton and so many other departed veterans, he adds qui-etly, “We did the best we could for them.” —KT

TWENTY YEARS LATER...

42 FRANCE • SPRING 2014 FRANCE • S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 43

x Henri Levaufre has dedicated his life to preserving the

memory of the 90th Division’s role in WWII; he is currently working to have this former

battlefield classified as a historic monument. x Opposite: The 90th

Infantry Division Memorial at Utah Beach, with the famous TO

(“Tough Ombres”) insignia.

Levaufre’s efforts on behalf of American veterans and their families have earned him the Army Department’s Distinguished Civilian Service Medal— the highest honor bestowed on any civilian, American or foreign.

main responsibility, the upkeep of the cemetery’s 172 acres set on a bluff overlooking Omaha Beach. Immaculately landscaped gardens surround the magnetic focal point: countless rows of gleaming white crosses marching across an endless carpet of emerald green grass.

Also under his supervision is the nearby Pointe du Hoc, a 100- foot-high cliff that was the site of a German observation post. Early on the morning of D-Day, 225 U.S. Rangers attempted to scale the sheer incline in order to destroy a dangerous enemy battery that could be turned on ships and troops landing at Omaha Beach. By the time they were relieved two days later, the Rangers were in control of their objective, but only 90 were still fit for combat. Today the site remains much as they left it, pitted with shell craters and studded

with bombed-out bunkers. Rivers’s maintenance responsibilities also extend to

some 140 plaques and monuments in the area, includ-ing the one at Utah Beach inaugurated by President Reagan during the 40th anniversary. And as if these du-ties weren’t enough for the superintendent and his tiny staff, the upcoming 50th anniversary has turned Riv-ers’s office into a press center-cum-tourist information booth. The day I visited, Life Magazine had just left, ABC had just arrived, and Rivers was contemplating hiring a press attaché. He is also besieged by scores of Americans in search of lodging and other tourist services.

“These people need help, and naturally they come here, but we just can’t get any work done these days!” he says almost apologetically.

But while he renders what services he can, Rivers clearly gives prior-ity to caring for the grounds. “It’s so important to the veterans,” he ob-serves. “Yesterday, for example, I met a U.S. Navy vet who was visiting with his two grown grandchildren. He was completely taken aback by the beauty of the place. Somehow, it comforted him. He had survived the invasion, survived the war, but had lost a lot of people. Forty-nine years later, he had come back for the first time, with a certain amount of anxiety. But he was reassured to see that his buddies were cared for. Somehow, he didn’t feel as guilty about coming out of the war alive, he didn’t feel as guilty that his buddies’ numbers had come up, but not his.

“It was a liberating experience for him,” continues Rivers. “Here was a man who had never really opened up to his family about his war experience, and suddenly he just exploded. For two hours he went on about what had happened to him. It was like a flashback. I can tell you, it was a very sobering experience for those grandchildren.”

Rivers has seen scores of similar reactions, some even resulting in minor domestic disputes. “A vet will come into the visitors’ center to sign the guest book, and all of a sudden he will start talking—and talk-ing and talking. His wife, stunned, will exclaim, ‘We’ve been married for almost 40 years! Why haven’t you ever told me any of this?’

“It’s really very important for spouses to come,” stresses Rivers. “Many have never been interested in this part of their husbands’ past, but they understand much better once they come. When you stand at the overlook and see the beach at low tide, you don’t have to be a historian to comprehend that this had to be difficult.”

Many of the 1.5 million visitors who do make the trip are school children, and Rivers obligingly assists teachers in preparing question sheets for them to fill out during their visit. “Every year we see more and more kids, not only from France but also from England, Belgium, Holland and, increasingly, from Germany. Even the youngest ones seem to get a lot out of the visit.”

Perhaps most deeply affected are young people who come with a grandparent who took part in the war. “Often, they don’t say very much,” says Rivers, “but a lot is going through their heads. I’ve seen veterans point out to their grandchildren that they were their age dur-ing the war. And the kids are thinking, ‘Was he stronger in character than I am? Could I have done the same thing? Am I as strong mentally?’ Of course, they should realize that not everyone came out of this intact. There were those who were para-lyzed by fear. I really can’t imagine, even after all my years here, what it must have been like.”

Sadly, some visitors arrive a little too late. “I see a lot of families who never re-ally paid much attention to the war,” says Rivers. “When they come here, it sud-denly becomes real to them. They may have a father or a grandfather who recently passed away, a veteran, and they are so sorry they never talked to him about it, never asked any questions. But by then, it’s too late.” —KAREN TAYLOR

NORMANDY, 1993: The American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer is the emotional epicenter of the Battle of Normandy memorials. As the Mayor of Caen observed, “It’s a place that speaks to you. Ten thousand kids lying there silently—that says something loud and clear.” Indeed. Visitors walk back to their tour buses and cars misty-eyed, their faces drawn with the fresh pain of a 50-year-old sacrifice.

For the past decade, the care and maintenance of this shrine has been entrusted to Joseph Rivers. Impeccably neat, with the no- nonsense look of a military man (he is in fact a civil servant employed by the American Battle Monuments Commission), Rivers runs a tight ship. Yet years on the job have not left him immune to the emotional impact of the site, nor have they lessened his sensitivity to those who visit. Quite the contrary.

As we speak in his small office at the visitors’ center, his assistant pops his head in to say that he will be escorting a woman who has come to see her father’s grave for the first time. “We always personally escort next of kin,” explains Rivers. “Sometimes they get very upset. They keep their emotions in check until they get out there, but then it can become very traumatic for them. It’s the same with veter-ans; I’ve seen a lot of them just go to pieces.” Rivers admits that seeing visitors through these emotional watersheds is an aspect of his job that never gets any easier.

Rivers’s horticultural background prepared him for his

Joseph Phillip “Phil” RiversSUPERINTENDENT OF THE NORMANDY AMERICAN CEMETERY

x The American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, where acres of green are dotted by some

10,000 graves. x Inset: Three generations of the Shumway family pose on June 6, 2009;

veteran Hyrun “Smith” Shumway (center) was part of the Omaha Beach landing.

x Daniel Neese, super- intendent of the Normandy

American Cemetery and Memorial at Colleville-sur-Mer.

44 FRANCE • SPRING 2014 FRANCE • S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 45

x Joseph Phillip Rivers in 1994.

NORMANDY, 2014: Phil Rivers continued to serve as superin-tendent of the Normandy Ameri-can Cemetery until 1999, when he was assigned to the Meuse Argonne American Cemetery. He retired after 36 years of ser-vice in May 2011 and settled in Ooltewah, Tennessee, with his French wife, Jocelyne. He passed away the following year.

In Normandy, Rivers was suc-ceeded by Gene Dellinger, then by Daniel Neese, the current superin-tendent. “The biggest change that we have seen here since Phil’s tenure is the new visitors’ center, which opened in 2007,” says Neese. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, French Minister of Defense Hervé Morin, veterans and other VIPs were among the 3,000 people present for the inau-guration, which took place during the ceremonies marking the 63rd anniversary of D-Day.

Neese points out that the 30,000-square-foot building is not a museum but rather a place designed to give visitors a deeper understanding of the Normandy Invasion as well as the courage, competence and sacrifice of the men who served. “We have films, interactive displays and exhibits.

Visitors can listen to oral testimo-nies or see small setups such as a first aid kit or sea rafts. We want them to connect with these sol-diers on a personal level. It’s amaz-ing, even the rowdiest teens calm down two minutes into our film. After that, there is dead silence.”

Neese now oversees some 50 employees, about twice as many as in Rivers’s day. And that number will increase again soon with the opening of a new visi-tors’ center at the Pointe du Hoc, slated for inauguration during the 70th-anniversary celebrations.

Visiting U.S. veterans are no lon-ger a daily occurrence, of course, but overall, the number of visitors has increased significantly since the 50th anniversary of D-Day. “To-day about 60 percent are French and 20 percent American, with a mix of families, students and retir-ees,” says Neese. “It’s incredible, but the interest just doesn’t fade; the sacrifice of these young men is not forgotten, it lives on in people’s hearts. The Normans in particular are fiercely proud and grateful.”

Already he is bracing for the influx of visitors that will inevitably accompany this summer’s 70th anniversary. “Every major media outlet has contacted us, but we still don’t know much about the official ceremonies. One thing though is for sure: If everyone who has said they are coming does come, this will be the big-gest anniversary yet!” —KT

TWENTY YEARS LATER...

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Founded in 1985, France Magazine is published by the nonprofit French-American Cultural Foundation.

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2014 issue of France Magazine.

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