To the city far away

A choir member’s experience singing tribute to the fallen on the 79th anniversary of D-Day

This month marks 79 years since the Allied forces of World War II stormed the beaches of Normandy in an operation that would liberate Europe from the clutches of Nazi Germany and bring an end to the Second World War.

But for the local Normans today, the first week of June is a party. They dress up in their Army surplus duds and throw a costumed festival that is equal parts camp and historic reenactment. Travelers from across Europe — most from countries also liberated by the surge that began on Normandy’s shores with Operation Overlord — join with the citizens of this northwesterly region of France to kick off summer, enjoying Normandy staples like Camembert and boozy cider as they crowd historic town squares and cheer the day of their liberation.

This was a new and surprising juxtaposition for me. My own context of D-Day and other World War II battles is decidedly a more somber affair, likely born out of limited exposure and geographic distance that by perceived necessity focused only on the American heroism, which is to say, the untimely death of thousands of young men. The image I had of Normandy was courtesy the opening sequence of Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan”: harrowing and humorless.

But in Normandy, the invasion of Hitler’s Atlantic wall on D-Day in 1944 isn’t so much an event that is solemnly remembered as it is exuberantly celebrated. With the heaviness of the toll exacted safely preserved in monuments, cemeteries and museums throughout the area to visit at one’s own discretion and dosage, there is thus ample room for the spirit of joyful liberation to find its place in a regionwide festival that could almost be described as a 1940s-themed ComicCon.

Teeming hordes of authentically costumed celebrants in bomber jackets and jumpsuits, fedoras and bright red lips, drive a procession of historically attenuated yet still impressive M3 Scout Cars, Harley-Davidson WLAs and Dodge “Beeps,” among other military vehicles, and descend on the storied towns of Normandy where significant fighting took place that 1944 summer.

The air in the towns is jubilant, and the aromas of fresh sausages and frites cooked for hungry masses waft above nearly every village.

The somber remembrance does find its expression, too, particularly at the American cemeteries and at the D-Day beaches themselves, where the commemorative events hosted by the nonprofit organization Historic Programs take place.

And every year, Historic Programs invites a choir, a high school band or two, and a few other groups, like a bagpipe brigade, to add a little pomp to the circumstance of these ceremonies. This year it was the Choral Arts Society of Frederick, the choir to which I belong. We were invited to travel to this region, called upon to provide a live soundtrack for both celebration and solemn assembly.

For myself, it was an unexpected emotional undertaking. I’m not sure any one of us in the choir fully understood or anticipated not only how much work we’d put into preparing our music but in the sustained effort of governing our own hearts’ reactions just to be able to perform it. To sing under the full weight and awareness of Time and Place meant a crash course in stifling the frogs in our throats and willing the tears in our eyes to stay welled and unfallen.

SAINTE-MÈRE-ÉGLISE

Our first performance stop was Sainte-Mère-Église, the first town liberated by American paratroopers as part of the D-Day operation. It was a Nazi-occupied town, and the Americans were landing in trees and on buildings, getting shot at on the way down.

This is where paratrooper

John Steele of the 82nd Airborne became the stuff of legend when he accidentally landed on the small town’s 1,000-year-old church, for which it is named, pretending to be dead to avoid getting killed — and reportedly going deaf from the church bells ringing. The incident is immortalized by a mannequin of John Steele hanging from a parachute tangled around the church’s belfry. I didn’t ask if they took it down after the festival.

“I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places that this heart of mine embraces,” we sang on a temporary stage in the town square next to the Eglise, surrounded by small shops and

(See TRIBUTE 21)