D-Day 60 years on

By JANET MCALLISTER

It's an ideal beach for a family picnic. Vast as a golden-sand Piha sans Lion Rock and frosted with gingerbread holiday houses, it gives those pebbly Riviera beaches a run for their euros. The first time I visited, I was working as a Normandy nanny and hadn't seen the sea for several months. Any isthmus native will agree that's enough to make you stir-crazy: unthinkingly, I jumped and chased seagulls in the shallows, having a grand old time.

Until, that is, we spotted the German gun hideout on a grassy slope, responsible for maybe 2500 kills and woundings one summer's day on this bloodiest of D-Day beaches. I came back down to the Omaha sand with a bump. The beaches of Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword are tapu; the site of the largest seaborne invasion in history, sacred to the memory of the young men who died here. Respect is required.

June 6 this year is the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings. But even if you go to Normandy to seek war history rather than just pleasure, you get more than you bargained for. Look beyond the ghosts of Eisenhower's 1944 flotilla and you can imagine William the Conqueror sailing off in the other direction from the same beaches in 1066, towards Hastings, the Anglo-Saxons and his commanding nickname. Go to the medieval village of Bayeux (just follow the distinctive, three-spiked spire of its ancient cathedral) and you can see the exquisite Bayeux tapestry - the medieval equivalent of a television war special. The embroidered story scrolls along for 70m, showing William's boats, horses and gory spears (not to mention a couple of risque border pictures), wrought by monks in fantastic detail and wobbly perspective. It was commissioned by William's half- brother, Bishop Odo, and finished 10 years after the Battle of Hastings. Today's video documentaries will be lucky to exist for as long as this tapestry already has.

But in the Old World, the actions of nation-makers don't stay cooped up in museum cabinets, even after a score of generations. Lives were saved during World War II because William married his cousin Mathilda 900 years earlier. To make his irregular love match all right in the eyes of the church, he had two magnificent abbeys built in the Lower Normandy capital of Caen, 10km from Sword Beach.

Ten thousand Caenites took refuge in them during June and July 1944 while Allied planes were bombing the rest of their town to smithereens. To survive, they opened a well which hadn't been open for a century and resourceful boys ventured out to find cows to cook which had been killed in the bombing. (Normandy is still known for its abundance of cows, cider and rain.)

Resistance member Andre Heintz was one of those who sheltered in William's abbeys. Now 84 and still living in Caen, he worked with the Red Cross, using heavy old shutters as stretchers, and climbed up the top of a church spire to see how the Allies were getting on with the Panzer tanks. The day the Allies broke through was, he says, "the most beautiful day of my life".

Talk to any older Norman and stories like this appear - reminding you that the hard slog didn't stop with the storming of the beaches. The tales are told matter-of-factly, but as with Omaha Beach, the calm appearance hides heroics. One wartime afternoon in front of German officers in Cherbourg, a friend's great-grandmother strolled nonchalantly along with two chums - one dressed in red, one in white and one in blue. Another of my friends employed an older nanny who, just before she fled the Caen bombings with about 40,000 others, was given bread by a baker who was using up the last of his flour and handing out loaves free. At a wedding I went to in Paris, the grandfather of the bride had landed in Normandy a few weeks after D-Day as part of the Free French forces - he remembered the Caen Prefecture lawn lined with trenches and freshly dug graves.

Somewhat banally, that lawn is now a carpark, but a more honourable supplantation has happened up the hill from the town centre: where the German headquarters once stood is now the Caen Memorial, "a museum for peace". It is as much of a benchmark to museums as Churchill is to war prime ministers. The multimedia presentations on World War II, the Cold War and different cultures' perceptions of peace manage to be both stylish and intelligent (Te Papa, take note) and it is rewarded with visitors who stay an average of six hours. You don't pique that kind of interest with dusty cardboard explanations.

The memorial also runs half-day tours to the beaches and cemeteries, which I made use of for my second visit to the beaches, as an older and wiser Normandy tourist. My young, degree-trained guide knew off by heart exactly how many vehicles drove off the artificial harbour at Arromanches and how many German bunkers were built at Pointe-du-Hoc, but I wished she'd stopped talking when we first entered the American cemetery above Omaha beach. I needed a moment to catch my breath. The number of pure white crosses on that cliff is stunning, as is the statue of the young man rising from flame in front of a rectangular pool.

The difference in attitude of each country towards their war dead is curious. The Americans make full use of their right as liberators to make a patriotic statement about sacrifice and valour at their cemetery. Down the road at the British cemetery the location is less dramatic and the pomp less impressive, but more personal. Families of the dead were invited to choose a sentence for their son's or husband's headstone and there are vases for flowers in front of every grave - an acknowledgment that the dead are not only a country's loss, but a private loss as well.

And the German cemetery? Tucked in beside a motorway, this is, in some ways, the most moving site as well as the most anonymous - the war's waste of life is at its most obvious. These soldiers did not die for a glorious cause which can be proudly carved into a colonnade; they are merely dead. In amongst the trees and Maltese Crosses, the headstones are sunk humbly into the ground. There are two men to a grave, and, to stop the vandalising of SS graves, no soldier's rank is recorded.

This year, for the first time, the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, will attend the official D-Day remembrance ceremonies along with the Allied heads of state. His inclusion is not without controversy. Some say it is too soon, even after decades of Franco-German economic ties and student exchanges, and even though it is US foreign policy which is giving the French the heebie-jeebies these days.

But most people think it is better to give the invitation now than when all the veterans are dead and gone, otherwise it would be like going behind their backs. It helps that Schroeder is young - he was born two months before D-Day.

And so for this auspicious 60th anniversary, the Normans are preparing for a bigger-than-usual invasion of tourists. Some will run along the beaches for longer than I did on that first visit; Caen is organising a "Freedom Marathon", an endurance event as a symbol of "the long and difficult campaign". If William were alive, he'd probably join in - Norman Conquest, 21st-century style.

How to get there

Trains run several times a day to Caen and Bayeux from St Lazare Station in Paris, and from Cherbourg at the other end of the line, which has ferry connections to Portsmouth and Southampton. The cost of a one-way ticket from Paris is about €25 ($45), depending on the day of the week you're travelling.

What to see

CAEN MEMORIAL: A ticket costing €15 is valid for 24 hours at this incredible multimedia museum and is well worth it - it's best to start in the afternoon and return the next morning to avoid fatigue. Not open on June 6 this year for security reasons.

BEACHES AND CEMETERIES: Taxi tours from Caen start from €80, depending on where you're going; the full tariff for the guided memorial-run half-day tour is €65.60.

BAYEUX TAPESTRY: This 927-year-old "picture-book" account of the Battle of Hastings is a medieval masterpiece. Adult tickets are €7.40, audio-guides extra.

ABBAYE AUX HOMMES: In the abbey's church lies the tomb of William the Conqueror and there is a display showing the abbey's history, including photos of the people who found refuge here during the 1944 bombings. Free entry.