American Military Cemetery in Normandy

Ten years ago, just before the sixtieth anniversary of D-Day, my husband and I took a trip to Normandy. We stayed in the tiny fishing village of Grandcamp Maisy on the marshlands below Pointe du Hoc, a 100 foot promontory overlooking the English Channel. Because the cliff was the highest point between the beaches which came to be known as Omaha and Utah, the Germans massively fortified it.

The painting depicting the Siege of Pointe du Hoc

Every morning we would have our coffee beneath a large painting depicting the US Ranger Battalion’s insanely brave assault and capture of the pointe using ropes and other mountain climbing tools.

Anyone traveling in Europe can’t help but be reminded of the war.  Even a naive and often silly young woman, like Riley O’Tannen is profoundly affected by the stories she hears.

Omaha Beach, Normandy, France

From the Graduation Present (currently out of print)

“I thought of those young kids from small-town America, about to jump from a rattletrap plane into the unknown, for that one last moment believing Hollywood crap of fame and glory, then dropping with fewer chances than a duck in a shooting arcade into an alien land, a land they’d been assured would include cheering crowds and willing women, which they would never see because they would splat like frogs into marshes filled with dung or float to earth full of bullet holes. And they were the lucky ones.”