"Normandy: A walk through history"

Mom in High Heels is one of the brave spouses of our military, and is with her Army husband stationed in Germany. Her blog is a lot of fun, she's homeschooling their son, but my favorite thing is her travel writing. Being in Europe, they take the opportunity to see so many historic places. Her photos and commentary are always special, with little details you might not hear anywhere else.

"Normandy: A walk through history" is one of those, a chronicle of their visit to Sainte Mere Eglise, Dead Man's Corner, Utah Beach, Pointe Du Hoc,and Omaha Beach. It's a good article for family reading, and her photos bring it to life.

Of Omaha Beach, she writes:
" I could not in my wildest dreams comprehend the scale of this beach. It's not a small beach. It is huge and deep. I had no idea how far these men had to go once they hit the beach. Remember that they came in at low tide to avoid obstacles in the water (we visited at low tide too). As we stood at the head of the beach looking out over the water, my breath was taken away. The wind was whipping around us, but we walked down to the waters edge, which took us a good 20-30 minutes and we weren't weighed down with gear, waterlogged or being fired at."

Take your time on this tour. Walk slowly and click open the photos. They are real, not set designs. No crew came in and staged the area. This isn't some planned PR event, it's three generations of a real family considering together the utter reality of these places and the history of the men who did the job they had to do to guarantee their children could live as free people.

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Photo: "French civilians place crosses at the graves of American soldiers in a cemetery on Omaha Beach" from the Eisenhower Library. And something else, from the same page to ponder.