CWT Journal – August 29, 2026 / Normandy

Over the past few nights, we watched Saving Private Ryan with the girls—a parenting decision that might raise a few eyebrows given that they're 11 and 9. The film takes historical liberties, but that wasn't really the point. I wanted them to glimpse something textbooks can inadvertently sanitize: war is savage, chaotic, terrifying, and profoundly human.Spielberg's harrowing depiction of the Normandy landings certainly accomplishes that.

With tomorrow's D-Day tour approaching, lunch and dinner became informal history lessons about World War II, the deadliest conflict humanity has ever endured, and the extraordinary Allied undertaking that began the liberation of Western Europe. We talked about what happened here, why Normandy mattered, and what we would see tomorrow in the American sector—trying to give some context to names like Omaha Beach before they became actual places beneath our feet.

We also wandered through medieval Bayeux and caught our first glimpses of the magnificent Bayeux Cathedral. Remarkably, while much of Normandy suffered catastrophic destruction in 1944, Bayeux escaped relatively unscathed. Lacking the strategic importance of nearby transportation hubs such as Caen and Saint-Lô, it avoided the devastating Allied bombardment inflicted elsewhere and became the first major French town liberated after D-Day.

Tomorrow, the history lessons leave the dinner table.

There is an enormous difference between knowing where history happened and standing where it happened.