Dallas Morning News - Metropolitan - Collin County

Windy days on Utah Beach

03:23 AM CDT on Sunday, June 6, 2004

By CAMILLE K. HEDRICK

As usual in Normandy, the July morning was overcast and gray. I took Jean-Louis' bicycle and made my way along the farm road from Morsalines to Quettehou. I breathed in the cold, fragrant air, fresh with smells of summer rain, rich earth and pungent cheese. Seagulls calling overhead reminded me that the beaches were nearby. I wanted to get to St.Vaast-la-Hougue and back to Morsalines before lunchtime to buy a birthday present for my girlfriend, Marianne. Fortunately for me, her brother, Jean-Louis, wasn't there that summer, and his bike was mine for the taking.

Marianne, named after the symbol of the French Republic, like many French girls born after the 1945 Armistice, was my best friend at the American University of Beirut. I was visiting with her family in their vacation home in Morsalines, Normandy, in France, situated on the D14, the route départementale that stretches along the coast now known as Utah Beach.

Lunches and dinners with Marianne's family were always feasts, a reason to celebrate. When I remarked how delicious and plentiful the food was, Marianne's mother replied how grateful they were to be able to eat to their fill, remembering how hungry they had been during the war. After coffee, I would sit spellbound, listening to their stories about fleeing their home in Morsalines and how it had been miraculously saved from Allied bombing.

On windy summer afternoons, they would take me to the Utah Beach memorials, where Nazi blockhaus bunkers still cling to the cliffs. You can walk inside and peer through lookouts at the bluish gray water and sky, imagining the Allied armada of ships and planes of June 6, 1944.

I'll never forget the hush of the American cemeteries, where the white crosses and stars line up perfectly and stretch as if forever on immaculate lawns. Marianne's parents never tired of saying how much they loved the Americans and how they could never thank them enough for what they had done.

Later, in Paris, while my baby boomer friends would argue about the McDonaldization of everything from energy resources to health care, their parents would always welcome me with warm embraces. One mother recounted how les Américains had liberated the hotel she and her husband owned. The Nazis had used it as their regional headquarters, and she had waited on them hand and foot throughout the war.

She laughed when remembering how American soldiers had lined up outside her kitchen window to bring back the fried eggs, sunny-side up, that she had cooked for them: They wanted them easy over please!

My favorite French mother, Alice, married to a highly decorated French resistance fighter, told me of a clandestine rendezvous with him, and how they had huddled under her sole possession, a fur coat, celebrating their reunion with a can of sardines. Alice always questioned how anyone in France could even entertain not liking Americans.

These fond memories of France linger in stark contrast to those of the 1967 summer when I lived indoors in Beirut – it was too dangerous for Americans to venture outside. I remained in my room, listening to angry chants from the crowds outside, while waiting for the next radio broadcast from the BBC World Service.

The next few years, trying not to take them personally, I fended off the usual diatribes against our actions in Vietnam, our inaction in the Middle East and American commercial dominance of the world. I got very good at deflection while, secretly inside, I was proud of what my country stood for. My most valuable possessions, a U.S. passport and birth certificate, were always within my grasp.

Now in my passport country at last, reflecting on the 60th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy, I revel in my feelings of safety and freedom. I am no longer obliged to cast my eyes down at every mention of Iraq, Israel and Palestine, Guantanamo Bay and our many refusals to join the international community.

Here, in the United States, I can speak English, put an American flag on my lawn, attach a banner or bumper sticker to my car and freely voice my opinions about our actions, or, as my father taught me, "enjoy the benefits of democracy."

Camille K. Hedrick is a resident of Plano. Originally from New York City, Ms. Hedrick grew up in Beirut, Lebanon, and then spent 25 years in Paris, France.