Road Trip Through History: The Bayeux “Tapestry”
I played hooky from the tour on the second day devoted to D-Day because I wanted to visit the Bayeux Tapestry,(1) (Which is actually a work of embroidery. Just saying.) The group was scheduled to see the tapestry several days later, but I was sure I would want to spend more time than was officially allotted. (I’m almost as fascinated by needlework as I am by history. ) I am so glad I did. If truth be told, I would have happily made a third visit. Because, wow!
I have read a great deal about the tapestry over the years. But nothing had prepared me for the real thing. Plates don’t do justice to the skill of the needleworkers or the power of the images. And quite frankly, I was never able to get a feel for the scale of the work (224 feet long and 20 inches high, more or less.) Made with only ten colors and four stitches,(2) the work is both historical document and artistic masterpiece. The central panel tells the story of how William came to conquer England, focusing on the actions of Harold Godwinson in Normandy that lead to the Battle of Hastings. The battle itself appears only in the final scenes, appropriate because in this version of the story it is the end of the narrative. An upper border includes Latin text describing the action below and Roman numerals that mark the transition to each scene. A border on the bottom edge is filled with the embroidered equivalent of marginalia: tales from Aesop’s fables and details of daily life in eleventh century Normandy.
The images manage to be both stylized and realistic. (In fact, the boat building scenes are a major source for students of medieval navies.) Realistic details bring events to life: it never occurred to me to wonder about how soldiers got from the boat to the shore until I saw images of Harold Godwinson wading barefoot through the surf in France. (If you look closely, you’ll see that the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans have very different haircuts. The Anglo-Saxons wore their hair relatively long; the Normans wore their hair in a modified Mohawk.(
The museum itself is well designed. The tapestry is exhibited in a darkened, climate controlled room designed to protect it.(3) You walk its length with an audio tour that narrates the story as told in the tapestry, linked to the scene numbers that are part of the embroidery. Displays upstairs explain the construction of the tapestry and put it in context. An excellent film tells the story of William’s claim to the throne (4) and describes the conundrums surrounding its construction. (We don’t know who commissioned the work or where it was made.)
In truth, the tapestry, er embroidery, could have been hung along the wall of Bayeux Cathedral, as it was for two weeks each year for centuries, with no modern display aids and I would have been entranced.
1) And a local bookstore and a pair of shoes that had screamed my name every time we walked past them in the store window. The bookstore visit was a success—bookstores in foreign countries are eternally fascinating as far as I’m concerned. (What English language books do they carry? What do the covers of my friends’ books look like in a foreign edition? Plus the cookbooks, the children’s books, the history books, all the other books…) The shoes were a bust—they didn’t carry my size. Story of my shoe-shopping life.
2) Stem stitch, chain stitch, split stitch, and a variation of satin stitch known as “Bayeux stitch” LINK? (In case any fellow embroiderers are reading this, it is a variation of laidwork.)
3) Making me wonder why France would even consider lending the tapestry to England. The mere act of moving it would cause damage.
4) Told from the French perspective, Harold Godwinson is a usurper and an oathbreaker.
Road Trip Through History: German Bunkers and Reinforced Concrete
At dinner on our first night in Normandy, we ended up in conversation with two men at a neighboring table, a pair of British history buggs who were also touring D-Day sites in Normandy. They had already spend several days looking at the remains of the battles over Normandy, and one of them made a comment that stuck with me for the rest of our time in Normandy: “The Germans sure loved reinforced concrete.”
We soon found he was right. The remains of German bunkers and gun batteries bite into the landscape of Normandy: squat ugly concrete constructions with none of the grace of ruins from earlier ages.*
In our first day of touring alone we saw two fine examples: The Grand Bunker Atlantic Wall Museum at Ouistreham and the German gun battery at Longues-sur-Mer.
I must admit, the gun battery at Longues-sur-Mer was of only passing interest to me. It was the site of a key incident in The Longest Day.*** Seeing it gave me a sense of physical place, but did not change my understanding of the event. The serious D-Day buffs on the tour were more enthralled, and spent a bit of time quoting their favorite lines from The Longest Day to each other in situ.
The Grand Bunker Atlantic Wall Museum, also the site of a memorable incident in The Longest Day, was a different experience altogether. The concrete tower was the German headquarters in charge of gun batteries the covered the entrance to the river Orne. The top floor was a 360-degree observation post overlooking “Sword Beach”, where the British landed on D-Day. On D-Day, the tower housed two officers and fifty men, who formed the last pocket of resistance after the British landed. For three days the German garrison held off Allied attempts to take the tower with heavy machine gun fire and grenades thrown from the roof of the Bunker. On June 9, the German garrison surrendered to Lieutenant Bob Orrell and three other members of of the Royal Engineers, who blew open the armored door of the bunker. (A four-hour process.)
Today, the fully restored tower is a museum that gives visitors an understanding of the cramped and claustrophobic experience of life in a bunker. The interior of the bunker is a multi-story corkscrew of small rooms on uneven levels, that house a radio transmission room, an electrical generator, ammunitions storage, bunk rooms, the original range finder in the observation post, and a medical bay that makes a Civil War hospital look like a modern surgical theater by comparison. In addition to German artifacts, the museum includes exhibits about the creation of the German system of coastal defenses and fortifications known as the Atlantic Wall****
An illuminating stop by any history buff standard.
*The Romans loved their concrete, too. They used it to build temples and coliseums and the renowned Roman roads throughout an empire that stretched from Persia to Britain. And while I suspect the people they conquered hated their Roman invaders as much as the people of Normandy hated the Germans,** the concrete constructions they left behind them are beautiful.
**Based on the regular revolts against Roman rule from one end of the empire to the other.
***Both the book by Cornelius Ryan and the 1962 movie based on the book–a three hour blockbuster with an ensemble cast that included virtually every male star in Hollywood.
****Built between 1942 and 1944 using conscripted French labor. By June 1944 the Atlantic Wall extended eight hundred miles with some nine thousand fortified positions. Not that it did the Germans any good.
Road Trip Through History: Lest We Forget
On Memorial Day, My Own True Love and I make sure we attend a service in honor of the fallen. This year we were in Normandy on Memorial Day, enjoying a D-Day tour. In some ways, the entire tour was an extended Memorial Day experience, defined by General John Logan, the holiday’s founder, as “cherishing tenderly the memory of our heroic dead, who made their breasts a barricade between our country and its foe.”
My Own True Love and I expected the Sunday before Memorial Day to be a gut-wrenching experience. The schedule included attending the official D-Day memorial service at the American Cemetery near Omaha Beach.* It soon became clear that the official service was too distant to have much impact. Instead our guide led us through the cemetery, telling us stories about fallen soldiers, love, loss, and heroism. The National World War II Museum, which organized the tour, had provided a flower arrangement and a large number of white roses. The members of the tour improvised a small service of our own. One member suggested that we leave the arrangement on the grave of an unknown soldier. Another suggested that the veterans in our group present the arrangement. It was a powerful moment. Tears were shed. (In fact, I am tearing up typing this after the fact.) As a ceremony, it had all the impact that the official celebration did not.(Leading me to suspect that intimacy is an essential ingredient in a Memorial Day service.) Afterwards, we scattered to place individual white roses on graves.**
As I walked back to the bus, I heard the sound of a lone bugle playing “Taps”–the end of the official celebration. I stopped to listen with a lump in my throat and an ache in my chest.
Remember the fallen. Thank the living. Pray for peace.
*Not the first time we’ve visited an official American cemetery abroad. It is always a moving experience. The Visitors’ Center at the cemetery in Normandy was closed due to the ceremony. Rumor has it that the exhibits are excellent. Quite frankly, I don’t think I could have handled any more.
**I would have liked to place mine on the grave of one of the four women buried in the cemetery. (I am pleased to say that one of the male members of the tour asked where they were buried before I could.) Unfortunately, they were all buried in a portion of the cemetery that was roped off to protect the ground due to recent weather conditions. While I am perfectly willing to kick open a door when there is a good reason, this didn’t seem to be one of these times.