Passing the torch on D-Day
Memories relived for a new generation
By CNN Senior Correspondent Jim Bittermann
NORMANDY, France (CNN) -- In high schools and city halls and finally at the D-Day Memorial, it has been going on like this week after week since early in the year across Normandy.
Young people listening to octogenarians... grandparents talking to a new generation about war.
A regional radio network, a newspaper chain and local governments in northern France sponsored the evening gatherings to keep alive the stories, emotions and history of occupation and liberation
Georgette Godes and Gilbert Declos drove miles to take part. They were young too when they found out about war.
A photographer snapped their picture.... an orphan and his neighbor in the the arms of two American GIs.
It became the photo that symbolized freedom. They were only seven at the time but for Declos and Godes the memories of liberation remain vivid.
"The Americans were coming from the ocean ... and the Germans were coming from the ocean," says Declos. At one point their paths crossed and it was a bloodbath.
"When you seen the ocean now you say it is magnificent ... but in 1944 the ocean wasn't blue it was red ..."
Says Godes: "With the Americans we were euphoric. They were our liberators. And since we were children deprived of many things all of a sudden we had food to eat, we had chocolate."
The joy, the horror, are exactly what Declos and Godes and hundreds of others who remember want to pass on to a generation they believe needs and wants to know.
 Declos (right) -- the little boy in the D-Day picture -- and Godes today. |  |
Unlike some anniversaries which merely mark the passage of time, D-Day commemorations have always been about memory and reflection of sacrifices and values.
As the cemeteries are made ready for yet another D-Day anniversary, the old soldiers who took part in this project of teaching D-Day to the young say remembrances raise the dead and caution the living.
Says American veteran Bill Campbell: "If we cannot forget exactly what happened...these American boys that have died here and are buried here will not have died in vain ... Give them a chance to be heroes."
Says German veteran Ignaz Freiherr von Landsberg-Velen: I hope it will be a very good possibility to remember ... and warn."
All say there is another reason so much effort should go into this 60th anniversary of D-Day ... the time will soon come when there will no longer be anyone alive who stormed these beaches or recalls just what it felt like to be liberated.
