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© St. Petersburg Times, published June 5, 2002
Perhaps because I am the mother of sons, I never enjoyed dwelling on the subject of war.
I avoid going to war movies. The Brotherhood of War series is not on my reading list. On those rare occasions when I get the television remote in my hands, I don't flip immediately to the History Channel to watch that channel's seemingly endless retelling of military history.
What I know about the wars before Vietnam I learned in school classrooms or picked up by watching the news or interviewing veterans in my job. War is a subject I kept at arm's length.
So it was only because of the wishes of the males in my family that on a recent vacation to the City of Fun, New Orleans, I found myself spending a day in the very somber National D-Day Museum. In that place, you cannot keep war at arm's length.
The museum opened June 6, 2000 -- the 56th anniversary of the Normandy invasion that began the liberation of Europe -- so many people in the United States have not yet seen it. If New Orleans' music and food hold no allure for you, the D-day museum alone is worth a trip there. But be prepared for an experience that will stay with you.
Stephen Ambrose, a professor of history at the University of New Orleans, spearheaded the effort to create a national museum that would focus on the amazing story of D-day. He also pushed for it to be in New Orleans after learning that Dwight D. Eisenhower attributed the Allies' victory to Andrew Higgins, a New Orleans man who built the special amphibious landing craft used to deliver troops to the beaches on D-day. A Higgins craft is displayed in the lobby of the museum along with other military vehicles and aircraft.
We were still in the first-floor lobby when we realized that this museum visit would be special. We were looking at a glass case displaying the donated brown wool uniform and other gear used by a World War II servicewoman when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to find an elderly woman behind me.
"I have a secret to tell you. That's me," she said softly, pointing in the case to a yellowed photo of a young woman in World War II military uniform. Then she walked away, a slender, erect figure with gunmetal gray hair and dressed, I noticed suddenly, in a brown wool uniform. Only then did I glance back at the photo of the young woman in the display and see the unmistakable resemblance. I had an odd feeling that I had just stepped into history.
Ambrose wanted the museum to be a moving and personal experience for visitors. He hoped it would convey a message important to him.
"America sent her best and brightest to the beaches of Normandy, Sicily, Iwo Jima, and many other battlefields oceans away from her shores . . . not to conquer, but to liberate, not to loot or destroy, but to bring life and freedom," Ambrose wrote. "Like their soldiers, (Americans at home) worked hard and made sacrifices because they all believed in the righteousness of their cause. The National D-Day Museum celebrates the American spirit. But visitors will learn not just of what we have done. They will learn of what we can do."
The museum tells, in sometimes graphic detail that moves visitors to tears, the story of D-day, when 9,000 Allied soldiers were killed or wounded, and the other World War II invasions that led to the eventual victory by the Allies. But it tells it in a way that no television documentary and certainly no fictional retelling can.
The experience begins with a viewing of D-Day Remembered, a 45-minute, Academy Award-nominated documentary produced by the museum. It sets the tone for the visits to four interactive galleries, where photographs, writings, recordings, artifacts donated by veterans, electronic maps and short films shown in darkened minitheaters relate the complex planning and buildup to D-day and the invasion itself.
There are nine oral history booths, where visitors can listen to recordings of D-day survivors telling their experiences in their own words. Perhaps because there are no distractions from photos or film in these booths, the survivors' gripping stories seem especially chilling.
One of my favorite exhibits was "America Goes to War," which tells what life was like here at home during the war. How different life was then! So many sacrifices had to be made by Americans that the disruptions of life since Sept. 11 pale in comparison.
A favorite with kids is a display that uses models of ships and planes to visually represent the invasion of Normandy by more than 5,000 ships and landing craft supported by about 11,000 airplanes. Another favorite for children is a section that shows the tricks the Allies employed, including inflatable military vehicles, to fool the enemy about where the invasion would occur.
The exhibit "D-Day: The Beaches" gets crowded as people slow down to study the photos of the assaults on those beaches with their fearsome 100-foot cliffs, and the aftermath. It is quiet, though, as people whisper to one another or just stand and shake their heads in front of photos that do not, by any stretch of the imagination, romanticize war.
A new gallery called "D-Days in the Pacific" opened late last year and details the many battles in the Pacific theater, using animated maps, newspaper pages, artifacts and sometimes gruesome photos.
You leave the D-day museum with a new appreciation of the enormous challenge faced by a severely outmanned America as it entered the war, of the ingenuity of the military planners, and of the courage and suffering of the troops.
Sept. 11 and the war on terrorism have helped to change some Americans' previously jaded attitudes about military service and patriotism. I noted the difference during the recent Clearwater Fun 'N Sun Parade, when spectators who previously would have been impatient to see floats and catch beads paused and applauded the veterans groups that marched past.
- Diane Steinle is editor of editorials for North Pinellas editions of the Times.