On June 6, 2007 the new Visitor Center at the Normandy American Cemetery officially opened to the public. Inside are the short films and interactives we began working on over a year ago, including a 17-minute film that touches on the lives of each of our five guys through the letters they wrote.

It had been exactly one year earlier that our crew had been there together for the first time, when we began filming for the shorter film as well as our feature-length documentary. But this visit would be dramatically different from the first. Because this time, we would be reunited with family members of each of the five men whose lives we’ve been exploring: from the Carter family, Walter, Bonnie, Norman, and Catherine; from the Hatcher clan, Nancy and Paul Lamoreux; from the Sellers family, Ann and Donald Bailey; from the Perras, Mark and Joanne; and the second daughter of Hubert Mathews, Barbara Whitehead. We were also joined by other friends we’ve made along the way, like Al Gese, Reginald Alexander, Harry Kulkowitz, and Bob Sechrist. And with us in spirit were all the other members of these families whom we had met on our trips to their hometowns but who were unable to make this long journey. For some, like the Carters, this was a trip they had made several times before. For others, like the Baileys and Lamoreuxs, it would be their first time in Normandy. Our command post would be Chateau Bellenau, located just off of the Dead Man’s Corner museum in St Come du Mont, where most of the families would be staying.

On the afternoon of June 2, we arrived at Chateau Bellenau and met with the Carter family, who were the first to arrive. That evening, the Carters revealed a huge map of Normandy on which they had already outlined the path of Norval’s fateful journey into France.  It became clear that it would be not us but the Carters themselves who would lead the way through the story of their beloved father and grandfather.

Our first morning together, we went with the Carter family out to the cemetery, but not to look at the gravesite just yet. Rather, Max and Walter stood on the hill just north of the cemetery that overlooks Omaha Beach and the English Channel. From there, they could see before them the draw that Norval would have walked up after the 29th Division landed. That draw is now a walking path that curves up to the cemetery. Max and Walter remarked at the chilling irony that Norval may have walked over his future gravesite. He would not have been the only one.

Max and Walter then walked down to the beach. By sheer coincidence, as they stood looking up at the hill that cost so many lives to achieve, a group of modern 82nd Airborne paratroopers happened to be walking by. Max introduced himself and Walter to them, and they listened on as he explained the story of Walter's father and his connection to that beach.

As has happened so often already in the making of this film, amazing coincidences and discoveries occurred right in front of us. While driving back from the cemetery, we popped in to the Big Red One Assault Museum to visit our friend Pierre Louis Gosselin. He was there with a group of local 29th Infantry Division reenactors. As Max introduced Walter to them and explained who he was, they became very excited. As it turned out, the very next morning they were planning – completely independently of our project – to visit the spot where Norval Carter died in order to pay tribute to his sacrifice. And as excited as they were to meet Walter, Walter himself was astonished that people he had never met were keeping his father’s memory alive.

It makes me think of something that Bill Hatcher told me recently. Bill is the son of Kenneth Hatcher, who was killed before he ever got to know his son. Bill told me that people like him who lost those dear to them in the war go through much of their lives wondering if people really remember or care. When things like this happen where it becomes evident that they do, well, it’s impossible to describe what it means to them.

The next morning, June 4th, we drove to the spot where Captain Norval Carter died, along the road outside St. Lo that is now named after him. There Walter and the 29th Division re-enactors met again, and Walter had a chance to talk with them about the significance of this place to him.

But we went not just with Walter and his family. Nancy and Paul Lamoreux, and Ann and Donald Bailey, who had arrived the evening before, decided to join us and share in the story of Captain Carter and the 29th Infantry Division.

One of the great surprises for me on this shoot was learning afterwards what a pleasure it was for the families to get to know each other and the stories they were bringing. What I began to appreciate was that many of them had felt up until this point a strange, indescribable feeling of amazement that this was happening to them: that their father, brother, or uncle was selected for inclusion in this film. That stories they had previously feared might not survive to younger generations would indeed be preserved, told, and shared with millions of people. And that this strange feeling was something that was difficult for them to relate to other people.  Now they were able share this sense of amazement with each other, develop greater interest in each other, and see more vividly how the story of their loved one fits into the story of all five men.

Pierre and his friends then told us about a nearby place where there are foxholes that have remained undisturbed since GIs first dug them 63 years ago. But getting there would not be the job for our humble Renault Traffic. No, a far more well-equipped vehicle would be needed for trudging along the rocky and muddy terrain on the way to location of the foxholes. And Pierre and his friends had just the thing: an original Dodge weapons carrier. So Walter and the rest of us climbed in, and off we went... in style. And the end of our excursion were, as promised, deep, defined foxholes. Our new friends demonstrated for us just how well they could provide cover.

Afterwards we met up with Jean Mignon, the historian we befriended last summer. We met at the Chappelle de la Madeleine, which he curates, and which contains a moving exhibit on the 29th and 35th Divisions, the divisions to which Jean and rest of St Lo’s residents are most ingratiated to for its liberation.   Later, as we drove with Jean along the roads leading out of St Lo, he admitted that it gives him pain to visit these roads because he knows that at one time there had been Allied soldiers all around who had lay slain.

That evening, after the remaining two families had arrived in Normandy, all five families gathered together for the first time. Bob Sechrist was there, and even Michael Bacon, our film composer, was there. With everyone gathered around the same table, we made a toast to our next few days together.

On the morning of the 5th, we had the fortune of being able to film with both Ann Bailey, the niece of Gene Sellers, and Bob Sechrist, a veteran of the same stick as Gene, at the very road where Gene and Bob arrived in 1944. With tears in his eyes, Bob explained to Ann what happened to him and Gene in that first hour of the campaign. Later that day, we followed Ann and her husband Donald as they visited Gene’s grave for the first time in their lives.

Hearing that some sort of festival was happening in Picauville, we went over there to check it out.  We saw an early version of a Sherman tank parked in the field, one with the bolts on the front face exposed. We asked if they would allow our cameraman Scott to climb on top with his camera. The owners of the tank let us do more than that. They agreed to let him film from on top as they drove the tank through the town. For Scott, who’s been tested in nearly every dangerous environment known to man, this was still something new. He held on tight with one hand as the tank leapt forward and cruised through the town streets.

That afternoon, we met with Barbara Whitehead at the 1st Division monument above Omaha Beach, where the name of her father, who was the highest ranking officer killed on D-Day, sits near the top. Max walked with Barbara above the coast of Omaha Beach, where a single tree, blown constantly by the wind, now bends toward the hill as if it were an infantryman charging up from the beach.

The entire day the weather was appropriately damp, foggy, and windy, just as it had been on the morning of D-Day.

We were silent but the cameras were rolling as the families visited the gravesite of their loved one. As would be expected, everybody’s reaction was different.

On the morning of the 6th, as the families of Norval, Ken, Gene, Hubert and Walter looked on from the first few rows, the Normandy American Cemetery Visitor Center officially opened. Numerous dignitaries spoke, including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

We then took the families on a tour of the Visitor Center. On the first floor, they were able to use the new interactive database to look up a brief summary of service for their loved ones. But further inside the Center awaited the 17-minute film we made as a dedication to the memory of these five men, and by extension all those buried or memorialized at the center.  None of the family members, our most important critics, had yet seen the film. For days the anticipation had been building, and when the families were finally able to watch the film, their response could not have been more positive or more touching.

That evening, we gathered for a barbeque at the Chateau, with host Spencer Henry slaving at the grill. Since most of the families were leaving the next day, they exchanged phone numbers and email addresses, promising to keep in touch when they returned.

On June 7, we went with Nancy Lamoreux, Ken Hatcher’s younger sister, and her husband Paul to find the field where Ken was killed, using the maps drawn his captain, Frank Monan.

On the way, we came across a memorial to the 83rd "Thunderbolt" division, Ken’s division, that we had not even known was there. There were two flags there, the French flag and the American flag. But someone had hung American flag upside down, as a symbol of distress. Determined to put the flag the other way, Max and our cameraman, Scott Shelley, pulled the flagpole out of the base, but it was much heavier than they had expected, and it was all they could do to keep it falling too hard. After taking of the flag and re-hanging right side up, we knew it would take our whole crew to get the flag up again. Here the crew raises the flag, as Paul takes pictures.  Does it remind you of anything?

Believe it or not, this was not a setup! 

As we talked with Nancy and her husband Paul at the memorial, combines rolled and churned in the background, serving as a palpable reminder of the fact the land in Normandy is farmland, just like the land in Wisconsin that Ken had come from.

We then drove on to the field where Ken had been killed.  In that field Nancy told us about another one of her brothers, Troy, who had also fought in the war, and unlike Ken, had made it back. But Troy was permanently affected by his experience, both mentally and physically, and Nancy told us that in reality, she lost one brother in the war, and another one because of the war.

Afterwards, as we were driving away from the field our progress was halted by a cattle crossing. We got out and started talking with the farmer, Jean Francoise, and he met Nancy. He explained that many of his cows are bred from Holsteins, which Nancy remarked are the same ones they have in Wisconsin. Jean then gave us as a gift a rusted machine gun barrel that he once found. In the words of Henri Levaufre, "In Normandy, people don’t forget!"

Not every search of ours yielded what we were looking for. We went with Norman to the lovely Chateau called "Les Perretes," where back in 1944, Norval Carter was briefly stationed. Years ago, on a previous visit there with his family, Norman had noticed a name etched on one of the walls of this Chateau that in retrospect he thought might have been Norval’s. It had remained a doubt in his mind ever since and something he was interested in confirming. This time he had with him one of Norval’s medical notebooks, on the inside cover of which Norval had scrawled his signature. We returned to the room at the Chateau where many people have carved their name in the past, in some cases over a hundred years ago. Max and Norman scoured over the signatures, looking for any that might resemble Norman's grandfather's.

Alas, we did not find Carter’s name, only a name that resembled his. Disappointed looks went around at the sense of being so close but so far away. But to me, the effort was far from fruitless. Rather, I felt this result was nearly as interesting as it would have been had his name actually been there.

This search for physical evidence of these men, from writing they may have left on a wall, to foxholes they dug, to artifacts of the equipment they used, to the physical places where they were killed or where they lived their lives prior to entering the war, is part of the broader search for what they left behind.  And I think there is something to be said for that search, regardless of what it turns up.  Because that search is our side of the story.  That search is about our own struggle to reconnect with the past...when everything else in life is pushing us forward.

Meanwhile, Mark Perra set out with Art Sevigny to the field outside of Les Corvees where Walter Perra's plane had crashed.  We had been there last summer, and we would have liked to go out there again, but logistically we couldn't manage it.

In our final few days in Normandy, we visited locations in St Marcouf, St Mere Eglise, St Lo, and Sainteny that have been frozen in time by photographs and moving images taken by signal corps photographers during the war. In a way, finding these locations where they were - the roads they walked on, the cathedrals they passed - is again part of the search for what these men left behind. It is proof of their existence in a region filled with such beauty and a sense of peace that is sometimes hard to imagine there was ever fighting here at all.  (You can view some of these signal corps images, and images from our return to these locations, in the section called "Tracing Their Steps".)

On our final day, we had the good fortune of being able to go out in a boat with our friend Yannick Cornier and survey the coast from the perspective of the GIs who landed there. We even drove the boat full speed directly toward the coast, and the elevated sound of the churning motor made us all feel a surge of adrenalin. And just as we were getting ready to leave, a fog rolled in like a giant ghost and blanketed the landscape. After that, it was time to go.

I just want to say to the families that participated, that as much of an experience it was for you, it was for us too. This not is an ordinary project for us. This is not something we get to do every day. I consider you my friends and I am excited when I think that this journey that we are sharing is far from over.

July, 2007

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