several community
associations
in
Normandy. Every
five years for the
past 20, they have
visited Normandy to
observe the D-Day
anniversary. They
are hosted in private
homes as guests
of the members of
their
counterpart
organizations. BIA
is also twinned with
a British community
where the Bedford
Boys had lived and
trained for about a
year prior to the invasion. They have exchanged visits
with the group in England, and they operate a high
school student exchange program with the Normandy
associations.
This year’s visit marked the 70th anniversary of the
D-Day invasion of Normandy. Months of planning and
coordinating between the two respective organizations
preceded the 2-day observance. For the BIA members,
space was limited to 50 participants, since that was the
maximum capacity of the tour bus that was hired. In
the past, arranging accommodations had been relatively
easy. Not so this year, because the milestone anniversary
was anticipated with great excitement by the French
populace. Most Normandy locals who had previously
hosted BIA members were inundated this year with
requests for lodging from friends and relatives.
“They were planning on it for years,” Charlie
recalls. “Suddenly everybody that had a place down in
Normandy discovered they had cousins and relatives
they didn’t know about.”
Still, arrangements were eventually worked out,
and BIA members exchanged personal information
with their respective hosts, as a means of introduction.
Charlie recalled a previous host, who essentially did not
know a word of English. Being the proactive guy that
he is, Charlie wrote a letter of introduction for himself
and Lib, and then used Google Translator to provide a
French translation thereof.
As luck would have it, their host, Nicollette Ponsart,
replied in part, “I taught English for 30 years at Nice
University.”
“So we were in like Flynn” Charlie says with a huge
grin. “The heat was off…we didn’t have to worry about
opening books and all to communicate”
Nowadays, Normandy is very much a resort area.
Many people now have summer homes at or near the
beach. A select few date back to the pre-invasion era,
but most of the older homes were destroyed by order
of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Rommel had been
tasked by Hitler to create an impenetrable barrier along
the northern French coast, in anticipation of an allied
invasion. Many of the homes that had been there were
obstructing the defensive field of view, and thus had to
be removed.
Among the 11,000 or so people who attended the 70th
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