Fleeting glimpses of the D-Day landscape
(an attempt at restitution)
Thursday 6 June 1944 : one hundred thousand men were disembarked or parachuted into a region which was only known to them at best as a map reference or on an aerial photograph. Dropped from the sky into the Normandy bocage or put ashore on its beaches these young Americans, Canadians and British, found themselves, amidst the turmoil and tumult of battle, in a quiet, serene landscape fashioned by centuries of human toil.
It is their vision of this unknown land that François Louchet has sought to recreate, by tracing 8 tracks through the Bas Normandie countryside as seen through the eyes of 8 allied soldiers. These first person accounts of ”the longest day” correspond to possible routes from the two parachute drop zones, (one American, at Sainte Mère l’Eglise, the other British, at Pegasus Bridge) and the six landing sectors : the beaches of Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha, Utha and the Pointe du Hoc. Eight journeys through the countryside, beneath a leaden sky, passing through flooded fields, ditches, villages deserted by their inhabitants.
Rejecting any archaeological approach, forsaking all vestiges highlighted by today’s remembrance tourism, what Francois Louchet gives us is a fictionalised account. Although each route, the chronological sequence of the sites and even the meteorological conditions have been scrupulously respected, this work is not intended to be a reconstitution. To do that would be as futile as it is risky.
First and foremost it is an attempt to represent the countryside as it would have been seen by those who had just been so brutally plunged into it. The unusual angles, indefinite edges, use of motion-blur and choice of viewpoints at ground level are all intended to evoke the conditions in which the soldiers, caught up in the maelstrom of battle, approached and made sense of this unfamiliar territory. They were immediately forced into an intimate bond with their surroundings : the moist coolness of the earth, the rough stone paths, the sensuality of the dunes. A host of sensations assailed them. In between the bouts of fighting, during those intervals when death was merely postponed, the bocage, launched an indecent charm offensive, an onslaught of sweetness. Who knows whether some of these men, in spite of the fear gripping their guts, weren’t sensitive to it.
Jean-Christian Fleury
traduction de Sheila Bryant
