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David Cale (ImagesOfTheJourney) > La Place Du Canada
One of these old bullet scarred German bunkers remains, renamed "Place du Canada."   The Queen's Own Rifles  memorial plaque describes the battle that day which and asks you to try to imagine what it was like.  

The trouble was I couldn't and suspected that only those actually there could ever grasp what took place.  I took a deep breath.  The salt spray smelled of the iodine rich seaweed strewn on the beach, the surf crashed and roared, and the grey-green sea was empty of  the madness of men.
David Cale (ImagesOfTheJourney) > Juno Beach
Time seemed suspended. I had an uncanny feeling I had been here before. I walked the beach, watching as the tide took the water half a kilometre out. This beach was so familiar; but nothing beyond it. At some point I turned and walked back towards the houses lining the beach, some looking just like they had prior to the invasion.

The beach storage houses are a modern addition... you can rent one for the summer.
David Cale (ImagesOfTheJourney) > Mosque Cairo
David Cale (ImagesOfTheJourney) > Bridge Over Untroubled Waters. Naples
David Cale (ImagesOfTheJourney) > This German pillbox is actually in St. Malo but it so demonstrates the violence of the invasion.  These are the results of American Tanks taking on a German machine gun pillbox. It is close to 25 cm thick steel. It is interesting to note that there is only one hole which penetrated the metal.
David Cale (ImagesOfTheJourney) > Vimy Ridge Memorial

Canadians fought and captured this ridge 92 years ago.
David Cale (ImagesOfTheJourney) > D-Day +65 Normandy: A Personal Journey photo
David Cale (ImagesOfTheJourney) > I was haunted by the question.
Their stones stand silent in the setting sun, 
why is it that I can leave and they can not?
David Cale (ImagesOfTheJourney) > Beyond these are dark, tangled woods
surrounded by yellow ropes strung between red signs "Danger Entre Interdit Munitions Non EclatÚe"
(undetonated explosives). 

The sun was low and cast long shadows.  I found myself left alone by the living.  Yet behind the wind in
the trees, faintly, I thought I could hear desperate cries and curses of men who had died for the promise of
peace and found that the price they paid had brought only a lull.  Millions more were to bleed and die.  

In the cemetery their stones stand
Forever at attention
Ridged in the setting sun.
I wonder
How is it that I can leave
and they cannot?

That night in the "Hotel du Golf" I was introduced to the French mosquito.  There were no window
screens or air conditioning (the norm in France).  I passed the night waging war against these miniature
foes dive bombing my ear. Another round in the eternal battle between "us" and "them!"  My one
satisfaction was adding to the already numerous record of Mosquito kills marked in blood on the walls.  

The next day I drove out to the coast, and travelled from World War I to II.  I stopped at the towering
chalk cliffs of Cape Gris,  a mere 18 km from England. Their mirror image, the "white cliffs of Dover"
were visible in the faint haze separating the light blue sky from the darker sea.  

Because of this, Cape Gris was an important observation post for the Nazis.  Masters of reinforced
concrete, they had built several observation bunkers on and into the cliff connected by a warren of
tunnels that still survive.  

I realised I was hungry and lunch was in order.  I sat on top of one of the bunkers, ate my jambon et
fromage baguette and drank a glass of superb French wine.  In the warmth of the sun, the sight of gulls
hovering over the edge of the white cliffs, and the taste of good food, I was filled with the joie de vivre
one expects from a holiday in France. 

After lunch I wandered over to one of the tunnel entrances. It was overgrown with brush, and smelled
like a latrine (which is just what many tourists used them for).  The tunnels beyond were impenetrably
dark. The beam of my little key-chain flashlight seemed to be smothered, as if there was more to the
darkness here than just the lack of light.  My return from the tunnel into the sun dispelled most of my
fear,  but I was left with a sense that the evil I had felt was not dead, only biding its time.
Juno Beach
Time seemed suspended. I had an uncanny feeling I had been here before. I walked the beach, watching as the tide took the water half a kilometre out. This beach was so familiar; but nothing beyond it. At some point I turned and walked back towards the houses lining the beach, some looking just like they had prior to the invasion.

The beach storage houses are a modern addition... you can rent one for the summer.
David Cale (ImagesOfTheJourney) > Juno Beach
Time seemed suspended. I had an uncanny feeling I had been here before. I walked the beach, watching as the tide took the water half a kilometre out. This beach was so familiar; but nothing beyond it. At some point I turned and walked back towards the houses lining the beach, some looking just like they had prior to the invasion.

The beach storage houses are a modern addition... you can rent one for the summer.
Juno Beach
Time seemed suspended. I had an uncanny feeling I had been here before. I walked the beach, watching as the tide took the water half a kilometre out. This beach was so familiar; but nothing beyond it. At some point I turned and walked back towards the houses lining the beach, some looking just like they had prior to the invasion.

The beach storage houses are a modern addition... you can rent one for the summer.
See photo in gallery

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This site and my photography business have developed from a passion for wonder, for wandering and for story telling. In the past few years I have traveled to more than 700 cities and places in pursuit of wonders from which come my stories and photographs.

IMAGES OF THE JOURNEY PHOTOGRAPHY


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