Setting the Stage…

After a brief but comfortable night sleep we enjoyed a breakfast buffet and loaded back on our bus to visit the Caen Memorial Museum.  The Memorial Museum is essentially a walk through of the entirety of the second World War, starting at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and ending with Japan’s ultimate surrender.  This is NOT a celebration of the Allied victory, instead it is a very real, very powerful, and very brutally accurate telling of the story of the war and the unforgivable loss of millions of lives. 

Spirits were high as we entered the museum.  Upon signing in we were each given a cordless “phone” which was to act as our personal tour guide.  The idea is that as you approach exhibits you enter the number into your phone and you are told about it.  I was skeptical at this approach, but the audio tour was absolutely fantastic – truly one of the best museum tours I have ever participated in.  All the Scouts, Venturer Scouts and Scouters were absolutely riveted by the audio tour, and as you can see from the pictures, our jovial mood quickly became a lot more serious.  THIS is what we had signed up for.. this was the beginning of our Battlefields experience… and wow, what a wake up call…

As excellent as the audio tour was, it truly was a lot to take.  I don’t think any of us managed to listen to the full tour.  For me personally, I made it as far as the Holocaust exhibit.  Towards the end of the exhibit my audio guide told a story about a worker at one of the camps.  He was telling a story about these two young kids he had seen at the camp for a few weeks.  The oldest was 12 and the youngest was likely around six.  He went on to say that he later saw them lined up for the “showers”… he knew what was in store for them, but worse yet he could see by the look on the older youth’s  face that she knew it as well.  Despite her fear she comforted her younger brother and they moved ahead in line.  He closed by explaining that the reason he is telling this story is so there would be a record somewhere that these two children had lived.  That their life happened.  I had to put down my phone after that… just couldn’t take any more.

 Another moment that sticks with me is that I walked up to a couple of our Venturer Scouts standing in front of a huge mural depicting three youth being hung in France during the occupation.  The crimes they had commitment included delivering resistance fliers, helping Jewish people hide from the Nazis, and feeding the hungry…  basically they were Venturer Scouts dangling in gallows for doing exactly what we teach our Scouts to do – as in stand up for those who need your help.  These kids were publicly executed for doing what our kids do on a regular basis – what we insist they do…  the museum was an intense experience for everyone, but without a doubt, it was the perfect and really the only way to start our Battlefields experience.


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