The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - D-Day 80 -- A Spy Story, a Love Story, a Canadian Story.

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

One of my favourite journalists, Nahlah Ayed, brings to light a little-known Canadian story that centres around preparations for D-Day. It really is at its heart a love story, but it's also a spy story with all the twists and turns that both elements can deliver. Another D-Day special as this week marks 80 years since that historic day.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. A love story, a spy story, a Canadian story, a D-Day story. It's all in one, and it's coming right up. And hello again, Peter Mansbridge here. Welcome to Tuesday on the Bridge, on a week where we are marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day. The actual D-Day anniversary is Thursday. Yesterday we told you about many of the particulars

of what happened on that day and Canada's involvement in it with the British historian James Holm. Today, we're taking a different angle, and I'm going to tell you more about it in a moment, but first, some quick housekeeping notes. Thursday, on the actual anniversary, by the time we come on the air, the anniversary events will have taken place. Hopefully you've watched many of them on television and heard about them on the radio. So we'll be moving on on Thursday's program to our regular Your Turn. If you want to make comments about D-Day, feel free to do that, and I'll refer to them on that day. But other than that, we're asking our question of the week.

And the question of the week this week is this one. What do you know now that you wish you had known when you were younger? Now, that can go in any number of different ways, right? But think about it. What do you know now that you wish you had known when you were younger? Now that could be a 25-year-old thinking back to when they were 12, or it could be a 75-year-old like me thinking back to when they were 12 or 15 or 20 or 25 or any age. So think about that one and send us along a note. Remember your name, your full name, your location you're writing from,

and make sure that you keep your comments fairly tight. I like to say a paragraph, and not a long extended paragraph, just your basic average paragraph. Send it along by 6 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday. After that, it's too late to process. So keep that in mind. You're pretty good at that, actually, I must admit. There's a couple of stragglers every once in a while, but not often.

The overwhelming bulk of our emails come in on time. And you send it to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com Alright. Let me tell you about today's guest. She's a friend and a colleague. I've known Nala Ayyad for, I don't know, 20 years, more than 20 years. I've worked with her obviously in my days

anchoring the National out of Toronto, but I used to travel a lot and I saw Nala a lot in different locations around the world and usually some pretty dicey places. She's a brave, courageous, smart journalist who liked to cover the story from angles that many people weren't covering them. They give us a greater context and understanding of whatever the issue might be that was unfolding in front of us. So I obviously have enormous admiration for Nola. And she left television not long after I did. There was no connection to that.

It just happened to be. But she got this terrific offer from the CBC radio program Ideas, where she's the host and loving the opportunity to tell stories in a different venue, different platform. And hopefully you followed her there as well. But Nala is also and and has always been, an accomplished writer. But she's written this book that we're going to talk about today. It's her second book.

Her first book, A Thousand Farewells. That one was a finalist for the 2012 Governor General's Literary Awards. This one, which has just come out, is called The War We Won Apart. And as the book cover says, it's the untold story of two elite agents, spies, who became one of the most decorated couples of World War II. One was a Canadian, the other would eventually become a Canadian. Their story is a story of spying.

Their story is a story of love. Their story is a story of behind the scenes in the days leading up to D-Day. And it's told with fascinating detail. I think you're going to enjoy this conversation. And it will lead you to the bookstore. Because this is a book you don't want to miss. All right. Well, let's do what we did yesterday.

We'll take our one break. We'll take it now so we don't interrupt the storytelling. And then we will – so we'll take the break now and come right back right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge right here on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Our guest today, Nala Ayed, about her book, The War We Won Apart. It's a part of our special D-Day coverage this week.

Thursday is the 80th anniversary of D-Day. And yesterday we had James Holland, the British historian on, talking about all the particulars about D-Day and especially as it related to Canada's rule. And today, Nala Ayyad with an incredible story that she tells in her new book. So enough from me. Well, actually, I have to do my normal big long preamble before the first question. But I think you'll understand why.

Here's our conversation with Nala Ayed. So Nala, I want to start with an admission, really. So bear with me for a minute because it takes a minute to tell this story. But as you know, because we worked on some of them together, I did a lot of shows that relate to the kind of stories that are in this book, you know, whether it was D-Day or V-Day or Remembrance Day, what have you. And I always enjoyed those programs because of the people we were talking with and the experiences they'd had. But one thing was common to my telling of the story was that I would get a

phone call almost immediately after every show from my aunt, who lived well into her nineties, who worked for the, during the war was with the RAF, the Royal Air Force. She was one of those people. When you watch old movies from the second world war, you saw women who were around a table plotting with little aircraft while the officers were looking down to

see where all the different planes were. She did that first in England, and then she went into France right after D-Day. She was one of the first ones there who was doing that in the airfields that the Allies started using in France. But she would call me and she would say, Peter, you always forget to talk about the women. It wasn't just a man's war. Obviously, it was predominantly men in the battlefield, but there were a lot of women in all kinds of different roles,

as there have been in other wars. And I know that that's, before we get into this book, that is being a passion to a degree of yours in the wars you've covered and in the story you tell here. Talk to me about that element for a minute. Well, I mean, you put your finger right on the pulse. And as you say, we'll talk about the book for a minute. But almost all the stories I did abroad were somehow, some way connected to two topics, either immigration, the movement of people and displacement, or war and conflict. And specifically in war and conflict, although there's so many facets to it, and the two are connected, obviously, I was, am very interested in women in war. Partly because,

as you say, their stories somehow are overlooked, or they're far more nuanced than what's recorded in history. And not to stereotype myself as well, but sometimes the stories of women in war straddle all the worlds in war. So both the combat and the supply side of things and the protests and the rearing of children in the in war, I find, are overlooked, but far more complete as a picture of what was going on than when you just look at those who are fighting. And so I've always in war zones, always went to women always tried to get to the stories of the women to go into the homes and places like Afghanistan or Iraq or other places, Gaza, you know, talk to the women to find out what's really going on beyond what's happening on the front lines. So it's a passion of mine, absolutely. And this story falls right within that category.

Well, it certainly does. And it's a great time, obviously, to be telling it because we're just approaching the 80th anniversary of D-Day. And where the images of one of men dropping out of planes on the night before D-Day, men hitting the beaches on D-Day, men defending on D-Day from the German side. And in all those images, you don't see women. But in fact, in this book, we find out, and I love the way the title on the cover, The Untold Story, I can't pass by a book, especially that's about, you know, the Second World War or the First World War,

that headlines The Untold Story, because you think you know everything, right? Of all the things we've heard over the years. But this, we didn't know about it. And, you know, it's about a lot of different things, but part of it is about what happened six days before D-Day and a woman dropping out of the skies as part of the team to, you know, kind of prepare the ground in some ways. Tell us how you came about this story.

Like, you know, some of it was kind of known, but really the bigger picture was untold, as you say. Yeah. Yeah, some of it was known. It has been told in a few bits and pieces, and some attempts had been made to tell the big story, but no one had kind of brought it all together into one place. So my entry point, Peter, is just like exactly what you just described. I mean, I was based in

London as a foreign correspondent. It was, as you know, part of our job every year to mark the anniversary of D-Day, go to Normandy and do the story of hopefully someone that Canadians hadn't heard about, a story that deserved to be told, and met so many veterans, both on the anniversaries, but also prior to that, people who were visiting or stories of those who had passed. This particular year, 2019, my last year in London, you'll know this name of one of our most talented producers,

Stephanie Jenser, told me, you know, the Juneau Beach Centre is honouring women who were involved in D-Day. And I thought, oh, well, told me, you know, the Juneau Beach Centre is honouring women who were involved in D-Day. And I thought, oh, well, tell me more. And so she told me about Sonia D'Artois. And I had never heard of her and I certainly had never heard of the Special Operations Executive, which is the organisation that she was serving in and had participated in. And so what they were doing, we're honoring her putting some of her

personal possessions at the Juneau Beach Center for people to look at kind of like a museum, that little cigarette case, a little compact, a silver one on a display. And there we met her family, and met her daughter, Nadia Murdoch, and her grandchildren. And suddenly, for weeks afterwards, after the story aired, I should tell you, Peter, that I had more reaction to that story than almost any other story I've done about D-Day or related to Canada's participation in the Second World War, and especially women and young women writing me saying, how is it that we don't know about this woman? How is it that we don't know this story? And by the way, that story was focused on Sonia. I did just do Sonia's story. But well, there's a lot more to Sonia's story than

just her. Her husband was also a member of the SOE, and that's how they met. We can get into that. But I could not get her story out of my head because I found her to be a compelling character. She was 19 years old when she signed up. She had never, well, I don't know 100%, but as far as I could tell, her experience did not include, you know, ever being around firearms or jumping out of planes. In fact, she was afraid of heights. And I couldn't get her out of my mind. So I called up her daughter, Nadia, months later and just said, has anyone ever written a book about this? And here we are, five years later. Now, the person who would become her husband, Guy D'Artois, was a Canadian.

Yeah, exactly. She was not a Canadian at that point. Yeah, she was a British, a young British woman who had spent most of her childhood in France, which made her the perfect candidate for the special operations executive because they wanted people, women and men, and the women came later once they realized that women were very well suited for the role, to be able to pass as locals.

And so they would be dropped behind enemy lines, not just in France, by the way, other Canadians, this is also a revelation to me, other Canadians were dropped in several parts of Europe and beyond. Canadians with hyphenated identities, Yugoslav Canadians, Italian Canadians, Japanese Canadians, but in this case, French, and her case, British or British who spoke French to help assist the resistance in preparation for D-Day and so she she was a perfect candidate she not only knew how to speak French but she knew how to be French she knew how to drink coffee the way French women did she knew how to dress how they did

she this was all natural to her. It wasn't an act. And so she was an ideal candidate, at least from that perspective. Well, so she goes into training where she meets her husband. And I love that part of the story because it happens in a small town on the western side of Scotland. Not far from you. Not far from me. In a building which became a hotel, which I've stayed at a couple of times.

Oh, yeah. Wow. They would tell the story in the hotel. You know, this used to be a spy school during the Second World War. The British Special Operations Executive came in. This is kind of like Canada's, you know, Special Operations Branch,

like JTF2, all that kind of stuff. And they said this was that school because it's kind of remote in the area it's in. But as soon as they told me this story because i you know i love these second world war stories and i all i could imagine was these hallways were filled with these young people mostly young um who were learning to do the kind of things you're talking about whether it was jumping jumping out of planes, how to fight hand-to-hand combat, how to kill, you know, how to hide the compass inside the cigarette package or what have you.

Exactly. But that also became this place where the two of them met, fell in love eventually to get married, which was a problem given the jobs they had. Yes. Talk about that. You cut out, given the what? Given the what they had?

The jobs. The jobs they had, yeah. Yeah, there was just a blip when you said that word. When I went into the archive, I found documents in which the instructors debated whether it was a good idea for those two to be married. hands of the Gestapo or anyone else, that one would be tortured in front of the other and thereby extracting information. And so that they would be used against each other to try to extract information. And so it was felt that it would be a security risk for both of them to be deployed together. On the other hand, some instructors in those documents would say it might actually be a strength for them to be together because Sonia, they felt some of them were very harsh in their Marlabone at Spanish Place. They were married in their uniforms. Her stepmother made the cake, you know, there were no flowers. She had a silk shirt

that was all she sort of her only nod to tradition. And just a small number of people who attended this wedding and thinking that they were going to be deployed together. And in fact, even the head of the SOE, the F section of the SOE, Morris Buckmaster, was at the wedding. Ultimately, it was his job after it was done and after the honeymoon to tell the two of them, actually, he had decided

that they would not be deployed together. It was a very hard decision, you can imagine. And Sonia was devastated. She just said, well, if you are going to send me with my husband, then I'm not going to go at all. And so she rejected the idea of being deployed at all. So she watched her husband fly off. She escorted him. She went to the airfield for him preparing to leave. And as soon as he took off, Buckmaster assumed she would go back to her original job and asked her, is there anything I could do? And she said, yeah, you can send me on a mission as soon as possible. She couldn't resist. She decided to go. And so a week later, she was on her way to a different part of France. You know, earlier you said, it's incredible that we don't know these stories.

Like when you talk to other people about them and they say, wow, I never heard of that. Why didn't we know about this? You just know that if this story was an American story or if this story was a British story or a French story, there would be books and movies that have been out for years by now. These would be two national heroes, right? And celebrities in nonfiction films and books. School kids would know their names. Well, thanks to you, they they're they're now you know getting

to know them but those scenes like the one you just described i mean i can see that i can see that in the theater right you know everybody'd be weeping and my god yeah and it's only halfway through the movie right um so she gets on the plane sorry go ahead you're gonna say no i was gonna say there is so much drama like that in this story, Peter. There is so much. I mean, I don't want to cut you off the way you're going about the story. But I just want to say this was, I mean, even the fact that she was so underestimated in her training. And then when they come back, going back to your beginning, which was so apt about this being about women.

You know, she comes back. They are considered heroes, but not a lot of people know the story, of course, because by nature, their role was meant to be kept quiet. And so there was a lot of discussion about what they did. And so when it was time for them to be bestowed with honors, you know, there was a debate. Should they be getting military honors, you know, an MBE military or one that was civilian? And what was eventually decided on, and I see this in the documents from the archive, is that they would get civilian awards. Well, one of the women, Pearl Wetherington, one of the better known SOE agents, rejected the MBE and said, I'm not, this is member of the British, the order, member

of the order of the British Empire, quite an honor, but they were given civilian ones when the men were given military ones. And so she went back and said, I'm not taking this award. There was nothing civil about what I did. And so a year later, this kind of rebellion by the women themselves ended up in the king changing, actually changing go back to your point, just dramatic point after dramatic point, you can imagine that moment as well when you finally get the letter saying, yeah, actually what you did deserves the kind of recognition that the men had as well. Wow.

Take us to that six-day period before D-Day. Sonia drops. What happens? What does she do? The first thing that happens is that she has a bad landing and she injures herself. She blacks out briefly. The second thing that happens is that she loses track of the trunks that were supposed to come with her, full of beautiful French-made clothes that were supposed to support her story as someone who works for a high-end fashion house. So those are displaced and she couldn't find them. Third thing is she couldn't find her reception committee. And so she had to pull out her gun, couldn't disentangle herself from the parachute. So there she is, you know, with the parachute, you know, she's dragging it behind her, her small pistol in her hand, trying to find her

reception committee. So given the fact that she could not find her clothes, they had to assume that they were picked up by a German convoy. And so they had to also assume that the Germans were thus alerted that there was a young parachutist who had just arrived in the area. So what does she decide to do? She decides to live openly, to do the opposite of what would be expected of an agent landing behind enemy lines. So she begins to go to the black market restaurants where German officers would dine. And she would sit there openly and be friendly and just to kind of deflect the idea that she was someone who wasn't supposed to be where she is.

In the meantime, while she does this, she's helping the circuit leader recruit more young men. She's helping organize parachutes from London with more weapons. She's helping organize training sessions for the young Maquis who had never worked with weapons that were from abroad. And so she was instrumental as a trainer. She was helping the young men and women to learn how to ambush convoys, how to use some of the weapons that were being parachuted. So, you know, she is living two lives while she's there. And then the final thing, sorry, the final thing that the last layer to all of this is that she also realizes very shortly after she gets there that she, her circuit leader,

the person who's in charge of her organization that she's supposed to serve as a courier was a man she had dated briefly back when she was in London. who's in charge of her organization that she's supposed to serve as a courier, was a man she had dated briefly back when she was in London. So that adds a lot of intrigue to the story as well and a lot of heartache. There's every possible twist and turn here. That, you know, the part about her decision to sort of live openly, put herself in direct contact with sort of live openly, put herself, you know, in direct contact with some of the enemy, showed obviously a streak of incredible courage.

But at the same time, put her in the line of a potential fire, so to speak, in terms of retribution when all this ended. Absolutely. I mean, when you consult the vast amount of information that's out there, which is all, by the way, thanks to a woman who was Vera Atkins, who was sort of the second-in-command pretty much at the SOE. Thanks to her, there's a great amount of information about how captured agents were dealt with by the Nazi regime. I mean, it was horrific what they did to civilians. It was

unspeakable what they did in concentration camps and to citizens all around Europe, to Jewish people in particular. Millions of people perished in those concentration camps. Also, anyone who suspected of being an agent often met the same fate. And so the danger was immense. She had one incident, Sonia, where, and as they were training, they heard about some of these stories. Because even as they are training, one of the biggest circuits in France is unraveling. And some radios, some wireless radios are commandeered by German forces.

And so sometimes agents would land into the hands of the Gestapo or of the German forces. They would be taken across the border. Some of them would end up in concentration camps. Some would end up at intelligence headquarters in Paris where they were brutally tortured to try to get some information out of them. And so all of this is in the background. All of this is in Sonia's mind as she is sitting in some of those restaurants trying to pretend to be a local. And one time, this is really when it comes to brings to the fore the danger.

She drops her purse on the floor. She's surrounded by German officers. And the purse drops with a thud, an unmistakable thud of a firearm. And next to her was an officer who politely reached over to try to help her. And she snatched it just in time because had he lifted it, he would have realized from the weight of it that there was something like, that they were not ordinary belongings in this purse, that there was perhaps a firearm in there and she would have been done for. There's another great scene for the movie.

Besides the danger, the potential danger of the Germans finding her out, there was also the very real danger of when the war came to a close, or at least when France was liberated, that there were going to be French who would wonder about whether or not those evenings in the bars or the cafes with the Germans were collaboration. Absolutely. Yes.

And, you know, she was mistaken for a German girl often, to use her words, German girl. She was mistaken for a German girl often because she was blonde. And often when she would leave those restaurants, sometimes people would spit in her direction because they suspected her being a collaborator. And so at the very, when Le Mans was liberated, which is quite early on after the landings, it was on August 8th, early on compared to the rest of the country,

it was one of the first cities to be liberated. She was accosted very briefly by people who were looking to exact, you know, revenge against those who were collaborating in whatever way. And so she was being taken to the middle of town where they had gathered a number of women who had been consorting with German officers and had their heads shaved and paraded around town to humiliate them.

And she was being taken by two armed men towards the scene to be treated in exactly this way. And if it hadn't been for some of the men she had served with, she was screaming at the top of her lungs and trying to get their attention, who vouched for her and said, no, actually, she is one of us, quote unquote, the resistance. She would have met a difficult fate in the middle of Le Mans at the hands of French patriots. I hate to cut the story short, but there's got to be a reason to read the book too. And it's filled with little moments like this. Tell me, once the war is over and the celebration has ended, they decide to come back to Canada.

Yes. And they settle in Canada. And do they sort of like drift into the background? I mean, here's this great story that's not getting told. They don't drift immediately into the background. Sonia makes it her business to drift into the background. She maintained all along that the war was past, that it was part of her life, but not her whole life.

And so after an initial flurry, and it was quite a flurry, of pictures and front pages and interviews, and as you can imagine, their story was very compelling, you know, that they, two agents who married, you know, who parachuted behind enemy lines and who are now coming home to make Canada home, really made a lot of headlines and journalists were clamoring from all over North America to interview them. But eventually, yeah, they do meld into the background. Sonia wants to focus on raising a family.

Guy wants to have a military career that he builds one posting at a time. And yet, Peter, they were very aware that their story was so compelling because Guy kept everything. He kept documents, he kept articles, he kept photographs, all kinds. In fact, he had lots of things photographed in the war zone itself. But he kept a treasure trove of material, which I had the privilege of looking through thanks to his daughter, Nadia. And so one day he wanted to write a book. He never did. He even bought a typewriter because he wanted to write the book about the story,

but he never had the chance to. And the family had hoped that one day the story would be told. And it's a privilege to be the one to begin to tell the story because Peter, there's no way I've told this entire story. There's still so much more to find out. I hope others might be interested enough to do some more digging but I think it reminds us of two things Peter like I think the reason the story is important to me is one just

on that point it's a good reminder that this is a country that's built on immigrants and this every single family in this country from from wherever part of the world they come from, has somehow had a brush with conflict or war. And those stories, I heard R.H. Thompson say this on the CBC not too far ago, that every family has a story like this, a war story of some kind. And these are stories that need to be told. And so, you know, I've told stories about war all over the world, and this is a chance to tell a Canadian story. Even though they had passed, I feel that it was a story that I wanted to tell because it's important. It's our history. It's this country's history, and we need to know it. So yeah, it's a privilege to be able to tell it. How has their family handled this through the generations now, the children, grandchildren?

They're immensely proud of their parents. So I met them at the Juneau Beach Center in 2019, and two generations came to honor their grandmother and their mother. They're very proud of the story, and they themselves have made attempts to tell the story as well. Yeah, and I know that they're gratified that their parents' story is finally told in more detail than had been before. Oh, well, they're lucky. They're lucky, I guess, that Jenzer said to you, you know,

why don't you think about that Sonia story and where it led? Because, you know, it's a terrific book. Just, you know, the picture on the front cover of the two of them, I don't know, I can't remember now. Is that Wedding Day? That is Wedding Day. Yeah, that's the Marlboro. Is that wedding day? That is wedding day. Yeah, that's in Marlebone. Yeah.

But it's such a wonderful picture. And when you, I keep looking back at it as I, you know, hear one anecdote after another, and you're looking at these two remarkable people because they look just like your normal wartime couple, right? Everybody's in uniform in those days uh or or approaching it and um but here the the secrets they knew the secrets they'd learned it's amazing it's great um you gave us a sense of what your your takeaway is just as a last question give us give it give me

more on that what this experience of learning their story has meant to you. As I said, every family, I venture to say almost every family in this country has had a history that somehow brushes against a conflict or war. And I think that's part of the story of this country. And we can't lose sight of the stories. We need to tell those stories. And so I laud Nadia from the family and others, you know, people that I work with who have recorded their parents. You know, she had her mom interviewed for hours on end. And so one lesson I say is go, you know, go record the elders in your family. Like go tell, go ask them what stories you need to know, because it's part of

the fabric of your story and part of the fabric of this country's story. So that's number one. And two, I think, I hope the story is kind of a reminder of what happens when book burning authoritarians are on the ascendant. And also the cost of war, the perils of war, and the fact that it's often the young who pay the disproportionate price. And I think those lessons are as important today as they were back then. And if we think we're immune, I think we're wrong. And so I'd like to think that this story is partly a reminder of that, that wars really, once they start, often they don't end and they affect everyone, generations on. Nala, it's so good to talk to you. And for longer than 30 seconds or a minute,

we used to get at the end of some of your items. Oh, it's so great. To have a half an hour to talk about this wonderful piece of work. And I do mean that. So congratulations on the book and much success with it. Thanks, Nala. Thank you, Peter. It's a pleasure to talk to you again. Isn't she great?

Told you. Nala Ayyad, currently the host of Ideas on CBC Radio. An outstanding journalist from her days covering the world for both radio and television. And now an outstanding author with another really good book. And I hope you, if you were fascinated by just a hint of some of the stories that are in this book, based on our conversation, then you should go out and grab it.

The War We Won Apart, Nala Ayyad, is your author. And you should be able to find that at any bookstore or online. In fact, I know you can find it in either one of those places. A couple of thoughts from me.

Tomorrow, it's our Wednesday Encore Edition, and tomorrow we will rerun Monday's show with James Holland to get you set up for Thursday on D-Day. You know, as I said to James, and I mentioned about NALA, because we've both been to the Normandy beaches a number of times on the programs we did together, that it is, you know, keep in mind, I think you all know the basic story. There were five beaches where the Allies landed.

Two of them were American beaches, Omaha and Utah. Two of them were British beaches, Sword and Gold. And then there was the Canadian beach, Juneau. I've been on all of them. I've walked all of them. I've been into the areas around the cemeteries where the dead of that day are buried. And I got to tell you, the Canadian, I mean, at this time of year, you know, I think the first one I was at was the 50th anniversary, then the 55th, the 60th, the 65th, the 70th.

Now we're looking at the 80th coming up. It takes on a life of its own. There's kind of a, not a carnival atmosphere, but there is a certain degree of people dressing up in the style of that time, both militarily and civilian-wise. There are a lot of vehicles around that either pretend to be or are, in fact, from that era. And, you know, there are around the cemetery at Omaha Beach,

which, you know, was the scene in Saving Private Ryan. There's, you know, hot dog stands and all of that around outside the cemetery. But, I mean, it's a real event. And people hawking and selling different stuff. Not so at the Canadian beach. It feels like very, especially the cemetery. We talked about it yesterday, Benny Surmey.

It's set aside. It's kind of outside the main area from the beaches, kind of alone out in the fields. It's very solemn. But it's Canadian. And you feel that when you're there. And in the towns like Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer, Coussos-sur-Mer, and others,

it's not the same as I just kind of mentioned around the American one. And that's not a slight on anybody. It's just this is different. We are different. We're different than Americans. We're different than the Brits. We have our own style. And I kind of find it in there.

But we're all together on the common purpose of remembering, right? Remembering what these young fellows and young women did at that time, why they did it, the sacrifices that were involved, and that we have a duty not to forget and a duty to remember and a duty when we're able to acknowledge and if that simply means standing next to a gravestone of somebody you don't even know or never knew or know their family but you look at that what's engraved on there and you see that young fellow was 19 years old. Gone.

In some cases, in a matter of seconds after hitting the beach. Never knowing whether that day was going to be successful or not. But we know. And we know to remember and to thank for it.

All right, that's going to wrap it up for today. Tomorrow, as I said, encore edition, but also get those answers into the question of the week by 6 p.m. Eastern time tomorrow. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening today. Thank you to NOLA once again for taking the time to talk with us. And we'll talk again in an encore format in, well, in almost 24 hours. Bye for now.