June 1985 finds me in a French rail car heading to Paris. I am leaving Caen and the Normandy coast to start the last leg of this three week journey. It is time to head home. I had walked through the streets of Bayeux, Caen, and a number of small villages, most whose names I will never recall. I’ll remember the buildings though, some hundreds of years old, with the scars of bullet and shrapnel holes in their stonework. Small churches that had survived even longer bouts of history now in ruins or disrepair.
I saw the remains of the artificial harbor at Arromanches, walked the beaches of Omaha, Sword, and Utah, and stepped quietly through the hallowed grounds of the more than 9300 graves in the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer. I climbed in and out of German gun emplacements and pill boxes, and sat atop a hill overlooking the beaches wondering how anyone could have lived through the volume of terror Germany unleashed.
Yesterday was the last of those treks and today I board a train alone, my traveling companion heading south to the French Riviera. The train departs and I look out over the serene fields and flatlands as they pass. For the next hour or so, as I recall the beaches, the graveyard, and the destruction that still remains to this day, my mind fills the empty landscape with tanks and men running for cover, darting here and there amidst the fighting. So much damage, so many people, so many graves. I shake my head and silently think “Nothing was worth the loss of life, the loss of artwork, the loss of history. It just wasn’t worth it. Nothing was worth it.” My thoughts are interrupted by the announcement of an upcoming stop and the train slows as it approaches a station. I have no idea that for the next few moments everything my eyes see and my mind willing to accept will become permanent in my memory, seared as if branded.
As the train rolls to a stop, the lady in the seat in front of me starts to stand. Her hair is black and lightly peppered with streaks of gray. Her dress is dark blue, polka dotted with very tiny white daisies, each with 6 petals. She stands and with her right hand, reaches to get her bag stored in the overhead shelf. The sleeve of her dress, ending with a small ring of lace, normally extends to her wrist pulls back on her arm as she struggles to reach the shelf. She is a bit stocky and at four foot nothing she leaves almost a foot between her finger tips and the shelf. After three weeks of backpacking I am tired and slow to realize she needs assistance. I start to stand, grabbing the edge of the seat in front of me to pull myself up and I absently wonder how she ever got her bag up there in the first place. The woman switches arms and again tries to reach her bag. I am now half way up out of my seat and I internally smile at the absurdity of switching hands and yet we all do it. I can see the material of her sleeve creep up her left arm as she again stretches to reach the shelf. Suddenly time stops – everything stops. Nothing exists but the woman’s arm and myself. The material has uncovered slightly smeared, faded with age, black marks on her forearm near her wrist. My mind recognizes an 8 then a 6; there is a 1 and a 7. I realize its origins and I don’t want to see anymore but I am paralyzed, half-standing; no longer able to move.
The world starts moving again and a man across the aisle grabs her bag and hands it to her. I am still only halfway out of my seat. I never see her face. Never look to see who helped. I sit back down.
To this day I have no idea how many numbers were forcibly etched into that woman’s skin, but I recognized the shape and its slight angle and curve for I had seen pictures of the tattoos from German concentration camps. This one shown to me was hand written when she was but a child, probably not more than 10 or maybe 15, as she was processed into a camp. And to this day I cannot tell if it was the recognition of my arrogance or my ignorance that stung worse. Maybe it was both. “Nothing is worth the loss of life, the loss of artwork, and the loss of history. It just wasn’t worth it. Nothing was worth it” – that was my last thought as the train came to a stop and the woman rose.
I tell people there is corporal punishment for the soul. They often don’t believe it but when it happens it leaves a permanent mark on your soul and in your heart. For those that require it to get your attention, I hope you can appreciate being given such a gift, for that is what it is, a gift for the soul.
Copyright © 2025 G. Steven Nolte – Rights for non-commercial reproduction granted: May be copied in its entirety, but neither retyped nor edited.