On the road again...to Caen

Friday we hit the road - heading east with the first stop in Caen...which was basically destroyed in June of 1944 by American bombers going after the surrounding bridges.  Ironically they missed those targets and leveled the city.  The city isn't anything to write home about (at least what we saw of it), but they have a stellar memorial...Caen Memorial which is a huge amount of information about WWII and the events leading up to it.  Again not exactly remembering all that we learned in our history classes...that this segment of time (1939-1945) cost the lives of 60 million people and a staggering amount of these (35million) were civilians.  Talk about not being able to wrap your head around something.  Just for comparison purposes,  Russia led with 21 million...and the U.S. came in at 305k...with all the other major players (China, Germany, Japan,  Poland, France, Italy, the U.K.) coming somewhere in between.  60 million.  Unbelievable.  It's sinking in why so much of the messaging in regards to anything/everything WWII and that time is 'we will not forget'.  We can't afford to forget.