The last time I was moved to silence was almost two years ago.

I stood on a beach.

It was my first time abroad, and it was during the Fall Break tour of my four month stay in the Eternal City. I don't think I will ever lose the wonder for the world that this first trip gave to me.

We left for tour at the end of October, about a week away from my 20th birthday. It was to be a two week long visit to France, most specifically the northern half, and most specifically in my World-War-II-obsessed mind, a trip through Normandy.

We had a wonderful tour guide, a man named Stuart Robertson, who does more private tours, and someone who also has so many stories that he's received first hand from survivors and soldiers of the war alike that every place we went was shadowed and colored by real people from the past. I hate thinking of it as a "tour" because that word conjures all of the masses of crowds with their whisper sets following the one person holding a flag at the front. Stuart was a storyteller - and we were simply his listeners.

Sainte-Mere-Eglise, Pointe du Hoc (which is arguably one of the most beautiful places I have ever been), Utah Beach - each place we walked and stood upon in the sunny that morning was amazing.

But it was Omaha that struck me.

Once a tourist resort, the expanse is now empty. We stepped off the road and onto the thick sand. Stuart only spoke for a few moments and then fell silent, gesturing that we should go wherever we needed.

It's what you would call the perfect beach - golden sands, spread out to meet the blue sea that foams at its edges. A perfect sky, a slight breeze. But it was so eerily empty, so completely silent. No gulls cried. There was no one there but us, and a single little boy with a net, catching things in the shallows. I left the group and I walked to the edge of the sea, and when the toes of my boots touched the surf, I turned around.

The bluffs didn't seem that far away - I felt that I could cover the expanse at a run in less than a minute, 30 seconds even. But they couldn't that day. And some didn't even make it past where I stood. I stood and looked as the waves lapped at my boots, and couldn't find the words to fill the emotions that ran through me. I watched the little boy with his net, the picture of innocence standing testament to what happened there.

So much death, in such a quiet, beautiful place. I'll never forget it.