A Trip Back in Time

In June 1994, I was in Normandy. Everyone thought I was there for D-Day. All the American flags were hanging in the bars and hotels.

I was there for the other invasion. The northbound one. The one that happened about nine centuries before Eisenhower launched his crusade in Europe.

William’s crusade was actually that. He flew the papal banner before his armies. I don’t believe Dwight got the Pope’s blessing for his southbound excursion.

Neither did I obtain papal blessing to research the Year 1066. I just sort of did it. Seemed like it needed to be done.

So few people understand or recall clearly what happened that pivotal year. How the face of Europe changed. Cartographers know the year well. It is the year in which they can change the tint to the same color for Normandy and England.

This is now my story. Because in 1994, I walked the battlefields of Stamford Bridge and Hastings. I went to Norway, England and Normandy. I slept at the foot of Guillaume’s birthplace castle in Falaise.

Something had propelled me to do so, long before I ever boarded the plane.

Something compels me to write now, to the exclusion of everything else I must do in life.

I believe the story of 1066 must be told anew. Polished like armor and the swords of the combatants, and yet in other ways, as unvarnished as the wood of benches and tables and planks of ships that bore the weight of armies.

It must come to the full screen to change the minds of the masses. For them all to realize how the world was won for some, and lost to others. It is a story of human experience most profound and epic. And it is real. Not a fantasy.

The tale of the year 1066 has been propagandized and manipulated, misconstrued and made fun of. We can clarify the truth. Reveal the beauty of it. Share with the world again the passion, the love, and the ideals that drove the world into whole new directions with themes that reverberate to this very day.

It is time to make the year AD 1066 into one year in history we will never forget.