On a beach in Normandy this summer, Rifle High School students Evalee Reider and Kincaid Perdue ran through the water.

It was peaceful. They laughed with friends. They played on the beach.

And they could not stop thinking about what had happened on that same stretch of coastline 82 years earlier.

They had already walked some of the terrain Allied soldiers crossed during the D-Day invasion and tried to imagine doing it carrying rucksacks filled with weapons and survival gear, soaking wet and under enemy fire.

“You just can’t fathom it,” Reider said. “You just really can’t.”

That feeling followed Reider and Perdue throughout an extraordinary summer experience that took the two Rifle High School IB students from Colorado to New Orleans, across the Atlantic to Normandy and finally to Paris.

Their trip was made possible in large part through scholarships from the Aspen Community Foundation’s Normandy & World War II Education Fund. Established in 2017 by Korean War veteran Paul Bushong, the fund was created to help local students better understand the significance of the Battle of Normandy by experiencing its history firsthand. 

Both jumped at the opportunity.

For Reider, France had been a dream destination since she was about five years old. She wanted to experience the culture, language and food, and saw the trip as a chance to bring a new perspective back to her IB classes.

Perdue had a similar fascination with France, its history and culture.

“Ever since I was little, I’ve always wanted to go to France,” Perdue said.

Getting there took some work.

Their applications included an essay, video, resume, references and a teacher recommendation. They were also asked to explain how the experience would benefit them as students and in the future.

Once selected, the learning started before they ever boarded a plane.

Students completed readings and research in preparation for the trip, including studying an American servicemember buried in Normandy and writing a eulogy to present during their visit.

The group began in New Orleans at The National WWII Museum before traveling to France. The students attended Normandy Academy, an educational travel program through The National WWII Museum in New Orleans. Bayeux became their home base as they visited D-Day landing beaches, cemeteries, museums, small towns and historic sites throughout Normandy.

For Reider, one of the most powerful moments came at the Normandy American Cemetery.

After spending weeks researching one soldier, she suddenly found herself standing only a short distance from where she was buried.

“It was just so different than how you would just present it at school,” Reider said.

She found herself getting emotional while delivering the eulogy. The soldier was no longer simply a name in a research project. She had been a real person.

That distinction came up again and again during the trip.

In a classroom, World War II can feel distant, she said.  In Normandy, Reider and Perdue saw buildings damaged during the war, stood inside places where soldiers had died and walked through communities where the effects of the conflict had been deeply personal.

The differences among the American, British and German military cemeteries also stayed with both students. The landscaping, headstones, architecture and atmosphere created distinctly different experiences.

Perdue described the German cemetery as particularly difficult.

Then came the Allied cemeteries.

“You still feel sad hearing about it,” Perdue said. “But they died for our freedom.”

That sense of gratitude may be one of the biggest things both students brought home.

At the beaches, they tried moving through the water while imagining soldiers doing the same thing under dramatically different circumstances.

Today those beaches can be beautiful and quiet and that contrast was hard for Reider to process.

“There were real people that were just dying on this beach,” she said. “I couldn’t process it.”

Then she came to another realization.

“That’s what they fought for, was our freedom to go there and experience that and to have fun,” Reider said.

And they did have fun.

There were dinners on their own in Bayeux, games in the park, a trivia night and new friendships with students from across the country. Reider and Perdue said the group became so close they called themselves a family and regularly took “family photos” together.

The trip ended with something both had dreamed about for years: Paris.

They saw the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe, explored the city with friends, stopped at a café and, in Perdue’s case, finally got the chance to order escargot.

“I had escargot, which was terrific,” Perdue said.

For Reider, the experience extended well beyond history.

Traveling in another country required communication, independence, problem solving and a willingness to experience something unfamiliar.

“There’s just so many different things that you would learn on this trip that you wouldn’t learn anywhere else until you physically experience it,” she said.

Now back at Rifle High School, both students believe the experience will change the way they approach their IB coursework, particularly History of the Americas.

Perdue said the history feels more firmly planted in his mind because he can connect what he reads to places he has actually stood.

For both students, though, Normandy gave them something larger than better context for an exam. It gave them perspective.

They returned thinking differently about sacrifice, freedom, relationships and even the lives they get to live every day.

“I keep saying that I can’t put it into words, but you really can’t, the sense of gratitude that you have,” Perdue said.

That is also at the heart of why Bushong created the Normandy & World War II Education Fund. His goal was not simply to send local students overseas to study history. He wanted them to return home and share that history with their families, classmates and communities so the lessons of Normandy are not forgotten.

Reider and Perdue came home with plenty of stories to tell: about cemeteries and beaches; sacrifice and freedom; Paris, escargot and friendships formed thousands of miles from Rifle, and about what happens when history stops being something in a textbook and becomes somewhere you have stood.