Donald Weber, War Sand

WAR SAND
And the Nine Commandos

The story my grandfather told me, goes like this.

During New Year’s 1943, nine British commandos were ordered to cross the English Channel and surface on the beaches of Normandy in France. The mission was to covertly collect sand and soil samples along a vast stretch of coast.

They had two days and nights to cross the Channel, collect the samples, and return without being caught.

France, and the seacoast in particular, was thick with German forces. The Atlantic Wall, Hitler’s dream fortress, was a wall of pure concrete, guarded by massed artillery and elite soldiers. To be caught meant certain execution as spies.

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If the commandos made it back to Britain, the samples would undergo scrutiny by scientists, geologists and physicists. Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower and Field Marshal Montgomery were counting on these minuscule grains of sand to withstand the weight of an invasion force, the largest the world had ever seen.

Thousands of ships, soldiers and armaments would land on Normandy’s beaches for the liberation of Western Europe. But first, the commandos had to complete the mission.

At the end of his story, my grandfather opened a small wooden box, and unwrapped a small glass tube from a white linen cloth.

It contained a pinchful of grey sand.

“This is what we brought back.”

“Through the use of microscopic photography and with a kind of forensic inquisitiveness and existential wondering, Weber brings us close to these fragments, offering us, too, the longer view: the eerie hush of the beachhead and the expressionless features of the sea and sky, edged in grasses. The series invites a contemplation of the endless quiet that lies beyond the flare of bold historical events, offering a cautionary tale of the hubris of humankind.”

— Sarah Milroy, art critic