First stop was the German guns at Longues sur Mer. Here are the best preserved defenses to survive the war. The are four "pillboxes" from which large guns were aimed. You can walk around them and see how they were set up to fire on Gold - the British landing site. It is striking to see how the guns are set back enough from the edge to insure there would be room to mow down any attacker. Today the area has been reclaimed as a flower preserve.
Next stop was Omaha beach and it was hard to miss that one drove DOWN to the beach and once parked walked DOWN even further. It was easy to imagine why with that geography, it is called Bloody Omaha. On the east coast of the beach there are both pebbles and sand. The wind and the waves were blowing and although it was quiet, you could not help but think of all the blood shed on those sands. The east end of the beach has a couple of memorials that everyone climbs up to, the tiny attempt to simulate what going up the hill must have seems like. I had to scramble in a couple of places and while there are now easier paths, the scrambling, with a small bag and camera made me think about how hard that would have been with anything more. This was where the hardest fighting too place and it is not hard to imagine. The memorial to the 1st Infantry who fought here shows why they lived up to their motto: No Mission Too Difficult, No Sacrifice to Great, Duty First.
The sacrifices made were even more obvious at the next stop, the American cemetery at Coleville sur Mer. Having visited a few military cemetaries stateside, I have to say the American government has figured out how to make the experience real for the thousands of tourists who pass through. In the US, you can just walk into the cemetery, here you start in a building. There is a small exhibit with tapes where General Eisenhower describes what needs to be accomplished and you "meet" some of the men and women buried there. Paratroopers, soldiers, field doctors all with typical American stories are just some of the almost 9,400 graves you will see in neat rows as you leave the building. The theme of the building is Competence - describing the rigorous training for all the participating soliders - they were the best in their units - anyone who couldn't measure up - did not come that first day, Courage - in what they actually faced and overcame to begin the liberation of Europe and Sacrifice - in that so many did not make it home.
The cemetery was more crowded than expected but among the crosses and stars of David no one was making a sound as some walked with purpose and others wandered just reading names and occasionally touching a tombstone. Some graves have no names and are marked that they are known only to God. With the rest you can see their home state, their date of death and their unit. While there are many who died on D-Day, you realize how bloody the fight was in the weeks that followed as many more are listed with late June or early July dates of death. Colesville overlooks part of Omaha and you can walk down to the beach there. Others were standing in the are that included more formal and impressive monuments including the names of all those whose bodies were never identified. Some maybe the unknowns at Coleville but the shear volume of names gave pause to how many family members never learned where their soliders fell. I was struck that it there were far fewer wreaths than at the British cemetery at Bayeux. There were more visitors so I hope it is just that weaths are a British custom and that we do not leave such memorials, that we carry them in our minds and hearts without the floral reminders.
Further west along the coast there are more landings, memorials and museums. One, dedicated to D-Day describes the weeks leading up to it and the days right before and right after in a very moving film. Largely narrated by survivors, including a soldier and his wife, a nurse who was part of the medical missions in the days after the invasion, they describe how this was the first battle where medical evacuations were a focused directive and how teams worked to move out all injured on both sides to the relative safety of Britain. One beach exhibit also describes the events of Jour J - the French equivalent of D Day. According to the U.S. military, “D-Day” was an Army designation used to indicate the start date for specific field operations. The “D” in D-Day doesn’t actually stand for anything—it’s merely an alliterative placeholder used to designate a particular day on the calendar. This helped prevent actual mission dates from falling into enemy hands, but it also proved handy when the start date for an attack was still undecided so the French use J, the first letter in their word for day.
Finally it was on to Pont du Hoc, site of the ranger climb that June morning with the goal of knocking out the German guns which could damage the troops on Omaha even further. I've wanted to see this place for 30 years since Reagan spoke here. Again, the US government provides an introduction, this time in the words of the Rangers who were here. Recorded at various recent anniversaries, they tell their story-one man saying that he just didn't want to drown and wanted to accomplish the assignment he had been given. They describe how one Ranger stood guard firing his rifle while another pulled his teammates up over the cliff. The climb is completely vertical - 90 feet and the first Rangers where on top in less than 10 minutes, the whole area was under control in less than 30 minutes but they were stuck there defending the land and when relieved on June 9, only 90 of the 225 were still able to fight.
Point du Hoc was crowded, it was really hard to get a photo of the ranger crippling hook without a crowd around - but I did! Everyone wanted to stand where Reagan did when we spoke about those 'boys of Pont du Hoc". English, French and, Dutch and German could all be heard as everyone wandered over top of the cliff and the German guns in awe of what had happened there.
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