Geneva Semester: Spring 2011: Normandy

     On my list of places to go before I die, Normandy was number 1. By far. Ever since my days of playing army men with my cousin Brady and hearing stories of D-Day, the whole of Operation Overlord (as it was known) has absolutely fascinated me. Throughout high school, the books that I read for pleasure were World War II non-fiction books, most of which centered on the Allied assult on the beaches of northern France. Adrianne planned almost the entire spring break trip, but she put me in charge of Normandy. So naturally, I decided to buy myself a gift, and rented a car for our stay there. Which was an EPIC win.
     We stayed in a hostel in Caen, which is not a particularly nice town from what we saw but in order to get up to the beaches, we had to travel through Bayeux which was beautiful. There are pictures from there on my next post, and if/when I go to Normandy in the future, I will be staying there. The drive was fantastic. We headed northwest and followed the signs on the roundabouts towards towns that were all familiar to me. We may have looked at a map once. The countryside was beautiful, it was sunny and the temperature was comfortable -- just a perfect day. After about 40 minutes, we came upon the sign for Colleville-sur-Mer, and the sign for the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, where we pulled off. This was what I had been waiting for.
      The hundreds of acres that hold the cemetery belong to America. They were given to the US by the French, and to this day the American Battle Monuments Commission is responsible for the upkeep of them. There is a visitors center with a two-floor museum right at the entrance of the grounds, that does a nice job of setting the scene and providing the historical context for the experience. Once outside, there is a winding path with beautiful landscaping that makes its way along a ridge where you get a spectacular view of Omaha Beach down below. This was my first ever view of Omaha Beach, the English Channel, and the Eastern side of the Atlantic Ocean. The path winds a little more inland, and then you come to the graves. Marble grave stones mark the final resting places of 9,387 American youth from my grandparents' generation, most of whom never had the opportunity to be parents much-less grandparents, but instead fell in battle doing what their country asked of them. The stones stretch on and on, in immaculately straight lines that are only broken up by the occasional path or neatly kept flower bed. While walking and reading the names, you come across some that read "Here rests in honored glory, a comrade in arms known but to God." There are 307 of these stones scattered throughout, marking the resting places of American soldiers whose bodies were found but never identified. There is a chapel that is directly in the center of the cemetery, with scripture from the Old and New Testaments. Then when you come out of the chapel, you face the Memorial which contains the enscription "THIS EMBATTLED SHORE, PORTAL OF FREEDOM, IS FOREVER HALLOWED BY THE IDEALS, THE VALOR AND THE SACRIFICES OF OUR FELLOW COUNTRYMEN". It also has a bronze statue called the Spirit of American Youth, and it depicts a young man rising from the water of the English Channel. Finally, behind the Memorial there is a garden which is surrounded by a wall that has the names of the 1,557 American soldiers whos bodies were either never found or never identified after the D-Day invasion. In all a very appropriate and powerful monument and tribute to the sacrifice that so many made in the name of freedom. After wandering through the cemetery on our own, Adrianne and I met back up and started our way down the path to Omaha Beach.
      I came to several realizations while walking on the beach that had never occurred to me before. When I picture a beach, I picture the Outer Banks of North Carolina where between the dune grass and the water-line, there is maybe an American Football field's length of sand. This was not the case on Omaha Beach. There was anywhere between 1/3 and 2/3 of a mile of flat sand. Looking inland, there is a high ridge, the left side of which still has chilling remnants of the German defenses. These machine gun nests and small artillery emplacements were zeroed in on the beaches, and could lay down massive amounts of fire. This perfect coverage, coupled with the obstacles and landmines that were scattered throughout the beach, and the long distance that the invaders had to run without any cover, set up a perfect killing scenario for the Germans. I always knew this, but seeing the expanse of the sand made it all the more obvious. The other thing that occurred to me was how little the water in the Atlantic warms up until at least the middle of summer. The water was around 50 degrees, and I would be willing to bet that it is not much warmer than that around June 6, the date of Operation Overlord's beginning in 1944. When the Americans had to bail out of their landing craft early, they were in water that could probably induce hypothermia in a matter of 20 minutes. It just never occurred to me that the water could be cold. The beach today is beautiful. Even in the early spring there were lots of people walking their dogs, some flying kites, but all just enjoying themselves. If I lived there, I would be out there all the time. It is just mindblowing to think of how many souls passed through that place, not all that long ago.
     After wandering around the beach for awhile we made our way up the hill to the German bunkers, which were bullet riddled and had their steel supports rusting and poking out. They still looked terrifying and formidable, even in their mangled condition. The men in these positions were able to deliver massive amounts of death, before probably being killed themselves when their positions were overrun -- doing what their country asked of them. Unbelievable stuff. And the destruction got even more real when we left and went to Pointe du Hoc, about 20 miles down the road.
     When you see a video of a bomb exploding, it is hard to imagine the scale of its effect. Pointe du Hoc is the point at which Omaha and Utah Beaches meet and was therefore, a critical military target. It was heavily fortified by the Germans, riddled with machine-gun nests, and had no fewer than four heavy artillery pieces in support in the rear. The Allied air forces drops tons of high explosive bombs to try to soften the German defenses, but it was not as effective as they would have liked. To make matters more difficult for the US Rangers who were given the task of taking the point, there was no gently sloping beach and dunes for cover. Shear cliffs had to be scaled by using ladders that they had to shoot up the cliffs Batman-style. Ladders would be cut down, the men on them would fall to their rocky deaths. Germans fired down on them from above, and all the Rangers could do was climb as hard as they could. And when they got to the top, they faced a tangled maze of bunkers, machine gun nests, and bomb craters that they had to weave through and try to neutralize the threat to their lives. Casualties were higher than at any other beach on D-Day. An absolutely terrifying war story, that can only be truly appreciated when you see the devestation that the battle left behind, and that has been left in the same condition since the conflict. Impact craters are the predominant feature of this landscape. The bunkers are still there, but much of the concrete has been reduced to rubble, and the steel rebar and I-beams that reinforced it is twisted and deformed as though it was all made of plastic. I've never seen destruction of this magnitude. It was jaw-dropping.
     We drove around for another little while, making our way up to Carentan, where Easy Company of the 506th Airborn Division (of Band of Brothers fame) made their name by holding off a massive German counter-attack in the days following the initial landings, then made our way back to Caen for the night.
     When taking in the loss of American life at the cemetery, the devestation at Pointe du Hoc, and thinking of the loss of German lives during the whole thing, a quote started running through my head that has always been one of my favorites. "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants." Jefferson nailed it. Without darkness, you cannot have light. Without evil, there cannot be good. Without oppression, you cannot have Liberty. Humans are savage in nature, and without sacrifice, and the willingness to bleed and die for your beliefs, the oppressors will win. I am convinced that the only reason Operation Overlord was a success (aside from the Russians fighting in the East), was because the Allied forces believed whole-heartedly in the engagement, whereas many in the German Wehrmacht were not true believers in the National Socialist Party and by mid-1944, had started to lose their taste for war. The Allies were willing to bleed more in the pursuit of Liberty, and because of that, they made the Germans bleed more on their way to victory.

General Eisenhower's Address Preceding D-Day Invasion

Memorial Pool, Normandy American Cemetery, Colleville-sur-Mer

General Patton

Flags of the Allies

"Only the dead on the waterline rolled with the waves."

Reflection Room, Museum in Normandy American Cemetery

"All we asked...was enough soil in which to bury our galliant dead"

Museum exit to Cemetery

"We do not forget, we will never forget the debt of infinite gratitude that we owe those who gave everything for our liberation."

English Channel, Omaha Beach

Walk to the Cemetery

Omaha Beach

English Channel, Omaha Beach

Notice the Cross that the Omaha Arrow points to; that is where we were.

Normandy American Cemetery, Colleville-sur-Mer

Some of the 9,387 Crosses

One of the 307 Unidentified Soldiers Buried. "Here rests in honored glory, a comrade in arms known but to God."

Normandy American Cemetery, Colleville-sur-Mer

"Think not only upon their passing, remember the glory of their spirit"

"Through the gate of death may they pass to their joyful resurrection."

Chapel in center of the Cemetery

Memorial at the Cemetery

Chapel

American D-Day Memorial

Normandy American Memorial

View from the Memorial

Spirit of American Youth rising from the waters of the English Channel

Spirit of American Youth

Garden of the Missing and Unknowns

1,557 Americans' names, unidentified or never found after D-Day invasion.

Spirit of American Youth

Omaha Beach

Dunes between the Beach and the hills up to the German lines. This was the cover that the invading Americans would need to reach to survive. . .

....and in-between the water-line and the cover, there was about a half-mile of beach to get over, with obstacles, landmines, and machine-gun fire coming from every direction in front.