Omaha Beach
On my first Alaskan cruise in 2003 there was a 4th of July get-together for the Veterans on board. I don’t normally go to things like that, but I am so glad I did that day. One of the Veterans I had the pleasure to talk with had been a Norwegian Army resistance fighter in WWII, he had made it to England and went ashore with them on D-Day. I had seen Saving Private Ryan five years earlier, and now I was talking to someone who had actually been there…going to Normandy became a goal.
This year my vacation was sailing from Paris to Normandy and back – and we were going to be at the Normandy beaches on our Veterans Day. I had hoped the timing would work out that way, but I kept reminding myself that just getting to Normandy was the goal. It turned out it was also the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, the ending of The War to End All Wars…or World War 1 as we now know it. I did not know that fact when I got on the ship, and I studied Western Civ in college!
The American Cemetery above Omaha Beach is one of the most beautiful I have seen, it is maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission, and the Memorial there has a bronze statue that symbolizes the young men that gave their lives – The Spirit of American Youth Rising from the Waves by Donald De Lue. 9,387 American military dead are buried there, to include three women and two of President Teddy Roosevelt’s sons, and the names of 1,557 whose remains could not be found are inscribed on the walls at the Memorial. Families of 61% of those who lost their lives there wanted their children to be returned home, the remaining 39% are buried in the American Cemetery. At 11:30 there was a wreath laying ceremony at the statue to commemorate Veterans Day and the 100th anniversary; it was short, quiet and respectful, and several of our group were a part of the wreath laying.
Afterwards we went down to Omaha Beach, there was a high tide so we could not see just how far the beach would be at low tide…we were told it is about 3 football fields out into the English Channel. There is a sculpture in the beach sand called Les Braves by Anilore Banon, dedicated on the 60th Anniversary of the Normandy landings. On the cliffs above the beach are still a few bunkers dug into the cliff side, but they are off limits to visitors.
Our next stop was seeing the German artillery bunkers above the beach on the cliffs – four bunkers remain and you can walk through three of them. I was amazed at how well they had weathered all these years, the guns were still in place (even in the one that took a hit) and you could see into the rooms used for living and storage. The walls were incredibly thick concrete! Impressive engineering in my opinion.
Our final stop of the day was the Mulberry Harbour at Arromanches, a temporary portable harbour designed and built by the British and deployed beginning 9 June 1944. If I remember correctly from the museum tour, it was functioning within one week! Many pieces of the caissons and whales can still be seen off the beach. The movie I saw at the museum showed old naval ships first being sunk and then the caissons to create a breakwater, with floating dock piers for offloading and transfer (whales, beetles and spud piers). Another case of remarkable engineering!
It was an intensely emotional day, and I will long remember it as one of my most memorable Veterans Days.
