The above pictures are Omaha Beach. To look at it now, it is very difficult to imagine how different it was on the 6th of June, 1944. Omaha Beach is but one of the beaches that were stormed that day by upwards of 160,000 allied soldiers. Omaha Beach was one of the two beaches the Americans assaulted, the other one being Utah Beach. Omaha Beach is approximately 4 miles wide. For the landing, it was split into five different zones. In the initial wave, each zone were to have 6 landing craft containing 192 troops each.
In order to gain some perspective as to how big this beach really is, double click on the picture above. To the right side between the beach and the foliage, there is a parking lot, and there are two vehicles parked there. Honest, there really are. When you see how tiny they are in the picture, and how wide the beach is in comparison, you will have an idea of the distance the assaulting forces had to go to reach any cover.
Entry points, little valleys like the one seen above, separated the beach into the different sections. The troops landing in each section were to funnel into these 'valleys' and work their way up away from the beach. The Germans, knowing this would happen, had cement bunkers on either side in order to have a murderous crossfire brought down on the Americans.
If you look closely, just a little to the southeast of the monument you see what was a concrete machine gun emplacement. Looking towards the beach, you can tell that the person manning this machine gun had an unobstructed view of the troops assaulting the beach. Believe it or not, the German who manned this position survived, and escaped unhurt. He lived through the war, and after it was over, wrote a book about his experiences. He said in his book that he believed that he accounted for the most American deaths that day. He was not sorry, and he did not apologize. For him, it was his job, and he did his job.
The house pictured above was there on the 6th of June, 1944. Hard to believe, but it suffered very little damage during the invasion.
The beach above is Red Beach. This is where the Americans suffered their worst casualties. The first wave contained 192 men. Within a half hour, 130 of them were dead. With that total were nineteen young men from a small town named Bedford, Virginia. Bedford is where the D-Day Memorial is located. The French named a street after Bedford in memory of those young men who gave their lives on this beach.
The pictures above show just a little of what the Americans landing on Red Beach faced. In the photo on the left, the bunker that shows up under the house in the background contained an 88 millimeter piece of artillery. It's shells can take out a tank.
The photo on the right shows two more bunkers. The one to the left of the walkway contained a 20 millimeter canon, and the bunker in the hillside above the white building on the right contained a heavy machine gun.
These were only a few of the weapons that faced the Americans in this area of the beach. How any of the troops landing here survived is beyond comprehension.
The photo on the left was taken at the American Cemetery where almost 10,000 American troops have been laid to rest. Originally, it contained over 33,000, but at the end of the war, the government gave the relatives the choice between leaving them there, or having them returned to the states and buried at home. The relatives of over 22,000 took them up on the offer.
We noticed when we walked into the cemetery that there were no names visible on the crosses. The reason is because they are on the back side of the cross, the side that faces America.
The photo on the right is a wall that stands behind the monument by the entrance to the cemetery. It is in a half circle, and has thousands of names on it. These are the names of the men whose bodies were never found. It is not widely known that retrieving the bodies from the beach did not begin for three days after the landing. By that time, many of them had been washed out into the English Channel. If there is an asterisk beside the name, and there are a few, it means that remains of a sort were recovered after the wall was built.
The Germans began to fall back from the beach at one-thirty in the afternoon of June the 6th.
It is impossible to grasp everything that happened that day on this beach, and the others where landings took place. Our guide, Alain Chesnel, a Frenchman, took us on a ride around the area of the beaches. He stopped next to a rather large field. Across the field at the far end, we could see the English Channel. In order to show us how rapidly the battle developed, he told us that the initial waves hit the beach at 6:30 AM on the 6th. At 7:30 PM on the 7th of June, the field we were looking at had become an airfield, and the Americans were flying cargo planes into it, and removing the wounded.
I hope I am able to return here one day in the not too distant future. I would like to revisit this beach, and also visit the other beaches. I'd like to spend some time walking around them, absorbing the echoes of the men who came this way many decades ago, and left their spirits in order for me to live my life in freedom.
Alain Chenel's web site address is http://www.overlordtour.com/en/ww2/references.htm
There, you can learn about Alain and his attachment to the 29th Division, the division that landed on Omaha Beach. He is a very nice, interesting person, and he knows his D-Day history. If you ever have the opportunity to visit the Normandy area and want an excellent tour, check out his web site.
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