Stones and sand I collected at Omaha Beach
1 November, 2013
All Saints Day finds me writing in Le Mans, France. I took a train today from Bayeux via Caen. I have a very nice room next to the station with a view overlooking the platforms. There will be some train spotting, as this is a Grande Ligne with TGV service. Already I have seen a parade of TGV Reseau double headed (two sets coupled in tandem), a TGV Duplex double level, and many TER regional and intercity trains. It’s been raining all afternoon, so I have taken time to nap and have been planning out the remaining two weeks of this grand journey. From here I travel to Chartres on Sunday afternoon. I plan to return to the beautiful Cathedral where I had a very moving experience when I visited and walked the labyrinth in 1998. From there I will head to Paris. Not sure how long I will stay there. Eurostar is most affordable on Tuesdays, so it may be for a week. I have been entertaining the idea of perhaps checking out Brussles for a day next weekend.
I digress, however. The freedom that I am enjoying today in France all stems from one decisive and horrific morning on the beaches of Normandy in June of 1944. Yesterday I visited several sites of the invasion with Victory Tours. This is a “one man, one van” company that I highly recommend if you find yourself in Bayeux wanting to visit the invasion sites. We covered nearly 60 miles of the Normandy coast, from Arromanches to Pointe du Hoc. It is impossible in eight hours to truly get an idea of the scale of events that day, and that summer nearly 70 years ago. I find it almost as difficult to put the experience to words tonight.
Leaving Bayeux, the first stop was at Arromanches. Just west of Gold Beach, this was the site of the artificial Mulberry Harbor for the British sector. There are still Phoenix breakwaters outlining the harbor, and several pontoons from the floating piers that are washed up on the beach in a line at the access road.
Phoenix breakwaters
Pontoons
Access road with US Anti Aircraft gun and one section of floating roadway
M4A1 Sherman tank
Seven seen at Arromanches
Leaving Arromanches, we stopped at a bunker complex that was operational on D-Day. The cannons are still there in two of the bunkers. The third took a direct hit to the ammunition magazine, and sustained heavy damage. At the end of the day we visited Pointe du Hoc. A gun emplacement that never actually had any guns. Here the Rangers scaled 100 foot high cliffs sustaining heavy losses to capture a point that had been continually bombed for a month prior to the invasion. The German forces had largely abandoned the position, but it was still defended by infantry. The site is preserved today with bunkers that were never finished, and a landscape still scarred with bomb craters.
After a brief stop for lunch at a small park on one of the access roads, we visited Omaha Beach. Bloody Omaha, as it is called, for that morning the sea was red with the blood of fallen soldiers, and every year in June the sands run red again. The beach remembers the thousands of Americans who died there. The pictures cannot capture the feeling that is there. The sands are sacred. There remains little evidence of what transpired that morning. As I stood on the sand, I tried to imagine the events of June 6, 1944. Explosions, gunfire, screaming of the wounded, smoke and the smell of death in the air, the chaos of war. I could not. The actualities of that day defy my imagination. Before me lay five miles of sparsely populated sands between the bluffs and the sea. This is not a beach for recreation. This is a hallowed ground. A place to remember. A place to ponder mortality. A place to give thanks for freedom. I collected a small packet of sand, and a handful of stones before we left. I cannot begin to give a history of that morning so long ago. I refer you to the pages of Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omaha_beach
Returning to the van, we drove up the narrow access road to the top of the bluffs and the town of Colleville. Here there are 172 acres of American soil overlooking Omaha Beach where marble crosses mark the graves of 9,387 fallen Americans who never got to return home. Three hundred and seven of the crosses mark the graves of men never identified. The names of another 1,557 who were killed and never found are inscribed on a wall in a sunken garden to the east of the memorial. While the memorial and reflecting pool are on the east end of the cemetery, the names on the crosses all face west – back to the United States. I have visited Arlington in the nation’s capitol, and it is massive and staggering in the number of graves, but the experience paled in comparison to this. Row after row of names and states and dates that they lost heir lives. All in summer of 1944. There are no dates of birth or ages on the markers, but these soldiers were all 18 and 20 years old. Still boys, theirs was the ultimate sacrifice to ensure the freedom of Europe. My head spun as I walked through the grounds looking at the names and their home states. I saw several that were from Colorado. Several who died on July 4. A few who died on my birthday, July 8. The graves are random. They are not placed by name, location, state or date, but there is one day that is seen again and again: June 6, 1944.
360 panorama — click to embiggen
180 panorama — click to embiggen
Here Rests In Honored Glory A Comrade In Arms Known But To God
The day, All Hallow’s Eve, was very heavy and emotional. I had long felt a calling to visit Omaha Beach and walk on the sands, and to visit the American Cemetery. I still don’t understand what it was about, but I can say with some certainty that between the time I first set foot on Omaha and when I left the Cemetery something in my soul shifted. I left Bayeux a changed man. Perhaps in time I will understand, but maybe not. I don’t think it’s important that I do. It’s just important that I was there.
Bon nuit.
savagemythology 