avril 5: Omaha Beach

(Going back in time here since I forgot the entry before)

While at Chateau Monfréville, I took a day trip to visit Omaha beach where my dad's dad landed on D-Day. Its one of two beaches where American troops landed on the Normandy coast and is the one where they faced a much stiffer challenge from the Germans. Standing on the beach today, it's a bit tough to imagine thousands of men spilling out of boats and scrambling over the dunes, then up steep cliffs. There aren't a lot of traces left from the war here, save some bits of rusted metal that stick up from the sand now and then.

I walked down to the beach after making my way through the small museum that opened last year at the American war cemetery. It's very well done with images, video and some objects from the invasion, including the bag and contents that a medic like my grandfather would have carried.

The cemetery itself is stark with about 9000 white stone crosses, and a few stars of David, marking the graves. Many American dead were repatriated as they are today, so the cemetery could have been even bigger.

Earlier in my time there, I visited the German war cemetery which holds 21,000 dead. It's equally stark and a bit more sombre with rough-hewn, dark stone crosses and flat grave markers in the grass.

There are reminders often in this area of the invasion whether it's gaudy museums of weapons run by locals or panels in churches memorializing Allied sacrifices. All over France that I've seen, in fact, the world wars are so present in the form of memorials even in towns of just a few hundred people. Since this is the ground where they were fought, the memories are still fresh.