Normandy

Visiting Normandy was extremely important to me while I was planning my trip. I actually rearranged my time in Paris and London so that I could make the jump to Normandy and be a part of this tour company's American Highlights tour. World War II has always fascinated me, and the June 6, 1944 Allied invasion of Normandy was not only the largest amphibious invasion in the history of the world, but it marked a distinct turning point in the flow of World War II, and it may have been the most vicious and brutal battle the Americans saw in the Atlantic Theater. The stories, both at the macro and micro levels, are unreal. The drama, from privates first class all the way up to Eisenhower, FDR, and Churchill, is palpable. Making the decision to go was a major gamble. If the invasion failed, as the Canadian invasion of Dieppe had failed in 1942, the blow to the British, American, and Canadian armies would have been extreme, and the blow to our morale may have been devastating. The propaganda message would have bolstered German spirits for months. The Russians, knowing that a western front would not be opened soon, would have felt down-trodden and exhausted as they had been throwing their men at the eastern front by the tens of thousands for years, using the sheer size of their population as their greatest means of resistance.

Thankfully, and I really mean that, the invasion was an incredible success. Despite heavy losses, we shattered Normandy's stretch of Hitler's "Fortress Europe." The Allies gained a strategically invaluable foothold on the Continent to complement their superiority in the air, and from there we surged forward and spent the next ten months liberating western Europe as we pushed through Nazi forces until we met the Soviets in Berlin, where the eastern and western fronts finally converged.

The historical significance of D-Day cannot be overstated. For instance, there were two Swedish men on my tour. When I asked them what interested them in the D-Day tour, it essentially came down to the fact that but for D-Day, they would likely be living in a Nazi- or Soviet-controlled country, as one of those forces likely would have controlled the whole of Europe eventually.

But for me, D-Day is not just about its historical significance. The invasion of Normandy says something about the very fabric of America. This trip has made me extremely grateful to be an American, to be able to live and work in the United States, and to have the opportunities I have in my home country, but no experience over here has made me more grateful for my nation than today's time on the Normandy coast. These men, most of whom were 18-25, jumped out of planes into the darkness of night, lit only by the moon and German tracer bullets and anti-aircraft shells. They stormed beaches where Nazi guns were shooting large-caliber bullets to the tune of 32,000 rounds per minute--at Omaha Beech, over 500 bullets per second were roaring down from the fortified guns and toward our landing craft. With sheer bravery and determination, they pushed the Nazis back and had taken over many important towns and beaches within 15 hours, after Hitler had spent four years fortifying this section of the French coast. At the US Cemetery in Normandy, there is a sculpture that represents the spirit of American youth rising from the water, and that really captures what we did on June 6, 1944. We started with a few thousand that were out-gunned and in poor fighting positions, and within days, we had opened a viable western front that was so critical to defeating Germany (only having an eastern front with Russia was not guaranteed to be taxing enough to make Nazi Germany fall--only two full-fledged fronts guaranteed US-Soviet success). Within weeks, the Allies used those beaches to bring thousands of tons of equipment and almost two million soldiers onto the Continent. Hitler had had his way with western Europe for long enough. Now, the fight for Europe was on, and on our terms. The rest, as they say, is history.

So, the story. Originally the invasion was planned for the spring of 1944, and then for earlier in June. Eisenhower finally made the call to go for June 6 because of the combination of an advantageous break in the weather and a full moon. For months, the Allies had been placing a huge volume of false chatter and intelligence into the stream to make Hitler believe that Patton would lead the invasion into Calais, a spot in northern France that was a straight shot from England. To aid that illusion, ports were filled with any old boat the Brits could find, and citizens were told to wear what looked like military uniforms. Then, vast fields were filled with wooden and blow-up dummies of planes, tanks, trucks, etc. Thus, when the Nazis flew over to take intelligence photos, it looked as if there was a giant mass of activity to confirm the theory of the impending Patton-led invasion. The Nazis feared and respected Patton after his North African success, and they thought he was coming for them in the north. They were wrong. In fact, it was not until deep into July, a full month after the Allied invasion of Normandy, that the Germans realized that D-Day was the real invasion and that there was no great invasion coming in the north.

When the clock struck midnight on June 6, over 800 allied planes were on their way from Britain to the coast of Normandy. These planes each held a "stick" of 18 paratroopers--elite, well-trained forces that would skydive in at night (each with 150 lbs of gear while the sky was lit up by anti-aircraft fire) and pave the way for the tens of thousands that would hit the beaches at dawn. Despite the fact that many of these men were dropped miles from their objectives, every single strategic objective was completed, from seizing key bridges to taking out important Nazi gun positions. The first town in France to be liberated was Sainte-Mère-Église, where an American flag was raised over the town square at 4:30 am.

At about 6:30 am, 255 Army Rangers reached the shore by boat and, despite gunfire, grenades, and cut ropes, managed to climb the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc, within artillery range of Utah Beach, and take out strategic guns that would have punished our soldiers landing at Utah. To this day, the inside of one of the bunkers at Pointe du Hoc is entirely black, charred by clearing it of the enemy using a barrage of flamethrowers. But these Rangers paid for this success with many lives--without enforcements, and holding off Nazi reinforcements for two and a half days, fewer than 100 of these heroic men were able to fight on after this offensive and the ensuing defense of the point.

Utah Beach itself was a great success, and fewer than 200 Americans died on Utah Beach. Omaha, however, was a very different story. The fortifications at Utah were not fully operational on June 6, 1944, but Omaha was fully functional. If you have ever watched the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, that opening scene is a depiction of Omaha. And the Germans were not just shooting straight out at our landing craft--they were smart--they shot the high-caliber guns across the beach such that their lines of fire from different ends of the beach would meet at a point out over the water, creating a virtual wall of bullets (over 500 per second) that Allied soldiers had to cross. Our soldiers saw their landing craft gates drop only to be greeted by a wall of high-caliber fire, mowing them down from front to back. Sometimes, only the last two men in a landing craft of 30 lived to exit the boat, and then they had to get into the water with 100 pounds of gear, make their way to the beach, and then brave the sand, which meant a half-mile run from the water to the rocks. One veteran that told his story to our guide was only one of two that made it out of his landing craft. He said the beach was not littered with bodies, but rather pieces of bodies. He was shot twice while running across the beach. When he made it to the rocks, he was receiving orders from a commanding officer while that officer was killed right in front of him. Sparing some more gruesome details, that man had nightmares about Omaha Beach for 60 years. It was a vicious, brutal, blood-soaked hell. 3,881 Americans died taking Omaha. It took over 8 hours under unrelenting Nazi fire to silence the guns on the hilltops above the shore, but by 3 pm on June 6, the Americans controlled the beach.

(Please view my Normandy album, which highlights some other amazing stories from the invasion of Normandy.)

From the five beaches and several towns taken by the Allies on D-Day, the Allies were able to push forward and liberate western Europe. The French in Normandy have never forgotten what their allies did for them on that day. To that end, Normandy is probably the only place in the world where stained-glass windows in the churches feature Mary with American paratroopers falling from the sky.

Today, the American Cemetery in Normandy sits on a hilltop overlooking Omaha Beach. The French government gave the land to the United States, so when you enter the cemetery, you are on United States soil (i.e., for memorial services, the US president gives the French president permission to land his helicopter, not vice versa). Thousands of US soldiers are buried there, and many of those soldiers died on June 6, 1944. If you are an American and you go to France to visit Paris or see other sites, I implore you to take a day or two to visit Normandy to see these places and visit the American Cemetery. Viewing the thousands of gravestones is life-changing, and when I began to walk them from the sides with the inscriptions, and I could see each of their names, their divisions, their home states, and the dates on which each of them gave their lives, I was overcome with emotion. It's not just a field of crosses and stars of David--it's a field of individual stories, stories that ended here in Normandy, on these beaches and in these fields--and sometimes even in the skies overhead. It is an incredibly moving experience, and one that speaks to the core of what we want America to be--a beacon of light to the world, upholding what is good and promotes freedom, even at the highest cost (as Churchill said of his own people, they value freedom far above their lives). It also reinforces our view of America's Greatest Generation, one that is slowly leaving this side of eternity, but one that Americans should always look to for inspiration and direction in pursuing our ideals. The bravery and sacrifices of the Allied thousands who jumped out of planes and into a firestorm in the middle of the night or stormed the beaches of Normandy at dawn on June 6, 1944 paved the way for the liberation of millions and shaped the free world that many of us know today, and for that, we should all be grateful.

- R