Today marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the start of the Allied invasion of Europe to drive the Germans out of France and to liberate Europe from Nazi rule. We recently had the privilege – a word carefully chosen – to visit the Normandy beaches and towns and to view firsthand what those American, British and Canadian forces faced and overcame on D-Day.
In late April we spent three days in and around Bayeux, a small Norman city about 6 miles from the D-Day beaches. Bayeux dates from William the Conqueror in the 11th century and was the first French city liberated after D-Day.
I am a Vietnam-era Navy veteran who never left American soil, but it does not require military experience to appreciate the extraordinary courage and resolve exhibited on D-Day by the invading armies. The Germans had occupied France for most of World War II, and they heavily fortified the Normandy coastline along the English Channel, where an invasion was anticipated and the invasion force in fact landed.
Bunkers, artillery batteries and lookout posts in strategic locations, protected by concrete 2 meters thick, can be explored today. Allied bomb craters, never filled in, attest to the largely unsuccessful efforts to “soften” the German positions in preparation for the D-Day landings.
Pointe du Hoc is a particularly stunning spot to visit. Heavily fortified with German artillery and at the top of a hundred foot cliff, it provides a commanding view of Utah Beach to the west and Omaha Beach to the east, the two beaches where American forces landed on D-Day.
Stand in front of the German observation post and look straight down to the tiny beach where in the pre-dawn darkness of D-Day, 225 Army Rangers launched grappling hooks trailing heavy ropes and scaled the cliff against stiff German resistance. When the battle was over the Rangers suffered 130 casualties but they captured the strategic Pointe du Hoc.
Arrowmanches today is a lovely resort town with a broad beach on the English Channel, much as it probably was before D-Day. Since the Germans controlled the Norman port cities of Cherbourg to the west and le Havre to the east, the Allies decided to create their own harbor, dubbed “Port Winston” by the troops, at Arromanches.
Immediately after the beaches were secured on D-Day the Allied engineers commenced transforming Arromanches into a port city, accomplished in less than two weeks.
They sank old ships and barge-like concrete boxes called “Phoenixes,” towed across the Channel from England, to create a 4-mile-long breakwater.
Within six days of operation, 50,000 vehicles, 300,000 soldiers and tons of supplies were offloaded at Port Winston to support the Allied march across France and into Germany.
Today a single Phoenix is stranded on the beach, a massive hulk the size of a football field and a ghostly reminder of the war effort. The outline of the breakwater can still be seen a mile offshore, the sole visible vestiges of Port Winston.
Allied forces landed at five different beaches on D-Day, all of which we visited. The British took Gold Beach at Arromanches as well as Sword Beach to the east. Between Gold and Sword is Juno Beach, taken by Canadian forces, while Americans landed to the west at lightly defended Utah Beach and at Omaha Beach, where the fiercest fighting took place.
Standing on the bluff overlooking Omaha Beach, it is not hard to imagine the scene on D-Day. The bluff was heavily fortified by the Germans, and the broad shallow beach bristled with steel obstacles, a few of which remain today.
Because of security concerns we were unable to access the beach itself, but the view from the bluff was more than sufficient to illuminate the extreme difficulty of the American objective to debark from amphibious landing craft, cross the wide open beach under withering German gunfire and assault the bluff.
Nevertheless, by the end of D-Day Omaha Beach was secured, albeit with the loss of thousands of American lives.
One of our missions in Normandy was to visit the graves of two soldiers from our hometown of Tonawanda, N.Y., both of whom died in the invasion.
Robert and Preston Niland had two other brothers and all four fought in the war. Just weeks before D-Day Edward Niland was declared missing in action when his plane was shot down over Burma in the Pacific. The fourth brother, Fritz Niland, parachuted into Normandy behind enemy lines on D-Day.
When Fritz was reunited with his unit he learned that his two brothers had been killed on June 6 and 7. When the Allied Command learned that three of the Niland brothers were confirmed dead or missing in action, they tracked down Fritz and (over his objection) reassigned him to duty in New York so that at least one of the Niland brothers would survive the war.
Sound familiar? The Niland family, with some artistic license taken, was the basis for the movie Saving Private Ryan. As a footnote, it turned out that Edward was taken prisoner in Burma and liberated from a Japanese POW camp a year later. According to Edward’s son, Mother Niland set a place at the dinner table for Edward every evening until he finally came home from the war in mid-1945.
The military cemetery located on that bluff overlooking Omaha Beach is sacred ground bearing the remains of more than 9,000 American service members, most of whom either died or participated in the Normandy invasion. France has granted perpetual use of the property to the United States, and it is operated and maintained by an agency of the U.S. government.
Visitors center staff will upon request locate a grave and escort you to the site. Almost all are marked with identical pure white marble crosses – there are also about 150 Stars of David interspersed among the crosses. Each marker is engraved with the soldier’s name, rank, military unit, home state and date of death.
The graves of brothers Preston and Robert Niland are side by side. Our escort told us that they had been visited recently, and explained that damp brown sand from Omaha Beach had been rubbed on the markers in order to highlight the engraving on the gleaming white marble.
The ironic symbolism was not lost on us. Sand from the very beach where many died and many more shed their blood now serves to illuminate the basic facts of their often too short lives, given to help restore freedom in a foreign land.
You can read books and see movies about World War II and D-Day, and you might even have the good fortune to encounter one of a rapidly dwindling corps of veterans who were there in 1944. However, in my opinion there is no adequate substitute for actually visiting Normandy, seeing the broad beaches, the fortified high ground, the bomb craters, the logistical artifacts, the relics of battle, in order to appreciate fully the significance of D-Day.
The power of the experience is amplified by visiting the vast military cemetery at Omaha Beach and finding a familiar name, maybe someone from your hometown or a friend of your parents or grandparents. Witness the enormity of their mission, consider their courage and appreciate the privilege of being free today to honor their sacrifice.
(Michael Gfroerer lives in Concord.)