Prochaine Arret: Omaha Beach

A bit of history to start us off will not hurt I guess. On June 6th, 1944, the Allied forces lauched a seaborne/airborne attack on German lines in Normandy. Omaha was a code word for one of the beaches. The other beach where American forces landed was Utah beach. The Canadian landing spot was Juno Beach. And the British landings were at Gold Beach and Star Beach. The attack caught the Germans by surprise; however, they had enough forces deployed in the area that were able to inflict heavy casualties on the forces landing on the open sands of Normandy's coastline.

There was no tour provided at this time of year which was fine by me as it probably would have cost us too. We decided to walk the beach for a while. It was just us and hundreds of birds busy in their own chores for the day. the whole beach is a preserved area and looked quite solemn in its emptiness on a rare sunny day in Normandy.

Behind us lay the hills that dot this landscape, we could see small structure that were obviously bunkers where the German guns had lay in waiting, only yo break their silence on that June morning as the first waves of soldiers landed onto the beach. I couldn't help thinking back to Saving Private Ryan. That opening scene was always exhilarating in its action and speed, but now I was faced with the reality of it. These kids landed on this beach with little or no chance of leaving it alive. Each wave approached only to be mown down by artillery fire- all they could hope their own deaths would acheive was the painstakingly slow erosion of German strength in the region. It was hard to imagine walking off your boat and making your way to the beach with the sun in your eyes, bullets whizzing by you, bodies crying out for medics that too were yelling for help. And all you were supposed to do was keep advancing closer and closer to the deqdly guns. If the machine guns didn't kill you, then the mortars would maim. We both walked away from the beach with a million things on our mind, trying to place ourselves into the minds of these soldiers nay, these kids that had been told they would be liberators of France.