Omaha Beach

Except for Tom Hanks’s movie, “Saving Private Ryan”, few Americans remember the invasion of France during World War II. But for those of us who were alive in June 1944, the Normandy landings are fixed in our memories as one of the most important events in the 20th Century. Our troops were carried across the English channel by the over 1,000 ships, the greatest armada ever assembled.

I was 15 years old. I woke up that morning hearing the news on the radio in my parents’ bedroom. I remember almost trembling with excitement as I ran downstairs to listen to further news on the kitchen radio as our family ate breakfast. I could not imagine that 43 years later I would marry a man who was on one of those ships, waiting to wade ashore, carrying his gun over his head, four days later.

John said it was an amazing sight, looking out from the deck of his troop carrier on the sea surrounded by big gray ships – troop carriers, cargo ships, destroyers, cruisers – an ocean filled with ships as far as he could see in all directions.

Landings took place on five beaches. The most famous, and the bloodiest, was Omaha. The first day, June 6, many men died under German machine guns as they fought their way to the top of the cliffs behind the beach. John came ashore on Omaha beach on the fourth day, after the fighting had moved inland.

Today, on the bluff above the beach, is the American cemetery. No one can stand there without tears, looking at the neatly trimmed green grass and over 3,000 white marble crosses. John was with me – or, more correctly, I was with John – at the cemetery in 1988.

This was the first time John had been to Normandy since 1944. We climbed over the low wall with a sign warning against wild boars. (Are there really ferocious beasts ready to attack, or did the authorities simply want to discourage hordes of tourists from disturbing the sandy cliffs?) We scrambled down the cliff side, now covered with low, thorny shrubs. It is quite steep. I could not imagine how any of our young men managed to climb to the top with Germans killing their buddies all around them.

John walked along the beach, where the waves lapped quietly against the sands. I took his picture. He said it looked exactly as it did 44 years before.

John was a young 2nd lieutenant in a supply company. A few days after he landed, a ship dumped supplies on the beach in mountain-high heaps. The major in charge gave John the job of getting all this stuff organized. To help him, he was assigned a group of captured German soldiers. Most of them were Poles, who had been given a choice of Hitler’s army or concentration camp. They eagerly surrendered to the Americans. John’s parents were from Poland; he spoke fluent Polish.

John put the prisoners to work sorting out the various cartons: boxes of beans, canned peaches, corned beef hash, etc. They took heavy cartons off the piles and set them up in orderly groups, ten boxes wide, five boxes high, and a football field in length. As one of the prisoners lifted another carton onto the top, he said to John, “Why did the Germans think they could win this war? They never could have won. You Americans have too much stuff!”