What happened that day on Omaha Beach

[Litt'le Lee]

http://www.usmilitariaforum.com/foru...5&#entry341945

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[partestres]

Back in 1988 while working in France, a co-worker and I took a day off and visited the Normandy beaches on the anniversary of the landings. We arrived at Omaha Beach about 6:30 in the morning on a day with similar weather to 1944. Walking on the beach at the tide line the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I was overcome with a feeling that's still hard to describe. As my friend and I walked along in silence I started crying, I turned my head away so my friend wouldn't notice but soon realized he was crying too. We visited the other beaches, gravesites, Pointe-du-Hoc and spent the day reverently traversing the coast. In the early evening before heading back to Paris, we bought a bottle of Calvados in a little shop and on a seawall overlooking the Channel, had a toast to those who didn't make it as well as those who survived to fight on. I've been blessed to have had the opportunity to travel to many places over the years, but the excursion to Normandy is one of my most memorable. It was somewhat emotionally draining, but left me both sad for what our boys endured in the initial landings as well as proud of what my father's generation accomplished.

[kragluver]

I would like to visit Normandy some day. Your description of tears on the beach match my emotions when I first visited "The Wall" in DC. By the time I reached the apex of the memorial where the wall is at its highest point, tears were streaming down my face. I was embarrassed to be seen by passers-by until I realized that many of them were tearful as well.

[Mk VII]

The accuracy of Marshall's account has been called into question. The notebook which he supposedly wrote it up from in 1960 has not been traced among the Marshall papers.

"I am the only survivor off that landing craft and I have never, never told anybody that Captain Zappacosta pulled his gun on that coxswain and told him to take that boat in. It did not happen."

--Bob Sales, B Company, 116th Regiment, 29th Division

Stephen Ambrose and the British coxswains

[PrivatePaula]

@ Louis of PA: Images of that cemetary touch me everytime I see them...
That wide range of white on the green lawn crosses is deeply touching to me.

I went to the Normandy a few times. It's a really strange atmosphere there I think. The entire shore is full of old vaults.
some are still intact others are heavily damaged because the french tried to demolish them. There are very many museums in old vaults over there.

It was horrible to imagine that there were many men fighting for their lifes on the beaching you walk along 65 years later.