Around the early part of June, my mind turns to one of the more momentous events of the 20th Century: the invasion of Normandy beaches. D-Day. It was an extraordinary endeavor of infinite complexity, both militarily and logistically. And before the day of computers and networking.
Take that, AI.
In terms of human costs, about 4400 Allied soldiers died on
6 June 1944; German deaths are estimated between 4000 and 9000. You can get a
glimpse of that at the three military cemeteries within a few kilometers of one
another near Omaha Beach: Colleville-sur-mer,
American; Bayeux,
British; and La
Cambe, German. I’ve walked them all, several times.
The American cemetery is situated on the bluff above Omaha
Beach. You can stand at the edge and look down on the scene of the
slaughter. And wonder how the hell they ever made it up to where you are.
The graves are marked with white marble crosses, with the occasional Star of
David interspersed. It’s quiet, usually, except for the wind. More than 9300
men lie there—not all fallen at Normandy, but congregated there in the
fellowship of death.
The British cemetery, run by the Commonwealth War Graves
Commission, is in the heart of Bayeux, the town they took on 7 June. The
headstones are like those at all CWGC graveyards—identically-sized slabs of
white marble engraved with the soldier’s name, regiment and date of
death (if known; otherwise a cross and “known but to God”
inscribed); a centrally-located Cross of Sacrifice (tall marble cross
with a sword inset), and a Stone of Remembrance, inscribed “Their
Name Liveth Forevermore”. More than 4000 Brits, Commonwealth, Poles,
French and others lie there.
La Cambe is outside Bayeux; you get to it down a quiet road
that seems to have no other purpose but to lead you to the dead. The cemetery
is maintained by the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, the
German counterpart to the CWGC. It’s not as large space-wise as the two Allied
graveyards. That’s because when you look at the inscriptions on the black metal
markers set into the earth, you see there are often two to five men buried in a
single spot. Plus, there are the nearly 300 known and unknown under
the central mound. More than 21,000 men lie there.
(I need to digitize the photos I took of Bayeux and La
Cambe; apologies.)
The thing that struck me almost from the first in these
three cemeteries was the ages on the markers—you almost never see anyone who’d
reached 24. Most were in the 19-22-year age range. When you’d expect them to be
in college, or working their first jobs.
I’ve often wondered what the world lost through those early
deaths. What music never was composed? What scientific breakthroughs never
made? What civic gains, feats of sportsmanship, family enrichment just
disappeared from the future in June 1944?
That, of course, is in addition to the
anguish and sorrow that engulfed their families.
Parents, siblings, wives, children—bereft and left alone to sort
out a world gone mad. No one to repair the gutter or fix the bike; to guide
a grandchild’s hands tying a bow knot; to comfort a friend; to surprise a lover
with flowers.
It had to be done—it always seems to need doing. Especially
since we see the resurgence of fascism and totalitarianism all around us. But
take a few moments this week to think on those lives cut short in Normandy 75
years ago. The boys of D-Day who put their lives on the line for their
generation and those that followed.
And so, for today’s earworm we’re having something that
soldiers on both sides would have been listening to.
The song we know as “Lili Marlene” originated as a poem in
the First World War (the one that was supposed to end all wars), written by a
Hamburg schoolteacher conscripted into the German army, Hans Leip. It was set
to music by Norbert Schultze in 1938 and recorded by a German singer, Lale
Andersen, in 1939.
The gist of the piece is a lonely soldier on watch, missing
his girlfriend. Pretty universal—I expect there was some Greek song around 520
BCE that expresses the same thoughts.
The song pretty much went nowhere until in 1941 German
troops occupied Belgrade, in Yugoslavia, and needed recordings to broadcast
over Radio Belgrade. Andersen’s “Lili Marlene” was one of the few discs the
station had, so it got played a lot. And soldiers loved it.
But Reich propaganda minister Josef Goebbels loathed it. It
wasn’t sufficiently martial—no proper German soldiers had time to miss their
girlfriends or be anything but aggressively victorious. (He'd get along so well with Kegsbreath.) Besides, Andersen hung
around with Jewish artists, which was not the done thing.
Still—soldiers within range of Radio Belgrade demanded more
“Lili Marlene”. It expanded coverage to North Africa, where the British Eighth
Army took it up. By the time Allied forces landed on the Normandy beaches in
1944, it was on everyone’s playlist, and a standard for Marlene Dietrich’s USO
performances. Vera Lynn also covered it.
(It's kind of interesting that a song with a male soldier's
narrative seems only to have been covered by female singers.)
Here’s Dietrich singing it.
©2026 Bas Bleu
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