As we mark 79
years since the landings along Normandy beaches, I’ve been thinking about what
I learned on my visits to that area over the years.
There are 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.
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. But take a few moments this weekend to
think on those 30,000 lives cut short in Normandy nearly 80 years ago. The boys
of D-Day who put their lives on the line for their generation and those that followed.
