NORMANDY, France — The monuments endure in every small town. In Normandy, you’re never too far from a reminder of the price of freedom.
There are the big, majestic monuments, like the “Spirit of American Youth Rising From the Waves,” a sculpture that is the centerpiece of the colonnade at the American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach. Before the lithe, soaring figure cast in bronze are more than 9,300 American graves.
Nearly 4,500 miles from home, this might be the most American place in the world away from our shores.
Not far away, down the bluff from which murderous fire felled many of those young Americans on June 6, 1944, is another ambitious memorial, “Les Braves,” a modernistic metal sculpture meant to evoke fraternity, hope and courage in the face of barbarity. It is set into the sand, close to the high-water mark, where the Dog Red sector of Omaha Beach meets what was the Easy Green sector. It is a tranquil spot today, but like the buttons and buckles that still turn up with the help of metal detectors and shovels, memories of the horrors that happened here are never far from the surface. You know you’re standing in what was a kill zone when you look past the little souvenir shops to the perfect firing positions on the slopes above.
Elsewhere, many memorials are much more modest, like the 2-foot stone marker along a coastal road at the site of the first burials of Americans behind Omaha Beach at Saint Laurent-sur-Mer.
It’s easy to miss these markers, erected to honor the sacrifices of individual units at nondescript crossroads or pretty river banks. In Vernon, a quaint town on the Seine about 100 miles and thousands of combat casualties east of these beaches, a plaque commemorates the first crossing of the river by a British regiment. On a recent weekend morning, military re-enactors wearing British, American and French military uniforms held a ceremony to commemorate the town’s liberation, two months after the invasion. Their colorful ceremony was held on a lawn alongside the small memorial. Tourists earlier walked right past it without noticing.
Some of the monuments are hideous.
In hundreds of places, concrete bunkers and pillboxes, part of the Germans’ ill-fated Atlantic Wall, still rise out of the pastures. At a place called Longues-ser-Mer, the Germans built four emplacements with walls that were 6 feet thick and guns that could hurl a shell 20 miles. They are a popular tourist attraction 75 years later, the gray concrete slabs, gouged in spots by Allied bombs, proving more durable than the army that built them. The barrels of the 150 mm guns, silenced after only one day of action, still point at varying angles toward the shore.
Similarly ugly reminders are everywhere. In Saint Germain-en-Laye, just west of Paris, the French have never gotten around to destroying any of the 22 bunkers built as part of the command center for the Germans’ western front. A guide says the cost has always been considered prohibitive. And besides, the monstrosities are a reminder to visitors of the importance of remaining vigilant and guarding against the sort of evil forces that gripped the world 75 years ago. And so they remain a grotesque part of the landscape.
Back at the American Cemetery, which is part of the American Battle Monuments Commission and so is maintained by the U.S. government, a Portuguese guide has arranged for a wreath-laying ceremony honoring two American World War II veterans who are part of a mostly American tour group. A French docent cues the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and then “Taps.” Judging by the other wreaths nearby, this might be the third or four such ceremony today, and it’s only shortly after noon. But the French woman’s words are earnest, and in her message is the raison d’etre for all the monuments and the reminders of what happened here.
“Welcome back,” she said. “And thank you.”
David Hill is editor of the Daily Reporter. He and his wife, Paula, recently traveled to France. You can write to him about this or any other story at [email protected].
