2002 Letter from NORMANDY and OMAHA BEACH:

After spending the night in Hermanville, we drove along the coast road from Oistraham to Omaha Beach, and Pointe de Hoc on the western end. We had a book about the invasion, and Adelle read aloud as we passed each town and each memorial. Seeing the terrain while hearing what had happened on it added substantially to understanding and also affected our emotions. We found that the British beaches were flat quite a ways inland and the German forces could not defend them the way they were able to defend Omaha because of the high cliffs there overlooking the beaches.

Arromanche was an exception because the German forces destroyed many homes to build fortifications there. But it was to no avail because a British commando force took the town from the land side. In the water, we saw the remains of the American-built artificial harbor that had been towed across the channel to that site . Most of the concrete floats that were hitched together to make the piers were destroyed shortly afterwards in a storm.

It was so cold, windy and generally nasty that we only stayed a short while. We drove through all the areas where the British and the Canadian troops landed, stopping the car only to see a couple of memorials. Then we reached the American sector at Omaha Beach.

We viewed part of the battle site from the American Cemetery where the major monument and graveyard are situated. They are high off the beach and one can see up and down the beach for a long distance from the edge of the cliff, just as the dug-in German troops could on that day. Now the graveyard contains 9,387 graves of the men and women who died in the battle to take the area, all together, row on row, marked mostly by white stone crosses for Christian soldiers but a number of stars for Jews as well.

Ron was standing near the monument at about the center of the neat rows, videotaping and talking to the camera about all this when he suddenly started to weep and then sob so uncontrollably that he had to stop taping-- 57 years after the fact. That is how the site can affect you. Just seeing the graves and knowing what they went through that day is an emotional experience. Both of us had a very strong response to the area.

We then visited Pointe de Hoc, where Army Rangers scaled the cliff in order to find the artillery guns that were thought to be there. The guns had been moved before the invasion. The Rangers found them and destroyed them. The terrain is heavily cratered probably from the bombing which preceded the invasion.