Omaha Beach, Normandy

5 min readSep 18, 2021

First impression? It was a beautiful beach. The French certainly thought so this warm Saturday. Cottages and small restaurants lined Boulevard de Cauvigny along the shore as families walked the golden sand. Children flew kites near the sea wall in the gentle breeze. Despite its heavy history, Omaha Beach today is still a beach.

In the early morning of June 6, 1944, the view was much different for the first wave of American GIs. Seasick from a three-hour journey in landing craft tossed on the rough seas, the men initially couldn’t see the beach. As the low smoke lifted, it became apparent that errant Allied air and naval bombing had left German defenses completely intact.

The landings were timed for low tide so that underwater obstacles and mines would be revealed. As infantry disembarked from floundering landing craft, they often found themselves on sandbars 50 to 100 yards out. To reach the beach they had to wade through water sometimes neck deep, and they still had 200 yards or more to go to reach the minimal safety of the sea wall.

“The Germans under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had built formidable defenses to protect this enclosed battlefield. The waters and beach were heavily mined, and there were 13 strongpoints called Widerstandsnester (resistance nests). Numerous other fighting positions dotted the area, supported by an extensive trench system.

The defending forces consisted of three battalions of the veteran 352nd Infantry Division. Their weapons were fixed to cover the beach with grazing enfilade fire as well as plunging fire from the cliffs. Omaha was a killing zone.”

Many of the original German bunkers were still in place. You could inspect them closely and see for your own eyes their field of fire. I’d read that some German machine guns were capable of firing 1,200 bullets a minute. Officers and medics were targeted.

This bunker, Widerstandsnest 72, fired on the Dog Green sector of Omaha Beach. Today, a memorial to the U.S. National Guard is mounted on its top.

“One of the American units at the forefront of the invasion was a National Guard infantry unit based out of the small town of Bedford, Virginia: Company A of the 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Division.

When the company assaulted Omaha Beach that morning, there were 35 soldiers from the town assigned to the unit. By the end of the day, 19 of the Guard soldiers would be dead with four more dying before the end of the campaign.

On that day, the town of Bedford, located just below the Blue Ridge Mountains, suffered the greatest proportion of losses of any town in the United States.” That’s why the U.S. Congress warranted the nation’s D-Day Memorial would be located in Bedford.

I hiked up a trail along the far-west side of the beach in Charlie sector to see the view from Widerstandsnest 73.

It was situated to provide enfilading fire on the infantry coming from the water across the wide expanse of sand to the sea wall. From this bunker, you could see down virtually the entire length of Omaha Beach.

Remember, at the time of this photo, we still had three hours until low tide. The width of sand would be more than double. And the landing craft were even further out in shallow water. Unbelievable.

Despite signs, memorials and flags at every turn, the most striking thing to me about Omaha Beach was the contrast between its calm setting today and the chaos of 1944.

After our visit to the Normandy American Cemetery that overlooked Omaha Beach yesterday, we decided to drive to the German cemetery at La Cambe. It was the largest German war cemetery in Normandy and contained the remains of more than 21,000 German military personnel.

A sign outside the cemetery: “With its melancholy rigour, it is a graveyard for soldiers not all of whom had chosen either the cause or the fight. They too have found rest in our soil of France.”