Omaha Beach

The ramp drops in “Saving Private Ryan,” and all Hell breaks loose as soldiers storm ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day. Sixty-five years later, the deadly obstacles are gone; bunkers are concrete hulks; and there’s a parking lot at the base of the cliff. But standing at the water’s edge, your feet wetted by the English Channel at low tide, looking inland, you see the same beach – flat, open and endless – that the GIs saw. Only they had 75 pounds of gear on their backs, were seasick and soaked by the crossing, and were setting off to free a continent they had never seen before.

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Driving past sleepy French villages complete with dilapidated farm houses and the occasional café-tabac, one finds it curious they’re rapidly approaching one of the most significant strips of sand in world history. Less than 200 miles west of Paris where the sprawling green land meets the English Channel, the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial sits atop a cliff Nazi soldiers once occupied. It’s an odd experience to feel a renewed sense of pride in one’s country while standing on the soil of another, yet completely satisfying and humbling.

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“We’ll go to the cemetery and then straight to the beach,” said my French friend. She saw the look on my face. “Or is that strange for you?” Well, yeah; I’d seen Saving Private Ryan. But it was a beautiful day and you can’t count on weather in Normandy. It's still a beach, so we went swimming under the tree line where 9,387 boys who wanted to free France are lying. There’s a vacation colony here now, too—a carnival/cemetery. The Caen Memorial (27 miles away) takes on the difficult task of explaining the invasion. It's not that we're bored of speeches and solemn faces and dwelling on painful, frightened death... No one forgets here. We were just remembering why to live. Even in August, the water here is cold.

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