The rows of white crosses and the occasional Star of David carved into the green cliffs of the American military cemetery in Normandy owe part of its power to its simplicity and uniformity. The headstones of the 9,388 Americans who died in the Allied invasion of Normandy, which marks 80 years this week, bear their names, ranks, divisions and dates of death.
Details such as place of origin, age, occupation, cause of death are unknown – not because they are unimportant, but because all those buried there shared a common, important cause: the fight to liberate Europe and defeat Nazism. Their families chose to remain here, and now rest together, on the beaches of Normandy, where they fought.
A nearby cemetery holds the remains of thousands of British, Canadian and Commonwealth soldiers who died in Normandy that summer.
I feel a personal debt to these soldiers, sailors and airmen. As a child, my late mother-in-law, Marie Amélie Richard, lived with her family in the basement of a farmhouse in Normandy for four years while a German staff officer occupied their home. Many of the young men buried on the cliffs in the cemetery a few miles away are only a few years older than my mother-in-law and her teenage brothers and sisters. These soldiers gave their lives for strangers in a foreign land, far from home.
“American citizen soldiers knew the difference between good and evil,” writes historian Stephen Ambrose, “and they did not want to live in a world dominated by evil. So they fought, and they won. For that we, the living and those yet to be born, should all be deeply grateful.”
My family and I spend a few weeks in Normandy every summer. We’ll be there in a few days. At night, we’ll walk the beach that 80 years ago was the scene of blood and fire, fear, courage and death. Now it’s deserted and majestic. Our dogs run in the sand, splashing in the waves. Our daughters run barefoot, picking up shells.
I feel, and in a way we all do, that my family was saved by the soldiers who fell there and are buried just a few miles away.
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