Euro 2025 ~ Utah Beach, Sainte-Mère-Église and La Cambe German War Cemetery ...

Utah Beach …

Utah Beach, the westernmost beach of the five landing areas of the Normandy Invasion, was assaulted by elements of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division and was taken with relatively few casualties. The assault sectors at beach were designated (from west to east) Tare Green, Uncle Red, and Victor. During the predawn hours of D-Day, units of the 82nd and 101st airborne divisions were air-dropped inland from the landing beach. They suffered many casualties from drowning and enemy fire, but succeeded in their aim of isolating the seaborne invasion force from defending German units.

Located on the eastern shore at the base of the Cotentin Peninsula, Utah Beach was a late addition to the areas scheduled for invasion. The original plan for Operation Overlord did not call for a landing on the Cotentin, but General Dwight D. Eisenhower the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, added it to ensure an early capture of the port of Cherbourg at the northern tip of the peninsula.

The landing plan went wrong from the beginning, strong currents beset the landing craft, and the area was obscured by smoke from the preceding shore bombardment. The force landed 1800m (2000 yards) east of the designated landing area, in the less-defended Victor sector. The assistant division commander, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (the son of the 26th US President Theodore Roosevelt), quickly realized the error. Uttering his famous remark ~ “We’ll start the war from here” ~ he ordered the division to advance. In the 1962 movie “The Longest Day”, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. was portrayed by Henry Fonda.

Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. in Normandy

By the end of D-Day, few objectives had been seized, though the four exits from Utah Beach were held by the 101st Airborne, and a linkup with the 4th Division had been successfully achieved. The town of Sainte-Mère-Église was in American hands, but with the Germans counterattack, the control was tenuous. The 82nd Airborne had not made contact with forces from the beach, the western flank of the Normandy Invasion therefore was anything but secure. Losses had been heavy with each division having suffered some 1200 casualties.

Utah Beach 6 June 1944 ~

German POWs on Utah Beach

Sainte-Mère-Église …

This town played a significant part in the Normandy landings because of its position in the middle of the route, which the Germans would have used to counterattack the Allied landings on Utah and Omaha Beaches. In the early morning of 6 June 1944, mixed units of the U.S. 82nd Airborne and U.S. 101st Airborne Divisions occupied the town making it one of the first to be liberated during the invasion.

The airborne landings at about 1:40am, resulted in heavy casualties. Some buildings in town caught fire illuminating the sky, and making easy targets of the descending men. Some were killed by the fire, others who were hanging from their caught parachutes from trees and utility poles, became easy targets and were shot.

German POWs in the ground of Sainte-Mère-Église town church

There is a well-known incident involving paratrooper John Steele of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, whose parachute got caught on the tower roof and spire of the Sainte-Mère-Église town church. He hung there for two hours pretending to be dead until the Germans took him prisoner. He escaped four hours later and rejoined his division, when US troops of the 505th's 3rd Battalion attacked the village, capturing 30 Germans and killing another 11. He was awarded the Bronze Star for valor and the Purple Heart for being wounded in combat.

John Steele 

After the war he continued to visit the town throughout his life, and was granted an honorary citizenship of Sainte-Mère-Église. The tavern, Auberge John Steele, stands adjacent to the town square and maintains his legacy through photos, letters and articles hung on its walls.  He died of throat cancer on May 16, 1969, in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The incident was portrayed in the movie “The Longest Day” by actor Red Buttons.

Today at the same church in Sainte-Mère-Église, there an effigy of Private Steele in his Airborne uniform hanging by his parachute from the steeple. Pockmarks from gunfire are still visible in the church's stone walls. One of its stained-glass windows depicts the Virgin Mary with paratroopers falling in the foreground.

81 years after the US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions dropped into the hell and inferno that was Sainte-Mère-Église on 5/6 June 1944, I really do not know what to think about the town in 2025. Indeed, it was an important and relevant historical stop on this part of my “Euro 2025” trip, where my plans were always to visit and stand at the locations that played a significant role in Operation Overlord.

What I found in Sainte-Mère-Église to a far greater extent than any other D-Day location in Normandy, was the overwhelming commercialization of what happened in the town in June 1944. There were countless “souvenir” shops selling tacky items, which in my eyes were completely tasteless and off the scale disrespectful.

Even the cafés, of which there were many, used the images of American Airborne troops to advertise their burgers, drinks and ice cream ~ I did not like or appreciate any of that.

I suppose none of this would exist in Sainte-Mère-Église, if it were not for those in 2025 who cross the vast Atlantic Ocean, to buy the junk and devour the burgers.

 

La Cambe German War Cemetery …

Yesterday after my visit to Omaha Beach, Pointe du Hoc and The Normandy American Cemetery, I made my first ever visit to a German War Cemetery ~ La Cambe German War Cemetery. Out of respect, I did not want to include this visit in the same blog as the American Cemetery, so it is part of this one.

Maintained by the German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge), the grounds are the final resting places of 21245, the largest such site in Normandy

In the summer of 1944, more than 100000 people died during and following the Allied landings in Normandy. As the number of casualties grew on both sides, the U.S. Army’s Grave Registration Service to set up a temporary cemetery around La Cambe on 10-11 June 1944, the site was divided into two neighbouring fields, American and German. On the American side 4534 soldiers were buried (mostly casualties of the 29th Infantry Division), while on the German side 8574 soldiers were buried. The American dead were later exhumed and depending on the decision of their families, were either returned to the U.S. or interred at the Normandy American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer.

In 1954, at the beginning of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge reburial work, La Cambe War Cemetery was already one of the largest provisional WWII German military cemeteries in France, with about 8000 dead. Subsequently, the remains of 12000 German soldiers from 1400 graves, as well as another 700 bodies found at scattered war sites in Normandy, were interred at La Cambe. On 21 September 1961, the La Cambe War Cemetery was officially inaugurated.

The cemetery was designed by architect Robert Tischler. One of his central design principles is a narrow entrance through which only one person at a time can enter the site. Tischler's goal was to bring people to rest and silence when they enter the memorial. Communal graves are at the centre of the site, as a high tumulus, flanked by two statues and topped by a large dark cross in basalt lava, which marks the resting place for 207 unknown and 89 identified German soldiers, interred together in a mass grave. The tumulus is surrounded by 49 rectangular grave fields with up to 400 graves in each. Within the large grass areas, there are groups of symbolic crosses that bear no names. Each grave within the 49 fields is identified by flat stone markers.

The sign at the front of the cemetery reads in English and German ~

Until 1947, this was an American cemetery. The remains were exhumed and shipped to the United States. It has been German since 1948 and contains over 21000 graves.

‘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.

Yesterday as I was walking through La Cambe German War Cemetery, the first such site I have ever visited, I thought about a takeaway lesson that can be learned from the experience ...

The lesson that I will take with me, is that actions can have consequences. The actions that came from the ego of one man Adolf Hitler, and its consequences, led to the deaths of over 21000 of his own countrymen within this cemetery. In his war of aggression on Europe, 4.3 million Germans serving in the military were killed, along with estimates of up to 500,000 civilians who perished in the country's bombed out towns and cities. 

Actions have consequences does not only apply to Hitler, it applies to all of the 21000 who surrounded me at this eerily somber and somewhat haunting location. Whether they were drafted, or were active, eager and willing participants, they still fought in support of an evil, despotic regime. I suspect the one thing that everyone of these men, who lie in perpetuity within this cemetery, would say if they could speak now ~ is be careful how you live, because your actions have consequences.

I am glad that I stopped at  La Cambe German War Cemetery, it is part of history, it might be an ugly part of history, but all history deserves to be remembered.

After the cemetery I went over the adjoining visitor’s centre ...

I am well versed on the events of Normandy and WWII, therefore with that knowledge, I could easily see the displays within the centre struggled at times, to present a balanced view of the difficult historical events for Germany.

Like mine, many German families lost sons, husbands and fathers in both WWI and WWII, for which they would all suffer the very same pain of that loss ~ something that is not often considered.

In the visitor’s centre, I did struggle with my emotions over some of displays covering German war casualties buried at La Cambe, a couple of the photos showed them with the SS insignia on the collar of their uniforms. To balance that (I suppose), there was also an extensive display about the Massacre de l'abbaye d'Ardenne, the murder of 20 Canadian POW’s by the 12th SS Panzer Division, which I covered in an earlier blog.

I did feel a high level of empathy for those that had the task of preparing the displays and presentations within the visitor’s centre, it would not have been easy for them.

I wrote in the visitors book ...