Behind the Photo: Omaha Beach

John H. Matthews, 2009, digital

Before you even get to the beach or see the sand there is the cemetery. It is larger than you imagined in your planning for the trip. Rows of white crosses with the names of the dead engraved on them along with their rank. Visiting Omaha Beach is unlike any other beach day.

The first full view of the beach comes from a lookout spot with one of the typical horizontal wooden signs showing all the significant points you can see. But you don’t want to stand and read that. You only want to look. To see the beach and the surf slapping against the sand. When your feet first touch sand your instinct is not to throw off your shoes and run to the water’s edge.

The weight of this location is too huge. It is too known. It is hallowed ground, a term too often used yet no other can describe it.

A man on a cart being pulled by a horse goes by. Someone else is doing some form of sand wind surfing that I’m sure has a name. Something with wind or sand or para in it.

There are no secrets to what happened on this beach. It is well known and well documented and has been portrayed on film many times. It was a loss of human life like no other all in the effort to stop a war, to free France from the stranglehold of Hitler and the Nazis. The story doesn’t end on D-Day. It continues on through France with small towns and large cities with rebels fighting in the darkness to the Nazis committing horrible atrocities in what they know are their final moments.