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The Veteran's Beach
[FE] I stood in the sand and turned 180-degrees to my left, pulling my gaze from the English Channel to the distant flag fluttering in the breeze 30 meters above the heights at Omaha Beach in Normandy.I’ve read books and watched documentaries about the tremendous challenges and literal uphill battles that the Allies faced on June 6, 1944, but it was an entirely different thing altogether to stand in that spot and look up at those formidable heights. I had just made my way down from the Normandy American Cemetery, where I followed a well-marked trail past the monuments to the Big Red One, the 31st Canadian Minesweeping Flotilla, and the 5th Engineer Special Brigade, as well as the remains of Widerstandsnest 62, or if you speak Freedom and not Kraut, Resistance Nest 62. As I stood there in 2019, marveling at the seeming impossibility of the task presented to the soldiers 75 years before, I whispered to myself, "I can’t even imagine how these guys did it." "I used to wonder, too," chimed in my friend, whom I didn’t know overheard me. I was there as his guest, and Mark was still decompressing from running all of the security logistics for the American Battle Monuments Commission’s 75th anniversary events. Posted by: Besoeker 2024-06-08 |
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