D-Day Countdown: 60 years later

  The preparations already are well underway on a scale reminiscent of the landings themselves. On the fringes of the white-cross-studded American cemetery high on a bluff overlooking once blood-stained “Omaha” beach, the main U.S. spearhead at Coleville-sur-Mer, equipment trucks criss-cross unceasingly, carpenters already are hammering and pounding, and gardeners are trimming and cutting with infinite care. Their job: to prepare the grounds, the press facilities and the visitor stands where many of the ever-dwindling corps of still-living American veterans of the 1944 Normandy D-day landings are expected to return for the ceremonies on June 6th that will mark the 60th anniversary of their heroic exploit. Much the same scenario already is being played out along and near the other key Normandy landing beaches, American but also British and Canadian, that have become virtual pilgrimage sites over the decades and will figure heavily in the bevy of commemorative ceremonies. Outstanding among them: –Utah beach and the Pointe du Hoc, where the vestiges of artillery Nazi pill boxes still dot the shell-battered landscape surrounding the supposedly unassailable cliff wall that American rangers successfully scaled to capture the salient in the dawn hours of landing day. –To the East, Gold and Juno beaches where, respectively, British and Canadian troops stormed the shore with the same bravery and against the same entrenched Nazi defenses that their American allies encountered in their sectors. –Further inland, St. Mere l’Eglise, taken by American parachutists in a battle on the eve of the landings that left the unforgettable image of one of their number swinging from the steeple of the local church because his harnesses had hooked there by accident during his descent. Some 15 leaders of the allied nations whose forces in one form or another took part in the Normandy offensive, including units from Australia, Belgium, former Czechoslovakia, Greece, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Poland, are expected to be on hand to mark the D-Day anniversary. The main ceremonies will spread out over at least three days from the 5th to the 7th of June, and will be centered this year at the D-Day museum at Arromanches-les-Bains, site of the artificial port that allowed the majority of the 365,000 allied troops who eventually took part in the Normandy campaign to come ashore. “Operation Overlord,” as the D-Day offensive was called, put 156,000 allied soldiers on the Normandy shore on D-Day itself. Some 10,000 of them perished, were wounded or missing in action by the end of the day. They were backed up by nearly 12,000 aircraft and almost 7,000 naval warships and assorted landing and support vessels operating under the code name “Operation Neptune.” Although there are still months to go, hotel rooms in the entire Normandy coastal region already are solidly booked up. Book stores and newspaper stands are awash in new books and publications devoted to the landings, and various commemorative events, including public meetings allowing French residents of the area to relate their wartime experiences, have been underway for many weeks. Some 200,000 French civilians also perished during the bombing and battles of the Normandy campaign. In the offing as well are similar commemorations being planned for August 15th where, 60 years ago, American and other allied troops created a second front on France’s southern coast by landing on the beaches of Provence, and, finally, in Paris to mark the liberation of the French capital on August 25, 1944. For the first time this year, in a deliberately and heavily symbolic gesture, the Normandy ceremonies will include the presence of a German representative, none other than German Chancellor Helmut Schröder, invited by French President Jacques Chirac as part of the French leaders vigorous campaign to strengthen Franco-German ties across the board. There has been some criticism of Chirac’s invitation because the Allied forces on D-Day were, after all, fighting the German army. But there also is a logic to it: an estimated 200,000 German troops also were killed or wounded in the months-long battle for Normandy. A number of German military cemeteries in the region mark their sacrifice and François Mitterrand, Chirac’s predecessor as President, had made a similar let-bygones-be- bygones gesture in 1984 by inviting then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to a joint commemorative ceremony in the cemetery at Verdun in Eastern France. An estimated 362,000 French and 332,000 German forces were killed or wounded there in the bloodiest encounter of World War I. Chirac and Schröder, in the evening on June 6, will preside at a separate Franco-German ceremony at The Memorial, the peace museum in nearby Caen. The museum is devoted principally, although not exclusively, to commemoration of the battle for Normandy. Despite still lingering foreign policy differences with France and Germany regarding the Iraq war, President George W. Bush is expected to be on hand to represent the United States for the 60th anniversary as Bill Clinton did for the 50th. An accredited member of the foreign press corps, Minnesota native Robert (Bud) Korengold first came to Europe in 1955 after serving in the Korean war. A Chevalier in the order of Tastevin in Burgundy, the recipient of a Presidential Award for Sustained Superior Accomplishment in the conduct of foreign policy, and a member of the order of Palmes Academiques and the order of Arts et Lettres, he lives in Normandy doing a bit of gardening and a bit of writing and a lot of amused reflection about life in France and with the French.