As I stood on the sand at Omaha beach in France, I recalled the words of reporter Ernie Pyle, a reporter, as he described the sight of the beach just days after the initial D-Day landings there: “The wreckage was vast and startling. The awful waste and destruction of war, even aside from the loss of human life, has always been one of its outstanding features to those who are in it. Anything and everything is expendable.” These words were published on June 16, 1944, in a dispatch Pyle titled “The Horrible Waste of War.” Today, nearly 74 years after the D-day landings, there is no sign of the tanks, weapons, equipment, fortifications, personal belongings, or human bodies that scattered the beach on June 6, 1944. Now, an empty stretch of sand meets a clear ocean and open skies, with only the contemporary monuments, museums and flags on the shores left to mark the monumental events that once took place there. These later additions—the American flag side by side with the French, the statues of fallen soldiers and the poppy wreaths carefully arranged around monuments to all who fought—serve both to commemorate the past and to offer a warning for the present and the future.
The American cemetery in Normandy
During my past week in Normandy, I have been faced with near constant reminders of the extraordinary price that thousands paid in France, both the Allies on their path to ultimate victory, as well as their German opponents. This was no more apparent than when I visited three of Normandy’s major cemeteries, the American, the German, and the British. These cemeteries were very distinct, and all seemed to embody the individual cultures and collective memories of the nations they represent. The American cemetery, for instance, immediately reminded me of Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Thousands of white crosses sat atop neatly trimmed grass, aligned into careful rows. A large monument to freedom made up the base, with the American flag flying on each side and a pond resting in the middle. The grounds were impeccably maintained. Despite these distinctly American features, the sound of Omaha beach below brought home the fact that the men entombed there died in a foreign land, fighting an unpredictable battle without an assured outcome. As our class lay flags alongside the graves of the Ohio State alumni who perished in the Normandy campaign, I felt a deep connection to the men buried there, many of whom were my age when they landed on the beaches and lost their lives. However, beyond the personal connections I felt from my vantage point as an American, this cemetery was most striking because of its sheer size. The graves, extending for rows and rows in all directions, seemed to place emphasis on the scope of the American sacrifice in World War II, aligning in this way with one of the dominant American narratives of the war.
The British cemetery in Normandy
This American cemetery distinctly contrasted with the cemeteries of the British and the Germans. While the American cemetery, with its long rows of identical tombstones, gave me a sense of the extent of death during the second World War, the British cemetery brought home the individual lives of each solider who perished. At the British cemetery, the graves were highly personal. Each one included a unique inscription, many of which were personal statements of love and remembrance from the family members of the deceased. Additionally, each gravestone was situated within a bed of flowers. These features helped express Britain’s desire to commemorate the people involved in the war, the individual men who fought and lost their lives in Normandy. Meanwhile, the Germany cemetery offered insight into how the defeated are remembered. The cemetery consisted of flat gravestones that each denoted the names, birth and death dates of multiple soldiers. Groups of five stone crosses were interspersed throughout these grave markers, and in the center a grassy mound overlooked them all, bearing an inscription in German reading “God has the last word.” The simplicity of this cemetery seemed to make it all the more poignant, offering a somber reflection on the toll that war took on the enemy as well as the Allies. As I took a closer look at the some of the graves, I recalled the startling ages of the German soldiers in Normandy, many of whom were in their teens or late 30s or 40s. Many of the younger men had come from the Hitler Youth and been indoctrinated into the culture of the Third Reich, while others had deeply believed in the twisted ideology that would eventually bring about their downfall. Though certainly their beliefs and choices varied greatly, the soldiers buried in all three cemeteries prompted me to consider the overarching way in which these men had actually been alike, each of them human beings whom war destroyed.
The German cemetery in Normandy
Together, these three cemeteries seemed to speak to Pyle’s reflections on the expendable nature of war. Looking at the countless graves of named and unnamed men on both sides of the front, it was hard to avoid thinking about the enormous human waste that is so intrinsic to wars to this day. The cemeteries therefore seemed to act above all as a call for peace, bespeaking a warning against the consequence of vast military conflicts. This notion was made explicit in the visitor’s center connected to the German cemetery. In this room, an entire wall was dedicated to images from the gruesome conflicts that have occurred since World War II, interspersed with quotes that speak to the destructive nature of war and express deeply anti-war sentiments. These images included photographs from many of today’s ongoing conflicts, including the turbulent climate of the Middle East. This contemporary reflection on the cyclical nature of war and death added a new layer to the cemeteries, indicating that they serve not just to memorialize the past, but also to strive for a more positive and peaceful future. At the top of this panel of wall, a large quote from Omar Bradley read “We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than about living.” These words seemed to echo the emotions I felt as I looked out at the rows and rows of tombs and reflected on the contemporary implications of advanced warfare. War takes as its victims the victors as well as the defeated. This immense drain on human resources and lives is embodied in the cemeteries of Normandy. Their long rows of gravestones seem to denote an urgent call to learn from the mistakes of the past in the hopes of preventing future headlines that declare “the horrible waste of war.”