77 years after D-Day, Allied landing beaches and memorials in France have stayed largely empty as COVID-19 caution kept away foreign visitors and surviving wartime veterans.
Britain's "overdue" D-Day memorial to war dead at Ver-sur-Mer in Normandy, FranceImage: Stephane Mahe/Pool/REUTERS
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A memorial to the 22,442 British-led fallen was unveiled Sunday at the Normandy hillside village of Ver-sur-Mer, overlooking what on D-Day in 1944 was code-named Gold Beach.
The Allied landing of 156,000 Allied troops, carried on 7,000 boats and called Operation Overlord, led to the liberation of occupied Western Europe and Nazi Germany's surrender a year later as the Soviet Red Army approached Berlin from the east.
For a second year-running, COVID-19 caution kept Normandy's World War Two beaches largely empty Sunday, with foreign visitors and wartime veterans, now in their 90s, largely absent.
Memorial 'long overdue'
In a videoed message, Britain's Prince Charles described the memorial's unveiling as "long overdue" in remembering "extraordinary selflessness and resolve."
French Defense Minister Florence Parly said France was "forever grateful."
She described June 6, 1944, as a "lightning bolt of freedom"… in the heart of the [then] mist that enveloped the Normandy Coast."
D-Day: Allies storm the Atlantic Wall
On June 6, 1944, Allied troops landed at Normandy and opened a second front against the Nazis. It was the beginning of the end of World War II - and one of the most mythically charged moments in 20th century history.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Day of reckoning
The Normandy invasion is known historically as D-Day, but it remains unclear what exactly the "D" means. Whether it's simply a signifier for "Day," or it means "Decision," one thing is for certain. It was the beginning of one of the most significant battles in military history.
Image: Imago
Operation Overlord
The five sectors of the 80-kilometer (50-mile) stretch of Normandy coast where the landings happened were all given different names: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Sword, and Juno. Apart from the US, 13 other nations were involved in the invasion. Troop contingents were provided by the Americans, British, Polish, Canadians, French, Greeks, Czechs and Australians.
Image: Imago
Commander in charge
The commander of the Allied forces in northern Europe was General Dwight Eisenhower, who would go on to become the 34th president of the United States. A few months prior to D-Day, Eisenhower had successfully led landings in Sicily and mainland Italy.
Image: Imago
Far-reaching weather report
Just before the planned start of Operation Overlord on June 5, storms broke over Normandy, forcing Allied commanders to push the invasion back a day. The largest amphibious landings in military history got underway on June 6. The weather was not ideal, but allies feared Germans would learn of their plans if the delay continued.
Image: public domain
Death commando
Around 156,000 soldiers reached land on D-Day. On five different locations on the beach, they stormed the "Atlantic Wall," where German Wehrmacht soldiers were perched in fortifications that had been built in anticipation of an assault. The allied troops were forced to run unprotected, first through water and then onto the beach, all the while under German fire.
Image: AP
Paratroopers
Before the D-Day Invasion began, paratroopers had touched ground early on June 6 in a bid to secure key positions behind the Atlantic Wall. The troopers were camouflaged (shown here); they also used war paint and Mohawks to frighten the enemy.
Image: Imago
Aerial and naval assault
At first, the beaches of Normandy were bombed from the air by the Allies. After the beach had been secured, over 1,000 warships and some 4,200 landing crafts converged on the coast. Further reinforcement was provided by thousands of planes and tanks.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
Nifty maneuver
One of the reasons why "Operation Overlord" was so successful was that the German military command simply wasn't expecting it - at least not in Normandy. The Allies duped the Nazis into thinking they would land at Calais, near the Belgian border, and at a date later than June 6.
Image: AP
Nazis on vacation
Many leading NS officers had absolutely no idea D-Day was going to happen when it did. Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, for instance, was celebrating his wife's 50th birthday in the south of Germany when the invasion started. (Pictured above: Wehrmacht divisions at Normandy in 1940)
Image: Imago
A confident Hitler
When the invasion got underway, Adolf Hitler was sleeping in Obersalzberg. His officers didn't dare wake him, and when they did (at 10 in the morning), the Nazi leader was in surprisingly good spirits. After being briefed, he is said to have exclaimed: "The news couldn't be better!" Hitler was apparently pleased that the Allies were "finally in a place where we can defeat them."
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
Almost a year of loss
Even if the Normandy landings were perhaps the decisive battle for the Allies, the final victory came at heavy price. It still took 11 months for peace to be declared in Europe, and many of the soldiers who took part in the invasion were shipped straight to the Asia Pacific shortly thereafter. The war lasted until September 2, 1945, when Japan capitulated.
Image: AP
Fallen heroes
Around 57,000 Allied soldiers lost their lives in Operation Overlord, which started on D-Day and continued until the end of August. Another 155,000 were injured and 18,000 reported missing. German losses rounded out at about 200,000. Each year on June 6, there is a ceremony of remembrance at Normandy. Heads of state and government and many veterans often make the trip to the French coast.
Image: AP
Settled dust
In 2004, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder became the first German leader to take part in the ceremonies at Normandy. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, shown embracing France's Jacques Chirac, chose his words carefully for the event: "We will never forget the victims." Schröder added: "It's not the old Germany of those dark years that I am representing today."
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
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Inscribed on 160 white stone columns, arrayed like a British flag at Ver-sur-Mer, are the names of 22,442 servicemen and women, mostly British, who fell between D-Day, June 6 and August 31, 1944.
They also include soldiers then under British command of over three dozen nationalities from across the Commonwealth and French resistance fighters.
The new memorial cost €35 million ($43 million), contributed by the British government and private donors.
Veteran David Mylchreest, 97, chatting with British ambassador Edward Lewellyn after Sunday's unveilingImage: Stephane Mahe/Pool/REUTERS
The Ver-sur-Mer site also includes a French Memorial, dedicated to some 20,000 French civilians killed across Normandy during aerial bombings and ground battles.
Previously, key sites to pay respects were for Brits a nearby cemetery in Bayeux town and the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, overlooking Omaha Beach.
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War heroes absent due to COVID
Sunday's ceremonies, limited to a few selected guests and dignitaries, amounted to a "big absence" of veterans, said WWII expert Denis van den Brink.
"They are all around 95, 100 years old, and we hope they're going to last forever, but you know...," he said, his voice trailing off.
Local Normandy residents did, however, visit the monuments over the weekend.
So too did history enthusiasts and a few visitors from neighboring European countries seen touring small roads in jeeps and military vehicles.
Driving inland from Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, as shown in a Canadian archive photoImage: Reuters/National Archives of Canada
At Omaha Beach, whose blufftop cemetery contains 9,380 graves, reenactors paid tribute at dawn Sunday, bringing flowers and American flags.
Freelance tour guide Sylvain Kast, who normally works full-time over summer guiding visitors, said he only had three bookings between June and October.
"You do this job for the love of it," said Kast, a standby history teacher, who's also worked nightshifts welding during the pandemic. "It's been tough psychologically."
Across Normandy are more than 20 military cemeteries holding the remains of Americans, British, Canadian, French, German and Polish troops who died in the 1944 battle that saw Allied troops reach Germany in the winter of early 1945.
The D-Day landings on five Normandy beaches — also code-named Utah, Juno and Sword — still ranks as one of the world's biggest ever naval operations.
'I was proud of myself': D-Day veteran tells his story
