I have always dreamed of standing on Omaha Beach on a rainy and cold morning at low tide, standing by the edge of the water and looking inward. Until recently, I never had. No matter how many times I had visited France before, I always needed to be somewhere else, or was too busy to really imagine. I could never devote my mind to the water and the beach and the memories that, for me, were history but for those who took part in the D-Day landing were the pivot of their lives. Imagining a battle long gone is an act of will and imperfect in the best of circumstances, in spite of the fact that I have read voraciously on this battle. It is an act of will to force yourself to believe, to know, that something extraordinary happened here. The morning I visited Omaha Beach, a man was racing a horse drawing a sulky up and down on the sand, as if to challenge my intentions.
The invasion took place at dawn on June 6, 1944. A North Atlantic storm had hammered the beaches the day before June 6 and would resume a few days later. On the day the forces came ashore, there was a break in the wind and rain. But it was still cold, wet and terrifying. The invasion took place at low tide. The Germans had placed obstacles that, at high tide, would be submerged and tear out the bottoms of landing craft. They were revealed at low tide. But that meant that the men who landed would have go across a vast, flat expanse of sand to a sea wall that is no longer there. I tried to imagine what it was like to force yourself to walk across the beach with heavy packs and machine gun fire raking the beach. I think I would have frozen. Death was random that morning, and no amount of skill or courage would prevent it. A man placed his soul in the hands of his God and moved forward. On a peaceful day when the only movement was a horse, sulky and rider, it still took me about five minutes to go from the water's edge to the place where the sea wall had been in June 1944. I tried to feel what the soldiers must have felt. In some battles, there is a degree of wit and skill that gives you the illusion that you might have control over your fate. There could be no such illusion at Omaha Beach. Some lived, some died, and virtue had little to do with it.
The Significance of Omaha Beach
I focus on Omaha Beach not because the British at beaches codenamed Sword and Gold, the Canadians at Juno or the Americans at Utah were less brave than the men at Omaha, but because the defeat of Nazi Germany was sealed that day on Omaha Beach. The plan of the invasion was to land the British and Canadian forces to the east, as far as the town of Ouistreham. The Americans landed at Utah, at the base of the Cotentin Peninsula, and at Omaha. It was a 50-mile front. There was no chance of creating a continuous front that day, but the expectation was that the landing forces on the five beaches, plus the airborne troops behind enemy lines, would link up and create a foothold that could withstand German counterattacks.
An enormous number of things went wrong that day. Landing craft could not make it into the beach, and men drowned when they left the craft under fire and could not swim with their equipment. The landing craft came in at the wrong place. The naval gunfire and air forces could not destroy the German positions. The airborne assault was chaotic as troops were scattered all over the region. The amphibious tanks had trouble being amphibious.
I reflect that had the modern media been there, they would have declared the landing a failure and demanded that Eisenhower be investigated. Even after the landings proved a success, I can imagine op-ed pieces and television commentators, as well as senators and congressmen, asking how Eisenhower could not know that naval gunfire could not clear the defenses. All the planning in the world is of little value when chance, the enemy and miscalculation intervene. Those who have not fought wars demand precision from commanders that they themselves are incapable of in their own, much simpler lives. One hundred and sixty thousand troops landed within 24 hours on a 50-mile front. That it was chaos was inevitable. That it achieved the mission changed history.
It was not clear that Omaha could be held. The German troops deemed inferior by Allied intelligence fought with courage and tenacity. I loathe Nazi Germany with a personal hatred. I am at a loss as to how to evaluate a man who fights with gallantry for a cause I loathe. I am not speaking of the cause, but of the man. At Omaha they fought so well that it seemed that most of the men crossing the vast beach would die and those who made it to the sea wall would lose the spirit for the next step.
If the Omaha Beach invasion had failed, a gap would have been left between the British and Canadians to the east and Utah on the peninsula. Bernard Law Montgomery, commanding the British troops, had said he would take Caen the first day. He failed to do so. That meant that there was no anchor for the British position, and that German armor could have contained and reduced them, attacking them from Omaha Beach and all other directions. The artificial harbors -- the Mulberries, as they were codenamed -- were supposed to be at the town of Arromanches and at Omaha. Without Omaha, there would have been only one Mulberry for landing the follow-on equipment and supplies.
If Omaha had failed, I think Eisenhower would have had to withdraw. If that had happened -- and perhaps he could have drawn some solution from the looming defeat -- then the invasion would have failed and no other invasion would have been possible until nearly a year later. A landing could not take place in autumn or winter. That meant the Soviets would have faced the Germans, now secure in the west, for another year. They had already lost perhaps 20 million and no matter how great their rage, they would be facing perhaps years of slaughter. The farther west they went, the shorter the German line, as the European Peninsula narrows. The Soviet Union could have been forced to make a separate peace as Lenin had in March 1918. How much more could the Soviets take, regardless of the blood debt they owed Germany, is a question worth asking -- the concentration of still-capable German forces on a shorter and shorter front might have proved unbearable. It is one thing to ask for sacrifice with an end in sight. But how much can you ask from your people when all there is for them is war and death, and there is no end?
