Normandy Cemetery

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These are graves at the Normandy American Cemetery in northwestern France, near Omaha Beach. The cemetery holds the remains of nearly ten thousand American soldiers who died in France in World War II, most of them during the Normandy Invasion.

In this very peaceful and immaculate cemetery, rows and rows of small, white marble crosses (and a few Stars of David) mark the graves of Americans who died in combat during the war. Some of them would not even be old enough to drink by today’s standards. When you look at the dates on the crosses, you realize that thousands of them never got any farther than Omaha Beach, which is right below the cemetery. An awful lot of them are marked “June 6, 1944.”

The cemetery is open every day, and there are always a handful of visitors walking about. Sometimes you see French families with toddlers strolling along the walkways among the trees and grass. There are quite a few tourists, also, some of whom are Americans looking for relatives among the graves. Apart from the occasional sounds of the children, the only noise is the rustling of the wind blowing in from the ocean, and the sound of the surf breaking on Omaha Beach below, which is off to the left and outside the frame of the photo.

Photographed on May 2, 2000.