I visited the Normandy American Cemetery in 2018. A fellow veteran and I stood a short distance away on Omaha Beach at sunrise, 6 June. One year before the big 75th anniversary celebration. The locals told us the cold, rainy weather was just as it had been in 1944 when the allied troops came ashore. We toasted the fallen with a bit of Johnny Walker Blue while our driver took our photo. Then we scooped up some sand to take home.
The Normandy American Cemetery is the final resting place for 9389 American dead. It is located only a few hundred yards from Omaha Beach where many of them died. All the bodies are from WWII, except one. That one is the body of Lt. Quentin Roosevelt, an American pursuit pilot shot down by the Germans over France on 14 July, 1918. The German Air Force buried Roosevelt with military honors at the site where his plane crashed. After WWII, his body was disinterred and moved to Normandy to rest next to the body of his brother, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr, who came ashore at Utah Beach on D-Day and a few months later died of a heart attack in France. Forty Four other sets of brothers are buried at the cemetery.
The Normandy American Cemetery is meticulously maintained. It is in a beautiful setting. A lush green field surrounded by a pine forest. Some gravestones bear a cross. Some bear a Star of David. Some bear no name. The day I was there, the French Navy was conducting a ceremony honoring the American dead who gave their lives that France would be liberated. There is a German cemetery nearby. Thousands of men from both armies who never came home.
There are 25 American military cemeteries in foreign countries. More than 130,000 Americans are buried there. The option to be buried overseas ended with the Korean War.
At a conference in England, the Bishop of Canterbury, insinuated that the U.S. was “empire building” in the Mideast wars. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, replied “all we’ve ever asked is enough room to bury our dead”.
Once many years ago, a group of retired American school teachers arrived in France for a tour. At the customs desk, one of the teachers began looking through his pockets for his passport. The customs agent asked if the American had ever been to France before. “Yes”, replied the teacher. “Then you should know enough to have your passport ready” admonished the agent. The teacher replied that the last time he was in France he did not have to show it. The agent replied, “impossible, Americans always have to show their passports upon arrival in France”. The teacher looked at the agent and said “ the last time I was in France, I was coming ashore at Normandy on D-Day to liberate this country and there was no Frenchman there to show it to”.
At a Naval conference in Europe later that year, a French Admiral asked why there was a rule requiring that the conference was always to be conducted in English. An American Admiral replied, “because the Brits, Canadians, Aussies and Americans arranged it so you would not have to speak German”.
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