WASHINGTON — The following is columnist Douglas Cohn’s recounting of his visit to Omaha Beach as a teenager: In 1962, I was alone on Omaha Beach, looking up at the escarpment that U.S. soldiers were facing 18 years before. I
WASHINGTON — The following is columnist Douglas Cohn’s recounting of his visit to Omaha Beach as a teenager:
In 1962, I was alone on Omaha Beach, looking up at the escarpment that U.S. soldiers were facing 18 years before. I was 16, and I had broken away from a student group to make the train trip from Paris to Normandy. It was against the rules. I could have been sent home, but the trip was necessary. It was more necessary than seeing Notre Dame or the Eiffel Tower.
The 1944 Allied invasion of Normandy was a monumental event, and to walk the ground where it had so recently — in historical terms — occurred was an opportunity not to be missed.
This was where American idealism was at its peak, a place where mostly young men willingly charged into hell for the benefit of mankind. Two U.S. divisions landed at Omaha Beach, the 1st (a regular Army unit known as the Big Red One) and the 29th (a National Guard unit from Virginia and Maryland known as the Blue-Gray Division). To the west, the U.S. 4th Division, a unit we have come to know for its service in Iraq, went in at Utah Beach. Meanwhile, the 82nd Airborne Division and 101st Airborne Division had dropped behind the German lines the night before.
But at Omaha Beach, things went awry. The Germans were in greater strength than expected. Casualties mounted, and Gen. Omar Bradley came close to pulling the men back to the ships. Such an action would have created a huge gap between the Americans on Utah Beach and the British and Canadian forces on Gold, Juno and Sword Beaches to the east. The invasion would have failed.
The men on Omaha hung on and finally broke through, but at a terrible price. That is why the little town of Bedford, Va., suffered the highest per-capita U.S. casualties in the war. Of the 35 Bedford men in Company A of the 116th Infantry Regiment of the 29th Infantry Division, 19 were killed during the first 15 minutes of the action and two more died later in the day. This was the National Guard’s finest hour. It also points out the drawback of National Guard service. The troops usually come from the same area.
A similar tragedy happened during the first Gulf War when a scud missile devastated a Pennsylvania guard unit billeted in Saudi Arabia.
But at Omaha, it mattered not at all who came from where. Idealism was rampant. Sacrifice was common.
And when I stood on that beach and imagined the bullets and shells that turned oceanside beauty into seaside hell, I could more than see the soldiers, I could almost touch them. And as I clawed my way up the escarpment, the plunging fire from above was real though had happened years before.
Here, then was a cause. There was no question about fighting. Hitler had to be defeated. No argument. It was common cause. It was shared misery. It was on goal. It was individual terror. And looking back upon that experience, there is even a sense of envy for the clarity of the times.
Political Correspondent: Eleanor Clift
Copyright 2004 Anderson and Cohn
Distributed by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
