The Beach

The Allied landing never seemed real. It was a movie, a history lesson — not real life. That is, until I stood on Omaha beach at the age of twenty-one. I’d little interest in leaving Paris that collegiate summer, when carefree days in art museums gave way to nights amid international students who smoked Moroccan hash and played guitars. My friends and I, Americans of the luckiest generation, conceived of war as particularly gripping broadcasts we’d seen on CNN at age 10 or 11, when Operation Desert Storm felt distant, morally unambiguous, and consequence free. We joined a student trip to Northern France mostly for the free day at the beach.

Our perspective shifted as we stepped off the bus at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial. The grounds are a serene expanse of 9,387 graves. The monuments are austere, a simple white cross marking most plots, a Star of David marking others. “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few,” I thought, and I felt gratitude toward the men in those graves, whose makers put their ages near my own, though I could hardly fathom their battlefield deeds.

It felt unreal. Suddenly I wanted it to feel real.

The cemetery sits atop a bluff that looks out at the English Channel. A path winds gently down to Omaha Beach, a windswept expanse as tranquil and calming as any sandy seascape, its sweep strangely reminiscent of the Southern California beaches where I grew up surfing and playing touch football. Clouds of white and gray scrolled overhead. The sporadic sunlight let the sea appear alive with spangled spots one moment, but left it dull gray the next.

I stowed my shoes and socks by a piece of driftwood, rolled up my pant legs, waded knee deep and turned only as the remnants of the breakers lapped against my thighs. The bluff rose up before me as I’d planned: On June 6, 1944 men my age stood here, I thought, among mines laid so they’d be blown to bits.

They trudged to the shore under machine gun fire, rushing across that impossibly wide beach, as Germans fired down on them from atop that bluff.

Novels depict young men yearning for the glory of war, but I stood on my nation’s most glorious battlefield unsure I’d have mustered the physical courage to step off those transports. I imagined myself braving enemy fire to drag a wounded friend away from German strafing. As easily, I imagined lurking like a coward behind the transport, pretending to be wounded until others rushed forward to take the brunt of the offensive.

On the path back to the cemetery, quirks of landscape gripped my imagination. A large rock came alive as a place where men had taken cover. A narrow, brush-covered ravine seemed an ideal place for sniping at unsuspecting Germans.

Could I shoot?