50 years on, Normandy awaits another invasion
By Paul Taylor
BAYEUX, France (Reuter): Fifty years after allied troops stormed ashore to liberate France, and eventually Europe, from Nazi German occupation, the beaches and towns of Normandy are preparing for another invasion.
A throng of heads of state, up to 30,000 veterans, thousands of tourists and nearly 3,000 journalists are expected at the sites of the D-Day landings -- the greatest amphibious operation in military history -- around the June 6 anniversary.
A flotilla of hundreds of boats, led by Britain's Queen Elizabeth in the royal yacht Britannia, will set sail for France on June 5 amid celebrations in both countries.
The commemoration, which began as a diplomatic minefield for the French government, is a godsend for the hoteliers and shopkeepers of this rolling, green orchard of France.
"It will be a great party and it may pull this region out of recession faster than the rest of France," said hotelkeeper Jeanine Brard of Grandcamp-Maizy.
This year, she has turned away German veterans who return for a reunion every year to make way for the U.S. Rangers who scaled and captured the Pointe du Hoc in one of the great feats of D-Day heroism.
There is not a hotel room to be had from Cherbourg to Rouen for the first week of June, tourism officials say.
With almost two months still to go, shop windows are festooned with bunting and offer souvenirs ranging from D-Day watches and picture books to wooden cases marked "munitions" stuffed with gourmet foods and specially decorated commemorative bottles of wine and calvados, the local apple brandy.
The magnificent Memorial Museum for Peace in Caen, where the D-Day ceremonies will climax with a spectacular sound-and-light show on the night of June 6, is already flooded with visitors.
An ideal introduction to the origins and history of World War II, it stresses the errors of the Western democracies that contributed to Adolf Hitler's rise to power as much as the prowess and heroism of the allied forces that liberated France.
Busloads of visitors are thronging into the D-Day Museum in Arromanches, where British engineers built a giant floating harbor that made it possible to resupply and reinforce the allied beachhead on the German-occupied continent.
Virtually every town and village around the five beaches where the allies landed has its own museum and war memorials.
British, American and Canadian veterans are already returning to the beaches and cliffs where they fought decisive battles for Europe's freedom.
They can be seen clambering over the remains of concrete blockhouses of the German Atlantic Wall defenses or in silent meditation at comrades' graves in war cemeteries.
But the majority of visitors are younger people from the generations born after World War II, on whom the Normandy landings exert an enduring fascination.
This year's celebrations will probably be the last to be attended by large numbers of combat veterans. When the 60th anniversary dawns in 2004, the survivors will be in their eighties or older.
"On this occasion, the flame of Peace and Liberty will be passed on from the wartime generations to the younger generations," said Christine Dejou of the Caen Memorial, which has received two million visitors since it opened in 1988.
France has invited the heads of state and government of the United States, Britain, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was not invited. Weeks of diplomatic embarrassment, including the cancellation of a joint visit by the two countries' defense ministers to war graves in Normandy, were ended by the announcement that President Francois Mitterrand will visit Germany on June 8 for a symbolic ceremony.
Mitterrand, 77, will be the only leader at the Normandy fete who took part in World War II. He escaped from a prisoner of war camp in Germany and was active in the French Resistance.
U.S. President Bill Clinton was not even born on D-Day. He is the first American president of the post-war generation.
The central commemoration will be at Omaha Beach, where American forces, swept from their landing route by currents, then pinned down by German fire on a steep sand and shingle beach, suffered the heaviest casualties of D-Day.
Nearby, some 220 Rangers scaled the sheer cliffs of the Pointe du Hoc on rope ladders to knock out big German guns that commanded the beach and could have decimated the landing forces.
Atop a concrete German bunker overlooking Omaha Beach, a plain concrete and marble monument honors men of the U.S. 5th Engineer Special Brigade who fell there and were awarded the French Croix de Guerre posthumously in 1945.
Nearby, a plain wooden cross, crowned by a wilting wreath, says in German "in memory of the comrades who fell here on June 6, 1944, 3rd Company, Regiment 726, Infantry Division 716". Higher up on the hillside, a polished granite obelisk pays tribute to the men of the 1st U.S. Infantry Division "killed in this period when fighting for the liberty of the world".
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