Not sure there is anything else that can be said that sums up this portion of the trip better. Over 9,000 men and women who lost their lives in the early days of fighting are buried here.
Overlooking Omaha Beach this cemetery is the last resting place for the American liberators many that died during D-Day or in the days that followed. The crosses and stars hold the names of those lost and some simply say “Here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God.”
To these we owe the high resolve that the cause for they died shall live.
We saw the final resting place of Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. who lead the charge at Utah Beach and his brother Quentin Roosevelt the only person buried here who did not die during WWII. (He died on Bastille Day (July 14, 1918) over France in aerial combat.)
Also on the tour was the grave of Mary H. Bankston – PFC in the postal division the only all-black Women’s Army Corp unit to be deployed to Europe in WW2.
This was a somber experience that really hit home when our guide reminded us that if not for these liberators he might be speaking Russian and not French.
