This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the invasion of France by Allied forces in the Second World War, one of the greatest military operations of history and the overwhelming battle of our time. Many thousands, including the Presidents of the United States and France, the Queen of England, and every veteran who can possibly make it, will gather at the beginning of June to mark that moment, the last time when living memory can effectively stir the original blood. The generals of that day have already departed, and the ordinary soldiers who fought as young men are this year likely to experience the last time they can make a proper communion with the graves and the pale ocher cliffs and the green turf of that mighty battlefield. After that, age will of necessity close this chapter of the book.
To the eye the book is still very much open. The casemates and blockhouses of Festung Europe are visible; even though half-buried in the sand or converted into summer cottages, they cannot be mistaken for anything else. Off Omaha Beach, the waves wash over the remnants of the steel sawhorses planted out in the tide to impede enemy landing craft. At St-Laurent-sur-Mer nearby, nine thousand white crosses sweep along the heights above the sea. This will be a center of some of the grandiose ceremonies, and also of smaller gatherings, those organized among individual units that came ashore on that day, such as the First Infantry Division, the Big Red One, which has its own granite monument a short way over the hill toward the shore. Down the road, back toward Bayeux, on the landward side, is a German graveyard with black and silver crosses, and there will be German veterans this year in Normandy too.
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