One can only imagine what it must have been like to land at Normandy, on Omaha Beach on August 22, even though almost three months had passed since D-Day--emptied, ruined armaments lying around like junked cars, wooden crosses marking innumerable makeshift graves, but also recently constructed buildings built to back the forces already moving into rural France. Must have been unimaginable. Those who came ashore long after the fighting, some say, paid what they with saw stirring reverence by way of their shocked silence.
It's impossible to know whether Chaplain Van wrote what he did about coming ashore months, even years after August 22, or whether we're reading what he put down in his diary that day or night. Regardless, it's clear that for him, like thousands of others, walking in the sand of Omaha Beach was stunning.
August 22:
From the ship we went into large barges which could hold about 300 soldiers. The barges brought us to a make-shift dock and we marched up the steep sand dunes on Omaha beach. On the top of the beach were pill boxes, concrete structures from which the enemy rained bullets upon the invading forces, while the soldiers were wading through shoulder deep water, trying to get to the shore. To the left I saw a large cemetery with thousands of crosses, the graves of soldiers involved in the invasion.
At 7:00 p.m. we marched to Catentan and St. Lo [a distance of 25 to 30 miles, depending on the route]. On the way we saw huge supply dumps and destruction everywhere. I spoke with several soldiers who were involved in the invasion and had been wounded. They were shipped to hospitals in England were now returning to their units. One soldier said that his helmet had been blown off his head, and when he picked it up, a bullet was still stuck in it. We arrived at a replacement center in St Lo. Everything is black-out and there were no camp fires. I slept in a large tent with 20 chaplains.
One can only imagine his prayers, well, their prayers that night.
It rained during the night. Our bed rolls were wet. So we just lay in a circle and went to sleep. My new address is 19th Replacement Depot, APO 176% Postmaster, New York.
Six days Chaplain Van waits for his new assignment. The Allies are making good progress through the French countryside," he says, and on the 23rd, he says Paris surrendered. For the record, the Chaplain says "I attended two services and played the field organ."
Just a word or two about what the Chaplain couldn't help but see.
The Battle at St. Lo is easily overshadowed by the invasion itself, but the hand-to-hand fighting that went on in and around St. Lo would have seemed catastrophic if it weren't for what had come just ten days or so before on the beaches.
St. Lo was an absolutely vital crossroads for troop movement and the establishment of a supply network. Securing the town and its environs cost Allied forces thousands and laid waste to little country town. So badly was St. Lo decimated that it was nick-named "the city of ruin" after a horrific ten-day battle. Everything was destroyed before the place could shelter the mass of incoming troops and their supplies.
The paths to St. Lo from the beaches were marked by what must have seemed like an endless sequence of "hedges," tall embankments, like walls used in farming the region. You can see those walls in the photo above. You have to see them to understand the immense price the Allies paid to overtake the neighborhood--11,000 casualties, 3000 deaths between the hedgerows and the streets of St. Lo.
This video is eight minutes long. Its origin is the National Archives. There is no sound. Pictures of "the city of ruin" start about six minutes or so into the eight-minute video.
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