CWT Journal – August 30, 2026 / Omaha Beach, Normandy

Today we confronted D-Day not as a chapter in a history book, but on the ground where it happened.

We began at the Normandy American Cemetery, an immaculate and profoundly somber expanse overlooking Omaha Beach. Beneath its seemingly endless rows of white marble crosses and Stars of David lie 9,389 American servicemembers. Nearby, the Walls of the Missing bear another 1,557 names—men who vanished without an identifiable resting place. When modern investigation, archaeology, and DNA analysis finally identify one of them, a small bronze rosette is placed beside his name: a quiet declaration that, decades later, he has been found.

From there we descended to Omaha Beach, whose tranquil shoreline today belies the carnage of June 6, 1944. We found a monument particularly meaningful to Dad: a plaque honoring the National Guard citizen-soldiers who fought in both World Wars. Its inscription notes that of the 48,900 American battle deaths in World War I, 18,238 were Guardsmen—an extraordinary reminder that ordinary Americans repeatedly left civilian lives to fight wars an ocean away.

Our final stop was Pointe du Hoc, perhaps the most visceral battlefield we visited. The terrain remains grotesquely pockmarked by enormous Allied bomb and naval-shell craters, many still several meters deep more than 80 years later. The promontory was strategically crucial because German 155-mm artillery positioned there could threaten both Omaha and Utah Beaches.

On D-Day, roughly 225 men of Lt. Col. James Rudder's 2nd Ranger Battalion landed beneath its nearly 100-foot cliffs and climbed upward under enemy fire using ropes and ladders. When they reached the summit, they discovered that the Germans had moved the big guns inland. Ranger patrols eventually found them concealed in a hedgerow and destroyed them before they could be brought effectively against the invasion fleet.

Then they held on. Surrounded and repeatedly counterattacked, the Rangers fought for two days before relief finally reached them. Of the original assault force, only about 90 were still able to bear arms.

Yesterday we tried to teach the girls what D-Day meant. Today we stood among the graves, walked Omaha's sand, peered into bomb craters, and looked down the cliffs those Rangers somehow climbed.

History became geography—and sacrifice became something we could finally see.