The “Invasion of Normandy” had the title “Operation Overlord” and took place at the northern part of the Normandy area. The key countries England and the USA went as the allied forces to do the landing operation early morning on June 6th, 1944.
The operation was planned on June 5th,but because of a typhoon and due to bad weather, the operation was postponed to the next day. On June 6 at 6:30 a.m., at low tide the American forces landed at Omaha Beach and Utah Beach, at 7:25 a.m. when it was flow tide on Sword Beach, Juno Beach and Gold Beach, the English forces landed and the Invasion had begun. On this day about 156,000 soldiers landed in Normandy through the ocean and the air, and there were about 10,000 losses.
From among the soldiers who arrived at low tide, the infantry had to walk about 450m to the beach, and they were totally exposed to the German troops, in which were located on a high cliff at the shore. Because of this weakness in attack, especially at the Invasion of the Normandy, the US troops lost a lot of their forces before they even arrived at the shore.
On this day, about 9,000 of the German troops died and got captive due to bombardment and huge military strength differences.
Vierville-sur-Mer(Omaha Beach), Now
I arrived at Omaha Beach on June 4th, 2011. It was around 3 p.m. on Saturday. When I have arrived, there was a commemorative event taking place at Vierville-sur-Mer which is located at the west of Omaha Beach. Outside they were displaying weapons and supplies of that time and vestiges of the Mulbery harbor. On the streets old-timers were driving which looked like they were from that century also. On the beach there were several people in old costumes which played the situation of what happened there before. I am looking forward to the places. I still plan on going and hope that there might be also commemorative events taking place like this one.
On June 6th, 2011 at 8 a.m. I started the photo shooting. At Omaha Beach I could take a picture of the same day and time like I planned on doing. In other words 67 years ago on that day at that time, the US troops were landing at Omaha Beach. It was raining a bit but the weather was not as bad as it was on that day 67 years ago. It was the time of war, but it was a Monday so there were only a very few people outside.