1 DAY AFTER D-DAY: THE DETRITUS OF WAR ON OMAHA BEACH

From Military Times

(Ten months before his death on Ie Shima, on the night of June 5-6, 1944, war correspondent Ernie Pyle crossed the English Channel amidst the vast Allied Normandy Invasion fleet, arriving off Omaha Beach on D-Day. Due to the intense struggle to capture the beachhead, Pyle and his fellow war correspondents had to wait offshore until permitted to land on Omaha on June 7, 1944 — D-Day plus 1. His account here of what he saw there is taken from his 1944 book, “Brave Men.”

While you might think that Pyle’s late arrival on Omaha Beach was a drawback, it resulted in one of the most powerful passages describing World War II. Pyle tells the story of the thunderous clash of nations that occurred on D-Day by revealing objects that he saw on the beach — enemy obstacles and fortifications, equipment and soldiers’ personal belongings.

Even after all these years, Pyle’s writing allows us to hear the sheer silence of Omaha Beach. We can feel the magnitude of devastation — and witness the quiet heartbreak of many thousands of people embodied in the personal effects of men whose lives were extinguished as they came ashore.

As those who fought in World War II pass on, let us take his words to heart. We can reflect on what Allied soldiers fought and died for as we envision the grim reality he describes below.)

By Ernie Pyle

"But there was another and more human litter. It extended in a thin little line, just like a high-water mark, for miles along the beach. This was the strewn personal gear, gear that would never be needed again by those who fought and died to give us our entrance into Europe.

There in a jumbled row for mile on mile were soldiers’ packs. There were socks and shoe polish, sewing kits, diaries, Bibles, hand grenades. There were the latest letters from home, with the address on each one neatly razored out — one of the security precautions enforced before the boys embarked.

There were toothbrushes and razors, and snapshots of families back home staring up at you from the sand. There were pocketbooks, metal mirrors, extra trousers, and bloody, abandoned shoes. … There were torn pistol belts and canvas water buckets, first-aid kits, and jumbled heaps of life belts.

I picked up a pocket Bible with a soldier’s name in it, and put it in my jacket. I carried it half a mile or so and then put it back down on the beach. I don’t know why I picked it up, or why I put it down again.

Soldiers carry strange things ashore with them. … The most ironic piece of equipment marking our beach — this beach first of despair, then of victory — was a tennis racket that some soldier had brought along. It lay lonesomely on the sand, clamped in a press, not a string broken.

Two of the most dominant items in the beach refuse were cigarettes and writing paper. Each soldier was issued a carton of cigarettes just before he started.

That day those cartons by the thousand, water-soaked and spilled out, marked the line of our first savage blow.