Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial

Vising the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial was pretty important to my family. My dad had always wanted to visit Omaha beach and the memorial and cemetery. We are a military family. My dad was in the army and quite a few of my family has served in the military, so it was very important to us to visit the cemetery. And we visited on June 7, 2015. Which is exactly 71 years and 1 day since D-Day. 

We woke up early and took the train to Caen, France, then we picked up our rental car and drove out to Colleville-sur-Mer, France, where the cemetery was located. The weather was pretty nice, blue skies and it was warm. We enjoyed the scenery. Rolling green hills with little villages and farms along the way. 

We arrived at the Memorial and headed into the visitor center/museum. We spent quite a bit of time there, reading all of the information.

 Medal of Honor.

 The image on the right tells the story of the Niland brothers, who inspired the movie Saving Private Ryan.

 Omaha beach.

 After the seeing the visitor center, we headed out to the cemetery.

 Two of the brother who inspired the movie Saving Private Ryan.

9,387 graves. 

Inside the chapel.

I was glad we came. I think everyone had tears in their eyes while walking around. It's pretty hard not to. I was quite surprised at how many French people there were at the cemetery. The French are extremely thankful for what the Allied forces did 71 years ago. I saw more American flags being flown in the towns surrounding the cemetery than I do in my own town here in the US. 

The French have not forgotten and neither should we.