On Omaha Beach Today, Wheres the Comradeship?
COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France, June 2 — The 9,387 marble headstones, most in the form of a cross, some in the form of a Star of David, provide a luminous tribute to American wartime sacrifice in France. The valor commemorated here is as clear and unsullied as the white of the stone. Perhaps such moral clarity at a time of a contested war is particularly alluring. It may be one reason why, on the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings Sunday, the American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach will draw 17 world leaders, including President Bush. Iraq, if nothing else, prompts a broad desire to feel united about something. It is difficult to feel otherwise about the frontal allied attack on entrenched German positions atop the steep bluffs that rise above Omaha; hard, even today, not to shudder inwardly at the vision of young men, many of them no more than 20, staggering out of the water into the Nazi shooting gallery on a mission to free Europe.
