history – Laurie Apgar Chandler

Six years ago, we arrived too late in the day to visit the American cemetery, and I cried. Today, I cried once more. Here are interred the remains of 9,387 Americans, including four women. By the end of the campaign for Normandy, the Allied dead there would number more than 50,000.

On the eve of D-Day, General Eisenhower sent to each of the soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force a letter of encouragement from which I have taken the title of this post. How difficult it must have been for him to send forth so many young men into such great danger. Eisenhower spent that last evening with the men of the 101st Airborne and stayed until the planes had all disappeared into the dark night.

Anilore Banon’s uplifting sculpture Les Braves, on Omaha Beach

This small remnant of the many tons of metal that littered the beach was padlocked in place.

Envisioning the chaos and carnage of 80 years ago amid the beauty of today.

I collected a delicate, perfect seashell (as I had at Utah Beach) to add to our jar of seaglass back home. From here, we drove to the top of the 90-foot cliffs at Pointe du Hoc, where Army Rangers once achieved the impossible, under fire.

Map of Pointe de Hoc, showing the 50-minute walk that Lance completed, in addition to navigating the seawall, beach, and later the cemetery, more than 10,000 steps for the day.

The walk toward the point weaves among countless impact craters left by Naval artillery

An Army Ranger of today pays his respects at The Dagger, a memorial gift from the French

Inside the observation bunker at the tip of Pointe du Hoc, a maze of rooms with a narrow gap toward the sea through which the Germans could shoot and keep watch

Looking down from above at Pointe du Hoc

Sergeant Walter Geldon, Company C, 2nd Ranger Battalion

The Normandy sites come alive through many personal stories, though tens of thousands will forever remain untold. Here is just one: “June 6, 1944 was Sergeant Geldon’s third wedding anniversary. He and his fellow Rangers sang songs to celebrate the occasion shortly before landing on Omaha Beach. The 23-year-old steel worker from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was cut down by enemy fire within a few minutes of coming ashore. When his widow died in 2002 at age 78, she was buried by his side.”

Temporary building and staging being installed for 80th anniversary celebrations

There are ups and downs to being here now, as June 6th fast approaches. An unbelievable number of active and retired military, as well as a stunning array of vintage Jeeps and other Army vehicles have gathered. The spirit of anticipation and brotherhood are at their highest. However, much of the American cemetery was blocked off, including the main memorial visible in the opening photo, with its soaring statue representing American youth. We never learned if there were open sections toward the back where you could walk among the graves. Thus, we were very grateful to find the Garden of the Missing open and paid our respects amid its tranquil beauty.

Inscribed around the Garden of the Missing are 1,557 names of American soldiers and sailors whose remains were lost. All the Army panels include multiple names from the 66th Infantry Division. 483 of the lost were never recovered from the English Channel when a torpedo sank their troopship *Leopoldville* on Christmas Eve 1944.

A bronze rosette indicates a soldier whose remains were later recovered. This panel also includes one of the lost from Maine, most of whom were in the U.S. Navy section.

Lance searched diligently for names of soldiers from his combat engineer company, the 307th, part of the 82nd Airborne Division. Sadly, two were lost and never recovered.

The story of the day would not be complete without mentioning our brush with the gendarmerie. At what appeared to be a random police checkpoint, Lance briefly considered making a run for it in our Range Rover (thinking of the movie The French Connection) when an officer waved him in. Better judgement prevailed, though, and after a very careful scrutiny of Lance’s driver’s license, we were free to go find lunch. We did not observe a single other vehicle get pulled in. On a lighter note, rambling the countryside has surely been a highlight, knowing that the churches, stone houses with their tile roofs and flower draped walls, even the hedgerows, must be little changed from 1944.

The restored blast furnaces of the Tannehill Ironworks rise high above Roupes Creek.

Writing a travel book can be full of surprises. When I set out, I had no inkling that I would be learning about the early iron-making industry. During the Civil War, Alabama played a key role in producing pig iron (more than all of the other Confederate states combined) and making cannons and ammunition. Bars of pig iron were sent to the Selma Arsenal, which produced half of the cannon and two-thirds of the ammunition used by the South in the final two years of fighting. This region is unique in the world for its abundance of all of the resources needed for iron production: iron ore, limestone, and either coal to make coke or forests to produce charcoal.

Hikes in the park at times follow an old stagecoach route or the Iron Road where the pig iron was transported 18 miles by eight team mule wagons to the Alabama & Tennessee Rivers Railroad.

Spotted trillium (or perhaps the look-alike Little Sweet Betsy) in a wet swampy spot near Roupes Creek. During my week at Tannehill, the woods began to green up, with flowering dogwood, redbud, and native azaleas adding touches of white, lavender, and pink.

Violets bloom in an old slave cemetery, brightening the final resting places of furnace workers and their family members, whose names are long forgotten.

Tannehill is also home to the Alabama Iron and Steel Museum, which surpassed all my expectations. For almost two hours, the story of Tannehill came to life for me. Beginning with the huge seams of brown and red iron ore found locally, to colliers camping in huts to make charcoal to large displays of 1800s household and military items made either here or at the Selma Arsenal.