Normandy & Brittany - Discover France: Experience the Best of France - page 248

some 20km away, including Gold Beach (to the east) and Omaha Beach (to the
west). Over six decades later the mammoth artillery pieces are still in their colossal
concrete emplacements - the only in-situ large-calibre weapons in Normandy.
Omaha Beach
The most brutal fighting on D-Day took place on the 7km stretch of coastline around
Vierville-sur-Mer, St-Laurent-sur-Mer and Colleville-sur-Mer, 15km northwest of
Bayeux, known as 'Bloody Omaha' to US veterans. Sixty years on, little evidence of
the carnage unleashed here on 6 June 1944 remains except for concrete German
bunkers, though at very low tide you can see a few remnants of the Mulberry Har-
bour.
On a bluff above the beach the huge Normandy American Cemetery & Me-
morial (Cimetière Militaire Américain; 02 31 51 62 00; www.abmc.gov ; Colleville-
sur-Mer; 9am-5pm) , 17km northwest of Bayeux, is the largest American
cemetery in Europe. Featured in the opening scenes of Steven Spielberg's Saving
Private Ryan, it contains the graves of 9387 American soldiers, including 41 pairs of
brothers, and a memorial to 1557 others whose remains were never found.
Opened in 2007, the visitor center , mostly underground so as not to detract
from the site, has an excellent free multimedia presentation on the D-Day landings,
told in part through the stories of individuals.