France
The D-Day Battlefields
OMAHA Beach Memorial Museum
The official Visitor / Interpretive Centre at OMAHA Beach is attached to the American Cemetery at St Laurent and is not a museum like the American facility at UTAH. It was inaugurated on 6 June 2007, and its design is understandably dignified and appropriately low-key. The site is covered on a separate page: Click here to view.
The OMAHA Beach Memorial Museum is located just a few hundred metres from the beach at St Laurent-Sur-Mer and is the nearest museum to the shoreline at OMAHA. It has been renovated and enlarged since opening and the exhibition space now extends to 1,200 square metres.
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A Sherman tank `guards` the car park, along with several artillery pieces. The museum`s landing craft, which was previously on external display has been moved inside to form the centrepiece of a diorama. Housed within the museum is an extensive collection of vehicles, weapons, uniforms, personal objects, photographs and documents, Allied and German, which combine to tell the story of the Landings and the Battle for `Bloody OMAHA`. A documentary film featuring veterans` testimonies, guides visitors through the events on 6 June at Omaha and Pointe du Hoc. |
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More information can be found on the Museum`s own website: www.musee-memorial-omaha.com.
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The stretch of beach here is so beautiful and peaceful that it`s hard to imagine the carnage that occurred when the troops came ashore on 6 June 1944.
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An American flamethrower found during excavations in Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, April 2006, and a bow door of a Higgins Boat (LCVP), blasted apart by a high-explosive shell on OMAHA Beach D-Day, which was found during excavations in March 2003.
This view looks north from the museum car park towards the beach which is only a few minutes walk away.
Please bear in mind that all images on this website are Copyright. They are not free to use and have been embedded with a digital watermark. Any historic photographs from the Imperial War Museum and other organisations` collections have been used courtesy of a `Share & Reuse` policy and are also subject to copyright restrictions.
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St Laurent-Sur-Mer is where the Les Braves sculpture now stands. The 9 metre-high stainless steel memorial, seen on the far right in the following shot, was created by Anilore Ban and represents ‘The Rise of Freedom’ flanked by ‘The Wings of Hope’. The seafront here has been dramatically altered since the Second World War and the high seawall against which numerous attacking troops sought refuge on 6 June 1944 has long-since been replaced by a far lower barrier.
More information on fight for OMAHA and additional images can be found on the OMAHA Beach main page.
