La Cambe
By Connor Jones, February 2, 2022
The landings at D-Day provided a costly and bitter victory for the Allied forces pushing to recapture France during World War II. Many memorials and gravesites are set aside for the American, Australian, British, and Canadian casualties accrued during the fighting. However, fewer than ten miles west of Omaha beach, another graveyard was constructed, this one more somber than any Allied cemetery. Over four square miles of land have been set aside for German casualties of war, making it the largest German cemetery in Normandy.
La Cambe, named after the village that houses the graves, is situated inside a grove of trees, which, adding to the single elevated mound at the end, presents a somber and piercing image, more so than any Allied graveyard ever could display. Shadows splay in every corner, covering dark headstones and passersby. Each grave marker is either level with the ground or lies under a Spanish gray cross, and with over 20,000 bodies buried, the lines never seem to end.
The memorial acts as a reminder of the costliness of war, the heaviness in the air asking what could have happened to these individuals had they lived in a more peaceful time. Yet bitterness is not the only emotion experienced at the graves of fallen Germans. The plaque at the entrance of La Cambe declares:
“The German Cemetery at La Cambe: In the Same Soil of France
Until 1947, this was an American cemetery. The remains were exhumed and shipped to the United States. It has been German since 1948, and contains over 21,000 graves. With its melancholy rigour, it is a graveyard for soldiers not all of whom had chosen either the cause or the fight. They too have found rest in our soil of France.”
It is a sign of great forgiveness and compassion to permit one’s oppressors to be buried in the land of those they oppressed, let alone acknowledge the position that those soldiers were in and choices that they had to make. This cemetery, subdued and substantial, serves as a reminder and as a warning: to be kind to both your friends and your enemies. Any who visit this monument in La Cambe will be unable to miss that message.