Don Brierre remembers every minute of that long day in 1944 when the Allies landed on the Normandy coast in the greatest invasion ever launched.
“It was terrifying,” recalled Brierre, then a second lieutenant in the 101st Airborne Division. “I was holding on to my courage.” And hold on he did, winning a battlefield promotion from division commander Gen. Maxwell Taylor, with whom he parachuted into France in the wee hours of D-Day, June 6, 1944.
Now an attorney in New Orleans, Brierre is rapt with praise for the city’s newest attraction, the National D-Day Museum. “It’s the best I’ve ever seen, really superior.”
That opinion seems to be shared by many visitors touring the $25 million museum since it opened on June 6, the D-Day anniversary. “We’ve been sold out every day,” said C.J. Roberts, the museum’s chief administrative officer.
D-Day brings instant images of American soldiers slogging through the surf on the Normandy beaches, braving the withering fire of Germans manning the coastal defenses. Those scenes are faithfully recorded here, but there is much more to the museum than the climactic invasion.
To set the stage, the museum story starts in the late 1930s, delineating the growing might of Germany and the territorial ambitions of Adolf Hitler. As visitors move from one exhibit to another, they clearly sense the impending nightmare that is descending upon Europe. Film clips show Hitler’s goosestepping troops, Neville Chamberlain’s “peace in our time” attempt at appeasement, Japan’s aggressions into Manchuria and China, the poorly staffed and equipped American military.
Next comes America’s mobilization and entry into the war. First, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s aid to beleaguered Britain, Charles Lindbergh’s cry for neutrality and America’s first peacetime draft. Then, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, America’s mindset shifts totally to the war effort. Exhibits show young men training for combat, scrap metal drives, women working in factories, stacks of shells and truck tires for the military, ration books and air raid wardens for civilians. Wartime posters cover a wall: “Buy War Bonds,” “Save Your Cans,” “Loose Lips Sinks Ships.”
But the highlights of the museum are those sections dealing with the preparation for the Normandy invasion and the actual air and sea assault, code-named Operation Overlord.
To give some idea of the formidable defenses that faced the Allied invasion force, the museum has re-created a German concrete observation and command post on the Normandy coast. Through its viewing slots the Germans had a panoramic view of the coast line and could direct fire onto the beach sections where Allied troops were landing.
Weapons used by each side are showcased in another display. A large wall display of the air and sea armada brings home the enormity of the invasion.
Most telling of the displays, however, are the personal accounts that accompany the exhibits. These are eyewitness recollections, both printed and oral. Some are quotations accompanying the graphic combat photographs, others are oral reminiscences one can listen to in nine small anterooms in the display areas.
Time after time, I saw visitors transfixed before decades-old black-and-white films and photos, their eyes glistening as soldiers told of the fear they felt as they emerged from their landing craft and waded ashore, saw their comrades blown out of the water and witnessed the agony of wounded men.
“As our boat touched sand and the ramp went down, I became a visitor to hell.”
— Pfc. Harry Parley
“The bodies of my buddies were washing ashore and I was the one live body amongst so many of friends, all of whom were dead, in many cases very severely blown to pieces.”
— Sgt. Thomas Valance
“Face downward, as far as eyes could see in either direction, were the huddled bodies of men living, wounded and dead, as tightly packed together as a layer of cigars in a box.”
— Maj. Charles Tegtmeyer
To complement the big picture, the museum also displays personal items such as a pocket Bible carried into combat, a French 50-franc note issued to a GI, a watch worn by an assault soldier, a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes, a helmet nicked by a bullet, the famous German code machine Enigma.
Throughout the exhibit, the role of the landing craft is an ever-present factor, and for good reason: The boats were vital to the success of the invasion, and all of them were built here in New Orleans by the late Andrew Higgins. At one time, 92 percent of the entire U.S. Navy fleet had been designed by Higgins.
“He is the man who won the war for us,” Gen. Dwight Eisenhower told author and historian Stephen E. Ambrose, founder of the National D-Day Museum, in the 1960s. “If Andy Higgins had not developed and then built those landing craft, we never could have gone in over an open beach. It would have changed the whole strategy of the war.”
Ambrose, a New Orleans resident, was so impressed by Eisenhower’s statement that he vowed to find a way to recognize Higgins. The National D-Day Museum, in a sense, is his memorial to the New Orleans boat builder.
A reconstructed Higgins landing craft is displayed in the cavernous lobby of the museum.
While D-Day is almost universally identified with the Normandy landings in France on June 6, 1944, the museum also plans to deal more fully with the other American d-days.
“We are already expanding, [adding] a 5,000-square-foot Pacific gallery,” said the museum’s Roberts. This wing will concentrate on the hard-fought landings on Japanese-held islands during World War II. Eventually, Roberts said, the museum will encompass “all major amphibious operations.”
IF YOU GO
GETTING THERE
The National D-Day Museum is in the New Orleans Warehouse Arts District., nine blocks from the French Quarter.
ADMISSION
Timed tickets are issued for entry every 15 minutes. The day’s quota is usually sold out by 2-3 p.m., so visitors should arrive in the morning. Adults, $7; seniors, $6; children 5-17, $5.
HOURS
9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. Visitors should plan on at least a two-hour visit.
HIGHLIGHTS
“D-Day Remembered” film, nominated for an Academy Award; four interactive galleries with artifacts, dioramas, mini-theaters, electronic maps, photomurals and text panels; nine oral history stations; aircraft and vehicles used in invasion; artifacts donated by veterans and their families.
INFORMATION
National D-Day Museum, 945 Magazine St., New Orleans, LA 70130; 504-527-6012; www.ddaymuseum.org.
J.C.
OTHER SITES CHRONICLE THE BATTLE
Two other United States museums contain significant commemorations of D-Day.
One is in the Chicago area at Cantigny, the former estate of Col. Robert McCormick in Wheaton, where the First Infantry Division Museum is located. That division, the “Big Red One,” participated in the D-Day invasion. Visitors board a replica of a landing craft, see footage projected there of troops going ashore at Omaha Beach, leave through a German bunker.
The other site is a work in progress, the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Va. The memorial’s 44-foot-high granite arch monument was dedicated May 29 by Jeannie Schulz, widow of “Peanuts” cartoonist Charles Schulz, who took over as fund-raising chairman of the National D-Day Foundation when the cartoonist died in February. Charles Schulz, a World War II veteran, was also on the foundation advisory board and had contributed $1 million to the project.
Bedford was chosen as the site for the memorial because this tiny farm town suffered more casualties per capita than any other U.S. community. It had 35 soldiers in Company A of the 116th Infantry Regiment; 19 of them died in the first 15 minutes of D-Day, two more later that day.
In the French area of Normandy and just outside the town of Caen, is the Caen Memorial Museum. Exhibits chronicle the Battle of Normandy, D-Day and other aspects of WWII. The museum is not far from Omaha Beach and the American Cemetery. For more information about the museum, the telephone number is 011-33-231-06-06-44; Web site is www.unicaen.fr/memorial.
