Thanks, HAS.
I go to Normandy (Pegasus Bridge) every year and visit all the D-Day beaches as well. If you walk Omaha beach at low tide you begin to understand the daunting prsopect for the Yanks. Their major error was off-loading the skirted waterproof tanks too far off shore so that they sank pretty quickly. Consequently, the PBI (Poor Bloody Infantry) landed without almost any armour - unlike the British and Canadians further east.
The collection parties who picked up the bodies not only took them off the beach but had to dig up and collect those buried in 'field', or temporary graves, marked with an upturned rifle and helmet. Basic post mortems were carried out -mainly GSW (gun shot wounds) or 'drowned'. but it was meticulously done and recorded before final burial in the US Cemetery above Omaha. Many of the graves are empty because N of K could pay for the bodies to be returned home.
There are many cemeteries and monuments scattered across Normandy and I recommend anyone to go and visit the area to see not only the villages, but St Lo, St Marie Eglise, theMerville Battery and the museum at Caen ,and of course Pegasus Bridge, where there is a replica Horsa glider near the markers where they landed in the early hourrrs of D-Day. I stay in Arromanche at the Marina hotel on the beach, above whichis a wonderful panoramic museum. Altogether, Normandy is a terrific place to visit.
I'm off to Arnhem in September for the 65th Pilgrimage - but that's another story.
Regards.
Derek