In Europe

of half-buried bunkers and turrets from the former Atlantic Wall. But beneath the cold, green water of the coast lies a complete graveyard. These days enthusiasts sometimes winch whole Sherman amphibious tanks from the water, full of crustaceans that have attached themselves through the years. In the museums the tourists crowd past the corroded soup spoons, motor-bikes, telephones, amphibious jeeps, boots, rifles and punctured helmets. At a special theatre at Arromanches they can experience ‘the total D-Day emotion’ in only eighteen minutes. At the Pointe du Hoc – sticking up against the sky like a blade – they are amazed (and who is not?) at the mad courage of over 200 commandos of the American 116th Infantry Regiment who scaled this steep rock with ropes and ladders under heavy machine-gun fire, and conquered it on the second day. Only seventy-five of them lived to tell about it. In the countless souvenir shops the tourists rush to buy buttons, buckles and books of photographs, they search forbullet holes in the bunkers, point at the famous dummy of a paratrooper that still hangs on the steeple at Sainte-Mère-Église.
    I make a little pilgrimage to the Pegasus bridge at Bénouville, along the Orne, the first patch of Western European ground taken by the Allies. In the early hours of 6 June, 1944, three Horsa gliders – enormous wooden aircraft towed from England by heavy Stirlings – landed here under cover of night. On board were ninety men of the 6th Airborne Division, linked together arm and leg to absorb the impact of the landing, singing loudly to calm their nerves. The two German sentry posts were taken entirely by surprise, within ten minutes the strategic bridgehead was in British hands.
    The dance café of the Gondrée family, on the corner, was the first house to be liberated in Western Europe, and their daughter Arlette was the first liberated child. Today Arlette runs her parents’ business, and does so with dignity and flair. Hanging in the bar are dozens of photographs: Arlette with General X, with Admiral Y, the crew of the British royal yacht saluting in front the door of Café Gondrée, it is all on record.
    Gondrée
pére
was a member of the Resistance, and spoke fluent English. Just before D-Day a British agent had urged him not to leave the house; something was brewing and he might be needed. Arlette has a few more things to tell me about that night. ‘I was four at the time, and I remember the enormous shooting and thundering in the darkness. My father sent us down into the cellar. We heard the Germans pounding on the front door. We didn't react. A little later the back door opened, we heard footsteps above our head, someone tripped over a chair, and then we heard someone cursing. “Damn it, Tommies!” my father whispered. By the next day our house was already full of wounded men.’
    The veterans of D-Day still come back here, and Arlette knows them all. ‘This is where they meet up again. This is their home. When you've been through something like that you always stick together. But they don't talk much about the fighting itself. “He fell beside me,” they'll say, but they never go into detail, not even to their families. They keep that to themselves.’
    Does she still remember her liberators? ‘Do I! They came down the stairs, and I started crying right away. “It's all right, chum,” that was the first thing they said to my father. Their faces were blackened and theyhad camouflage netting on their helmets, my mother ran and hugged them, but it was still terribly frightening. They were monsters, our liberators! They picked me up, too, and then they brought out the chocolate, and everything was all right after that.’
    Operation Overlord, as the Normandy invasion was officially called, was a military operation the likes of which had never been seen before. The preparations had taken two years. A total of almost three million men had been assembled in southern England, divided over thirty-nine divisions: twenty American, fourteen British, three Canadian, one Polish and one French. Among them there were also units from New Zealand, Australia, India and other parts of the British Commonwealth, as well as assorted French, Belgian, Norwegian, Polish, Czech and Dutch squads.
    The invasion itself was carried out by an army of 150,000 men, with 7,000 ships, 20,000 vehicles and 11,000 planes. On the first day, 4,500 of those men were killed: approximately 2,500 Americans, 1,641