I followed the footprints in the sand, some large, some small, some barefoot where toes and heels had dug in, and others shod leaving knobbly imprints. They all led in the same direction to the fabrication rising out of the beach. Gentle waves lapped around its base testing its resolve, but this was no sandcastle ready to capitulate in the face of the incoming tide. Three large sections of stainless-steel rise majestically from a hidden concrete base capturing the attention of passers-by. Indeed, most here have not come to build sandcastles, or leave their prints in the sand, but to see this memorial, read the story, and pay their respects.
The beach is located at Saint-Laurent-Sur-Mere in Normandy, France, and is more famously known as Omaha. The stainless-steel sculpture, measuring 30’ tall by 50’ wide was created by the French artist Anilore Banon to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the D Day landings, and it incorporates three pieces; “The Wings of Hope,” Rise, Freedom!” and “The Wings of Fraternity.” Banon explains “I created this sculpture to honour the courage of these men; Sons, husbands, and fathers, who endangered and often sacrificed their live in the hope of freeing the French people.”
A nearby plaque further explains the three elements.
The wings of Hope
So that the spirit which carried these men on June 6th, 1944 continues to inspire us, reminding us that together it is always possible to change the future.
Rise, Freedom!
So that the example of those who rose against barbarity, helps us remain standing strong against all forms of inhumanity.
The Wings of Fraternity
So that this surge of brotherhood always reminds us of our responsibility towards others as well as ourselves.
On June 6th, 1944, these men were more than soldiers, they were our brothers.
“The wings of hope,” “Rise Freedom!” & “The Wings of Fraternity”
After spending some time studying the monument I walked east along the beach, and as the distance from the memorial increased the number of footprints in the sand decreased. It was a spectacular spring day; a soft onshore breeze was just enough to stir the sea into small frothy waves. A group of five was strolling along engrossed in conversation, a young couple released their dog, who looking for a playmate, spotted a dozing seagull and bounded towards it. The gull suddenly awakened to the approach of its uninvited guest, and being in no mood to frolic grumpily arose, swearing at the dog as it flew away to find a new resting spot.
Towards the Vierville-Sur-Mer end of the beach a man paragliding beneath an orange canopy dipped and rose as he made his way alongside the clifftops. It was an idyllic scene, a far cry from when the troops came ashore eighty-one years ago. Beneath the paraglider stood the remains of “widerstandnest 73,” a concrete bunker, which on D Day was filled with German soldiers, directing withering fire on the American assault force until it was neutralised by the Rangers.
Paraglider
Omaha is one the best-known beaches in the world, not due its beauty, (although it is), but rather due to the ferocity of fighting and the number of American casualties that day; around 2,400. The story has been repeatedly told and rightly so, films such as “Saving Private Ryan” have immortalised the bravery of those who came ashore, and naturally people want to come and see for themselves where it all happened. A steady stream of coaches descends the road to the beach, stopping momentarily to disgorge their passengers for a quick photo opportunity, before reloading and powering off to the next “popular” site on the tour itinerary. It is the nature of tourism I suppose in our busy world that only the “best” known and “popularised” places get visited, they become the “only” narrative, while the less know spots are left to languish along with their stories.
We hear D Day and immediately our minds picture Tom Hanks, but it was far from being the only story of the 6th of June 1944. 160,000 troops (73, 000 American and 83,000 British and Canadian) came ashore spread over 50 miles on five different beaches, not to mention the parachute and glider landings the night before. They all have their own footprints (those who lived long enough to make them), and stories, which if left out leave us with an incomplete picture. But that is what popular narrative does, it leaves us with a deficient and sometimes misleading picture.
Yet even in the most visited places there are storied footprints waiting to be uncovered. At the Vierville end of the Omaha beach there are several memorials. One, a bronze statute entitled “Ever forward” depicts a soldier dragging a fallen comrade along beside him and is dedicated to the 116thInfantry Regimental team, 29th Infantry division who came ashore to take the Vierville draw. Another is a large concrete structure honouring the 29th Division of the National Guard’s “citizen soldiers” who were vital to the eventual success of the landing but paid a heavy price. It stands on top of what was another lethal German bunker.
Intriguingly I came across a smaller plaque tucked a little further away, to the 21 Base defence[1]sector & mobile signals units of the RAF, who were on “loan” to the US invasion force at Omaha to coordinate air support. A contingent of 160 non-combat radio and radar technicians with 27 vehicles landed in the late afternoon. They were supposed to come ashore only after the beach was secured which was expected earlier in the day, so they were held back in their landing craft, swilling about in the rough sea puking their guts out. After several hours they were ordered in, but unfortunately, as happened with several of the landings they wound up in the wrong spot and immediately came under enemy fire. Some vehicles sank into craters and disappeared beneath the waves, while others unable to get off the beach became sitting targets. Before they got off the beach, they suffered 47 casualties and eleven killed, so they switched from radar to fighting and helping wounded American troops off the beach while their doctor, medic, and padre attended to them as best they could. They were the only medical help on that end of the beach and helped save many lives.
21 BDS Plaque
In the Bayeux cemetery (where some of the 21 BDS are buried) there are 4,648 graves, the headstones inform us of the name, rank, regiment and date of the person buried beneath. Some give the date of death and others have citations. On the occasional grave a family member has left a framed photograph; it is moving to see the face and brings their story to life. But 338 graves have headstones which contain no names, no rank, no regiment, and no date, they simply read; “a soldier of the 1939 -1945 war,” “known unto God.”
Most of us have never had to leap out of a landing craft through crashing waves onto a beach under murderous machine gun fire hoping we stay alive long enough to make any imprint in the sand. When I arrived in France, the doors of the ferry opened’ and we drove down a ramp and straight off to a nearby town to find some breakfast. The only encounter was with a bleary-eyed border agent who stamped my passport and waved us on.
Some beaches are inviting; we skip gaily along leaving well defined prints in the firm wet sand, perhaps even stopping to draw hearts with a stick plucked from the high tide mark. But other beaches are discouraging. The sand is soft and deep, traction is difficult, and we flounder in our effort to make the slightest headway. The worst kind of beach to traverse is shingle. With each step the pebbles slip away from beneath your foot while others rush in on top, relishing the opportunity to impede forward progress. Funnily enough US troops trained for D Day on a beach in southwest England called Slapton Sands which is a misnomer, because it is not sand but shingle. It’s hard to determine any distinctive footprints left on a shingle beach, they dissolve into a series of indeterminate dimples.
“Known unto God”
We would all much rather land on the inviting kind of beach, a welcoming parasol with a miniature one in an ice-cold fruity drink waiting for us as we come ashore. “Life’s a beach” is the narrative sold to us, but What kind of beach is the question? What kind of footprints will we be able to leave behind?
In Carthage Texas there is a memorial, nothing to do with D Day, but it is to a poem; you have probably heard it.
One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord.
Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.
In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand.
Sometimes there were two sets of footprints,
other times there were one set of footprints.
This bothered me because I noticed
that during the low periods of my life,
when I was suffering from
anguish, sorrow or defeat,
I could see only one set of footprints.
So I said to the Lord,
“You promised me Lord,
that if I followed you,
you would walk with me always.
But I have noticed that during
the most trying periods of my life
there have only been one
set of footprints in the sand.
Why, when I needed you most,
you have not been there for me?”
The Lord replied,
“The times when you have
seen only one set of footprints,
is when I carried you.”
Anonymous
In the poem the author has bought into the narrative that there should be two sets of footprints, especially when landing on those difficult beaches. But the Lord reveals the story she could not see. Surprisingly for a poem which is supposed to offer peace its authorship has been hotly disputed and even the subject of litigation. In her article, “Enter the Sandman”[2] Rachel Aviv explores the claims of the potential authors but concludes he/she is only “known unto God.”
Regardless of who was the actual author, they did not write the poem from a vacuum, but they follow in the footprints of millions of people who have looked on their own beaches and puzzled over what they saw, often concluding a deficient or mistaken narrative.
In 1880 Charles Haddon Spurgeon preached a sermon called “The education of the Sons of God”[3]
And did you ever walk out upon that lonely desert island upon which you were wrecked, and say, “I am alone, — alone, — alone, — nobody was ever here before me”? And did you suddenly pull up short as you noticed, in the sand, the footprints of a man? I remember right well passing through that experience; and when I looked, lo! it was not merely the footprints of a man that I saw, but I thought I knew whose feet had left those imprints; they were the marks of One who had been crucified, for there was the print of the nails. So I thought to myself, “If he has been here, it is a desert island no longer.”
Over a century before Spurgeon, in 1719 Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe in which the protagonist is shipwrecked on what he supposes is a deserted island, but after many days is shocked to discover a human footprint in the sand. He is not alone!
Seventeen hundred years before Defoe another story of a beach landing came to light. A man lived by the sea and life for him certainly wasn’t the parasol kind of beach. His were the only footprints on that shore, no one else would dare to come and land, or indeed want to. How long he had been there is hard to know. While his beach was deserted, his mind wasn’t. At some point in his life demons took up residence in his mind causing him to do and say things which got him ostracised from his community. He lived in isolation amongst the tombs of a
But one day a sail hove into his view and seemed to be heading towards him. By the time he got down to shoreline there were already footprints in the sand and indeed the man who made them was standing on His beach! Although he didn’t know his name the demons seemed to, and they were in turmoil inside him. What was He doing here they wanted to know, and why had He come to bother them? Surely, he wasn’t interested in this man’s forgotten story? The man’s name apparently was Jesus, and the demons were addressing him as the “Son of the Most High God.” Jesus asked for the demon’s identity; “Legion, because we are many” came the reply.
There was no fight, there was no battle, just a command from Jesus that they were to leave, the only discussion was where they would go. The demons pleaded to be cast out into a herd of nearby pigs which Jesus permitted, with the result the pigs rushed down the hill and into the sea. Often, we just don’t realise how devasting and destructive an occupying force is until we see it for what it is.
When news of the event spread the locals came to see for themselves and found the man sitting with Jesus in his right mind and clothed, which scared them. On top of that they had lost a valuable heard of pigs, and who know what else might happen to their popular narrative if they allowed Jesus to stay. It is the challenge when Jesus lands on our shore and we discover His footprints all over our beach, because His story challenges the narrative we have created. What will we do?
The people of the region asked Jesus to leave, they didn’t want any more of His prints in their story, and frighteningly he did. Just as he was about to row away the man whose story Jesus had changed, not unsurprisingly wanted to go with him. However, Jesus wouldn’t permit him, instead he told the man to “go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how He has had mercy on you.[4]”
There is no memorial on the beach where Jesus landed, we don’t know exactly where it was, and any footprints have long since washed away. We don’t know the name of the man He liberated from his demon occupiers, he is only “known unto God.”
But we do know the name of the one who set foot on an unknown beach and left a print for eternity. How do we know? Because the man whose beach Jesus had landed on went around telling everyone what Jesus had done for him and asking them to invite Jesus to come and put his prints in their sand.
{$NOTE_LABEL} https://www.therafatomahabeach.com
{$NOTE_LABEL} https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/68974/enter-sandman
{$NOTE_LABEL} https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/the-education-of-sons-of-god/#flipbook/
[4] Mark 5:19 (ESV)
