The opening scenes to the 1998 award-winning movie Saving Private Ryan by Steven Spielberg show a family walking in silence through a cemetery. It is a poignant and very moving part of the film, made all the more so when viewers understand that the location is a real place and the white marble crosses are actual grave markers. Most people will know by now that the cemetery lies on the bluffs overlooking a stretch of the Normandy coastline in France, codenamed “Omaha Beach”, where the 1st US Infantry Division began to land at 06-30AM on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
The landing beach measured four miles wide and was subdivided into named areas, beginning with “Charlie” and “Dog” in the west, which were in turn divided into red and green colorcoded areas. A force of 34,250 men in successive waves
