THE INSPIRATION OF NORMANDY

THE COURAGE AND CHARACTER CONTRASTS WITH TODAY

As age sets in, bucket lists become more pressing. I just checked off the top of my wish list, visiting Normandy. It was with high expectations; they were exceeded.

In 1944, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower dispatched 156,000 Americans, Brits and Canadians across the English channel to retake France on the way to ending the German Nazi regime and the European war. The June 6 landing on five beaches is the largest amphibious attack in history. There also were more than 20,000 paratroopers and Gliders.

Although the Allies achieved an element of surprise they were met by the Germans' Atlantic wall. Omaha Beach was especially perilous. There were long range and short range guns with Germans in heavily fortified positions, land mines and anti-tanks on the beach confronting 34,000 American troops.

"The advantages were all theirs; the disadvantages all ours," noted journalist Ernie Pyle wrote. Most of the first wave of Americans landing on Omaha Beach were killed. Within a few hours the carnage was so great U.S. Gen Omar Bradley considered withdrawing the forces.

But the Americans persisted and took Omaha and Utah Beach while the British and Canadian troops took the other three beaches. They began the march inward which lasted almost another three months.

While 4,400 Allied forces were killed, the majority at Omaha Beach and there were more than 10,000 other casualties, this was only a third of expectations.

My wife and I had a fabulous guide, Normandy historian Stephane Lamache, recommended by Susan and David Eisenhower, grandchildren of the Supreme Allied commander. Stephane's knowledge was matched by his passion.

As we stood on Omaha Beach, it was surreal. There were beachcombers, sun bathers, kids building sand castles. It could have been the New Jersey shore.

Looking out was the channel where those courageous young men left the Higgins landing craft, facing heavy fire, struggling to reach the beach, defying Hitler's threat to "send them back to the sea."

Walking through the open areas of the nearby American cemetery amid the white crosses is profoundly emotional. These soldiers, seemingly from every state, sacrificed their lives for our freedom. There are markers for the missing, "A comrade in arms, known but to God," I stop in front of a gravestone for Jimmie Monteith, Virginia, Medal of Honor.

The British Cemetery in Bayeux is more open and informative; in addition to name, the markers include age and often a short tribute from family or friends.

The battle for Normandy is replete with stories of heroism.

In the early morning of June 6, the troops from the 101st Airborne captured the small village of Angoville-au-Plain after a battle with the Germans. They set up a hospital in the church where two young American medics, Robert Wright and Kenneth Moore, treated the wounded Americans and Germans. (The dead were stacked up behind a wall by the altar.)

Later that day the Germans retook the venue. When a German captain entered the church he was surprised to see the American medics treating wounded Germans. He put the church off limits to his troops.

Inside the church, where there's a stained glass window honoring the two medics, Lamarche cautions us not to sit on the still bloodstained wooden pews.

Wright and Moore, who were awarded the Silver Star, periodically came back to visit the church and Wright is buried in the adjoining cemetery.

In the nearby town of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, Americans accidentally shot and almost killed a young Frenchman, Michael de Vallavielle. He was taken to Britain where he spent eight months in treatment and recovery.

Vallavielle later became mayor and spearheaded the Utah Beach museum.

Luck played a role. On Utah Beach, the American assault barges drifted about a mile off course. There they met considerably less German firepower, and thus had fewer casualties than they would have met at the planned site. Leading the Americans onto Utah Beach was 56 year old Brigadier Gen.Teddy Roosevelt, Jr. He died of a heart attack five weeks later and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

A leading German General, Wilhelm Falley, Commander of the strategically critical 91st Infantry Division, not expecting the assault on June 6, was hours away from his headquarters at Chateau de Bernaville. After the first signs of danger, he rushed back.

An 82nd airborne paratrooper, Malcolm Brannen, inadvertently landed on the grounds right outside the Chateau. As Falley's car sped by Brannen shot and killed the German general, having no idea of his identity.

The Chateau -- German Field Marshall Rommel had been there less than three weeks before D-Day -- is now home to the Normandy Institute run by Dorothea de La Houssaye. She is intent on turning the Institute into a leading global think tank and education center.

The surge in Normandy interest, she notes, came after Tom Brokaw's book, The Greatest Generation, the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers and the movie Saving Private Ryan. Lamarche says that movie provides the most accurate depiction of the bloody battle on Omaha Beach.

A personal treat was to share stories with Dorothea about Sam Gibbons, who with the 101st Airborne parachuted into Normandy and fought for the remainder of the war. While I was covering Congress thirty years later, Gibbons, a Florida congressman, was one of my favorite politicians. He rarely, if ever, talked about his heroics.

The inspiration gleaned from Gibbons and his comrades up to Eisenhower, is a welcome contrast to an American President today who abhors sacrifice, always blames others and is a stranger to personal responsibility.

Operation Overlord was elaborately planned with clever deceptions. But there were uncertainties, starting with the weather. Failure wouldn't have changed the outcome of the war, but it would have prolonged it, with more deaths and the Russians probably would have taken all of Germany.

Eisenhower knew the risks. The night before, he wrote a memo -- mistakenly dated July 5 -- on a response to a possible failure. While praising the bravery and devotion to duty of the soldiers, he hypothesized that he had withdrawn the forces.

"If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone."