Omaha Beach

The D-Day landings, codenamed 'Operation Overlord', were the largest military operation in history and the beaches of Normandy bore the brunt of the invasion. It was Omaha (the beach depicted in the opening scenes of Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan) that witnessed the most vicious fighting of World War II. Early on that chilly June morning in 1944, almost 7000 boats hit the beaches along this coastline and tens of thousands of soldiers from Canada, the USA, the UK and elsewhere began pouring onto French shores.

The troops that landed on Omaha were met with a wall of German gunfire. Many were simply mowed down as they exited the boats, some made it to the ridge overlooking the beach and sheltered from the gunfire there, and others were gunned down on the beach. Over four horrific hours, the Allied troops managed to capture the beach and the German troops massed there. When the fighting finally stopped, though, Omaha was a mess.

Today little evidence remains of this carnage, apart from several large bomb craters as wide as 1m (3ft) in diameter that pockmark the sand dunes, a concrete boat (used by the Allies to carry tanks ashore) that was sunk by the Germans, and the bunkers and munitions sites of a German fortified point.

Two kilometres (1.2mi) west along the beach from Omaha is the American Military Cemetery, containing the graves of 9386 American soldiers; 25km (15mi) further west, 21,000 German troops - many of whom died at Omaha - are buried.