5th US Engineer Special Brigade Monument at Omaha Beach (Normandy, France)
N 49° 21.616 W 000° 50.876
30U E 656263 N 5469733
Above Omaha beach, on small cliff is ruin of German bunker with the Monument to the 5th US Engineer Special Brigade. Monument commemorates those who lost their lives while protecting the men in the landing craft and on the D-Day invasion beaches...
Waymark Code: WM6JTE
Location: Normandie, France
Date Posted: 06/11/2009
Views: 47
The small monument devoted to 5th US Engineer Special Brigade Monument and attached engineers units stay on the roof on former WW-II bunker above Omaha beach, circa 250 m of high-tide seashore.
The monument itself is a massive concrete pylon with glossy stone tablets on its all sides. On tablets are list of all 5th US Engineer Special Brigade subunits and attached units which were involved in the Operation Overlord. Also you can find here list of men, who lost their lives at bloody Omaha beach. Above granite tablets are small bronze plaques with symbols and short incriptions of these Brigade's subunits: 299th Combat Engineer Battalion, 146th Engineer Combat Battalion and 20th Combat Engineer Battalion. On the main monument's tablet is large white inscription: FIFTH ENGINEER SPECIAL BRIGADE.
The D-Day landings on Omaha beach were a near disaster. Most American troops landed away from their assigned sections of the beach and encountered withering German resistance. Engineers struggled to remove the beach obstacles that hard-pressed American soldiers had to use as cover. Gradually in spite of their heavy losses, engineers removed enough obstacles and built enough passable roads to help American troops and equipment land and get off the exposed beach and up the bluff to seize the heavily fortified German bunkers and other positions.