ST. LAURENT-SUR-MER, France -- From a glider in Ste.- Mere-Eglise to a Sherman tank in Bayeux, 50 years after D-Day the French have preserved nearly everything their occupiers and liberators left behind.
The ruins of war are everywhere.
Along Omaha Beach, a huge landing barge sits listed to one side, its rusted-out hull covered with barnacles.
At Longes-sur-Mer, overlooking the British Gold Beach, a huge German gun battery remains mostly intact, one of its three 155mm naval guns still pointing skyward.
Nearby in Arromanches, the skeletal remains of the Allies' artificial Mulberry harbor can clearly be seen enclosing the beach. Tremendous concrete caissons lie askew in the sand.
Some museums, like Le Memorial in Caen, explain the war with state-of-the-art exhibits done up with equal measures of historical accuracy and taste. But others, mostly privately owned "museums," are little more than musty junkyards of rusted and decayed war equipment.
At one, a combination museum, snack bar and creperie in Surrain, rests a jumble of old soiled Barbasol boxes issued to GIs, and shattered helmets mingle with an airplane's instrument panel.
Many who come are collectors. In one corner, a shiny machine gun sits behind a handwritten sign that reads "A Vendere": For Sale.
"Everything in the museum is for sale," says manager Christine Robert, whose family charges 25 francs - or about $ 4.50 - a visitor. About 20,000 come each year.
Many more visit the battle sites, giving local residents more to rejoice than nostalgia.
Each year 4 million visitors - perhaps double that this year - visit Normandy, the place Allies decided to launch the D-Day assault. The visitors eat in restaurants, sleep in hotels, shop in souvenir shops.
"It is good for the economy," says local tourism official Armelle Le Goff.
For those seeking a sentimental journey or a lesson in history, "they explain very well (Hitler's) Atlantic Wall. We want to keep the remnants in good shape."
Three Americans, too young to remember the conflagration that engulfed this tiny village, peer out from inside a battered German gun emplacement, its intact barrel still pointing with menace.
"These are the artifacts of very historic moments," says Allen Cors of McLean, Va., standing at the foot of a bluff overlooking once-bloody Omaha Beach.
"To walk where the battle was fought," adds Russ Pritchard of Philadelphia, "makes it much more graphic. Though you can never really know what it felt like, you really get a feeling of what it might have been like."
The stunning symmetry of the American cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer - with its 9,386 crosses and stars - draws the most visitors in Normandy after the famous castle at Mont-St-Michel.
Some leave flowers graced by French and American flags. Others, following a Jewish tradition, leave pebbles on the gravestone, a sign that they were there. Others rub sand from the hard-won beaches into the engraved crevasses of the white marble markers to make the names more visible.
"It is very important for me to come because I have a lot of family who suffered at the hands of the occupiers," said J. Claude Genissel, 56, of Gueprei as he visited the cemetery with his family Wednesday.
He still remembers the bombs that pummeled Normandy for weeks and killed his grandmother.
"We need to keep (the Allies') memory intact."
Others born after the war come to help understand relatives who were there.
Leigh Stels of Savannah, Ga., came with a tour group of young people visiting the highlights of France.
"My dad said to make sure I came here," said Stels, whose grandfather took part in D-Day. At the American cemetery, "I was overwhelmed by the whole thing. I started crying. It was very emotional to think it could have been my grandfather killed."
Emotions run as deep as the massive shell holes that pock Pointe du Hoc, site of the famed Ranger assault on the heavily fortified German stronghold. A moonscape of car-sized craters and multi-ton concrete gun emplacements, the Pointe is a magnet and a must-see for visitors.
For veterans such as Manny Polak, 72, then in radio intelligence with the U.S. Army Signal Corps in southern England, a visit to the Pointe reminds him that "I'm not one of these brave guys."
Though it was decoding work like his that helped the Allies pinpoint German strength at the Pointe and other areas, he visited Wednesday as a tribute to three war buddies killed in the war.
"Those three men kept me alive and never made it back. I'll be here on the 6th of June bringing them back."
On this day, children played at Pointe du Hoc, scurrying and hiding among the ragged ruins with their steel rods exposed and gnarled against the constant winds that whip this isolated promontory jutting into the English Channel. Daisies grow where blood once soaked deep.
For Edmund Koski, 70, of Harper Woods, Mich., who came ashore at Utah Beach in July 1944, the vestiges of the battle are a tangible reminder of the past.
"I'm just amazed they're still standing. I would have thought they'd level it off," he says, standing beside a stripped gun battery at Pointe du Hoc. "I'm glad they didn't."
Moving troops, supplies to land
By afternoon, June 6, 1944, Allied troops entrenched themselves on the Normandy beach, and a flotilla, towing pieces of two artificial harbors, began its trek across the English Channel. The harbors would be used for shelter and to bring in supplies as Allied forces moved deeper into Europe. Over the next month, tug boats towed 2 million tons of steel and concrete for the harbors.
How the harbors were formed
1. Gooseberries June 7, old merchant ships sailed across channel. Scuttled to shelter small craft in five places. Completed June 10.
2. Bombardons Hollow, steel caissons anchored off shore. Reduced waves by up to 50%. Mile-long lines of 24 Bombardons completed June 17. Dimensions: 200 ft. x 25 ft. x 25 ft. Weight: 300 tons.
3. Phoenixes Tugs tow concrete caissons forming harbor shell June 7. Planted on sea floor by June 18. Valves flooded caissons, submerging them. Dimensions: 200 ft. x 50 ft. x 60 ft. Weight: Up to 6,000 tons each, about the weight of 15 jumbo jets.
4. Pier heads and floating roadways Piers formed from raft-like pontoons on extendable legs rise and fall with the tide. Spans of roadway also move with the tide, connect piers to shore and each other. Spans laid on floats secured to sea bed. Pontoons: 200 ft. x 60 ft. x 10 ft. Weight: 1,100 tons Legs: 89 ft. long, 4-ft.-square feet Span: 80 ft. long, steel-treaded roadway 10 ft. wide
