LA CAMBE (France) - AMERICANS and Germans who were bitter enemies during the D-Day invasion of France shared stories and moments of silence at a Normandy ceremony on Friday, joining together to honor those who perished in the epochal World War II beach landings.
They held their poignant, low-key ceremony at the German cemetery at La Cambe a day before an international commemoration nearby, led by President Barack Obama, to mark 65 years since Allied forces landed on Normandy's shores.
Military bands played anthems of the United States, Germany, Britain and France, and visitors piled wreaths at the foot of a mound at the center of the cemetery.
'It's a great feeling ... to come here,' said Austin Cox of Crisfield, Maryland, a sergeant with the 29th Division of the US 115th Infantry Regiment who landed on Omaha Beach at 9 am on the epic day that turned the tide of World War II.
'My comrades, though, are buried over at Omaha,' said Mr Cox, 90, recalling the high tide that carried him onto the expanse of beach.
The main American cemetery at Colleville-Sur-Mer has about 9,300 graves. Most US war dead were repatriated.
Karl-Heinz Mayer of Oldenburg, Germany, has comrades at La Cambe, where a low, granite entrance leads into the cemetery containing the graves of the German soldiers, each marked with a small, flat stone.
Unidentified bodies are marked simply, 'ein Deutscher soldat,' a German soldier.
At Friday's ceremony, Mr Mayer recalled lying wounded on the fields of Normandy 65 years ago. An American soldier roused him with his boot, Mr Mayer said. He said he was eventually sent to the United States to be treated for his wounds.
'Today I am here for the last time, because I'm 83 and I'm not that well,' he said. 'We shake hands, we are all normal people. And I hope there will never be a war again because this slaughter was horrible.'
Some 215,000 Allied soldiers, and roughly as many Germans, were killed or wounded during D-Day and the ensuing nearly three months it took to secure the Allied capture of Normandy. -- AP
