Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial

Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial is an American military cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer in Normandy, occupying a clifftop site directly above Omaha Beach and the English Channel. The location has an immediate connection to the events it commemorates: the U.S. First Army established the temporary St. Laurent Cemetery here on 8 June 1944, only two days after D-Day, making it the first American cemetery created on European soil during the Second World War. The permanent cemetery was later developed on the same site and dedicated in 1956. Covering 172.5 acres, it contains 9,389 graves, most belonging to American servicemen killed during the Normandy landings and the fighting that followed, while the semicircular Walls of the Missing carry the names of another 1,557. At the centre of the memorial stands Donald De Lue’s bronze statue Spirit of American Youth Rising from the Waves, surrounded by a colonnade containing maps and accounts of the Normandy campaign. Among those buried here are Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr., who landed on Utah Beach on D-Day, and his younger brother Quentin Roosevelt, a First World War pilot whose remains were moved here in 1955. Also buried side by side are Preston and Robert Niland, two of the brothers whose family story helped inspire Saving Private Ryan.

Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial appears in Saving Private Ryan (1998). Unlike the film’s recreation of Omaha Beach, which was shot at Curracloe in Ireland, the cemetery scenes were filmed at the real burial ground above Omaha Beach. Steven Spielberg uses the location to frame the entire story: the film begins with an elderly veteran walking through the rows of white headstones and returns to exactly the same place after the Second World War story has reached its conclusion.

In Saving Private Ryan (1998), an elderly James Ryan arrives at Normandy American Cemetery accompanied by his wife, children and grandchildren. At the beginning of the film his identity is deliberately unclear. He walks through the seemingly endless rows of graves until he reaches one particular headstone, becomes overwhelmed and drops to his knees. The camera moves into his face before the story shifts back to 6 June 1944 and the assault on Omaha Beach, beginning Captain John Miller’s mission to find Private James Ryan and return him safely home after three of Ryan’s brothers are believed to have been killed. Only at the end does the film fully explain the cemetery sequence. After Miller is mortally wounded at Ramelle and urges Ryan to make his survival worthwhile, the story returns to the elderly man standing at the grave. He is revealed to be Ryan, visiting Miller decades later and struggling with the question of whether the life he went on to live justified the sacrifices made to save him. He asks his wife for reassurance before turning back towards Miller’s grave and giving him a final salute. Captain Miller is fictional and is not actually buried at Normandy American Cemetery; the production had special marble headstones made for the sequence, including Miller’s. The cemetery staff later recalled that Spielberg filmed the sequence in a single day and deliberately positioned the shot so the sea beyond Omaha Beach formed part of the background, visually connecting Miller’s fictional grave with the real battlefield below.

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