The Journey

On a pilgrimage to one of the most important battlegrounds in history, the author put life into perspective.

Matthew Reilly’s haunting memories of Normandy

The journey

Australia to Normandy, France

The year

2003

The lowdown

He has written 13 novels, including The Great Zoo of China. His latest, The Four Legendary Kingdoms, is out now. THE BEACH. My first thought on seeing it was: God, it’s so peaceful. Children built sandcastles on it. Adults sunbathed. A gentle surf sloshed against the shore. For such a long and broad beach, it was amazingly quiet. I’m sure the French have a name for it but for me it will always be Omaha.

In 2003, I was 28 and, hassled by the myriad annoyances of daily life, I decided to travel to Europe. I did the usual cities – London, Rome, Venice and Paris – but there was another stop, one that I doubt is on the schedules of most twentysomething travellers: Omaha Beach.

On D-day (June 6, 1944), Operation Overlord, the beginning of the Allies’ mission to retake Europe from the Nazis, began. Five beaches in Normandy, north-western France, were chosen as landing sites. “Omaha” was the codename given to one of them. It would be the largest seaborne invasion in history.

Overlord was as bold as it was frightening: a massive frontal assault on a heavily fortified coast. It involved about 156,000 Allied troops, 11,000 aircraft and nearly 7000 naval vessels. But numbers sanitise; it was a bloodbath, re-created brilliantly by Steven Spielberg in his 1998 film, Saving Private Ryan. Most Allied troops killed on D-day died on Omaha, the most heavily defended of the beaches. Nearly 60 years later, I strolled along the dunes behind Omaha, past the gigantic Nazi gun emplacements that still sit there, crumbling. During the invasion, they would have boomed like thunder. As I walked alone around and through them, I pondered that terrible day.

Maybe I was imagining it but I felt something in the air, something in the stillness – a presence. When so many die in one place, do their screams resonate there for eternity? Does their energy remain in the air?

As I looked out at the knee-high waves, I imagined the citizen soldiers of that day approaching the beach I was standing on, going towards the guns. The men in the first boats were almost certainly going to their deaths. Did they know that? I think they did. But they went anyway.

And in that moment, something in me changed. The annoyances that had taken me abroad suddenly seemed extraordinarily petty, beyond trivial. There is nothing that can happen to you in your life that could be as terrifying as what those men faced. And yet they faced it. Late for a meeting: so what? Lost your phone: it can be replaced. The only thing that matters is life.

I looked at children building sandcastles on Omaha Beach and mentally overlaid the warships off the coast, the explosions and the soldiers charging up the beach. Was it wrong for people to enjoy themselves within sight of the gun emplacements that raged on that horrific day?

In the end, I decided it was okay. It’s precisely why, back in 1944, those men stormed it.