Let me read something from Stephen Ambrose's book, D-Day, which is one of hundreds of excellent books on the Normandy Invasion on June 6th, 1944, and all that it meant the film

Saving Private Ryan was influenced by this book, actually that story about the

Four Brothers Ambrose tells in this book, actually that story about the Four Brothers Ambrose tells in this book.

Chapter 17 is entitled Visitors to Hell, the 116th regiment at Omaha.

And it begins like this.

It says if the Germans were going to stop the invasion anywhere,

it would be at Omaha Beach.

It was an obvious landing site, the only sand between the mouth of the Duve to the west and

Aromachees to the east. A sand that Omaha is fine and firm and it's a slightly crescent-shaped beach at low tide.

There's a massive stretch of sand there.

And he goes on to describe what happens.

We hit the sandbar, one soldier recall,

drop the ramp and all hell poured loose on us. The soldiers in the boat received

the hail of machine-gun bullets. The Army lieutenant was immediately killed,

shot through the head. In the lead, Company A boat, LCA 1015, Captain Taylor Fellers and every one of his men were

killed before the ramp even went down. It just vaporized. No one ever learned whether it was the result of hitting a mine or getting hit by an 88.

The stories at Utah Beach are very powerfully captured in the opening of the film Saving Private Ryan and we saved Omaha Beach for our last day at Normandy because we knew it was going to be very powerful for us, very emotional and also

because the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach is a place that we wanted to spend time at. And so we wanted to tell you a little bit about what took

place there, friends, as you are welcomed back to the Ransom Tar podcast with John and Stacey Eldridge a second half of a two-part

conversation where we want to just bring you into a little bit of some of the impact and the

lessons and the power of our pilgrimage to the D-Day

landing beaches in Normandy and to the Calvados coast in France back in June.

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