Navy Normandy Monument Project Underway

By Captain Gregory Streeter, USN (Ret.)

For over six decades following the largest naval operation in world history, the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, the only service not recognized by any monument or memorial at Normandy was the United States Navy.

Hundreds of ships and thousands of men were involved in transporting allied forces from England to Normandy in the largest armada ever assembled, in constructing and operating artificial harbors and in supplying the forces once they were ashore.

Walking the beaches of Normandy and observing the many plaques and monuments there gave no indication that the U.S. Navy ever was there.

The Naval Order of the United States, one of the oldest, if not the oldest, associations of Sea Service veterans in the United States discovered this oversight during a presentation made to a chapter of the Naval Order in 2003 by Mr. Ray Pfeiffer, who conducts tours of WWII battlefields in Europe.

Mr. Pfeiffer related that he and his wife conducted frequent tours of Normandy and they always made an effort to emphasize the Navy’s role since it generally received minor, if any, recognition in the ongoing remembrances of D-Day. He also mentioned in his presentation that the necessity for doing so was magnified by the fact that the Navy was the only service with no Monument at Normandy.

This lack of recognition was enormous when considering that the naval component of the operation comprised 1,213 allied warships. The task was of the warships was to provide shore bombardment firepower for the troops going ashore, to guard the transports, and to conduct minesweeping and antisubmarine patrols on the flanks of the invasion corridor.

Allied forces also provided 4,126 amphibious craft, including a variety of specialized landing craft, such as LSTs, LCIs, and LCTs.

More than 3,500 of these landing craft were actually used during the Normandy invasion and would provide the crucial troop-carrying capacity to land the thousands of men, vehicles, and artillery along the 50-mile wide target area.

To correct this oversight, the Naval Order of the United States took up the challenge to develop and fund the placement of a Monument to the United States Navy at Normandy. Sculptor Stephen Spears of Fair Hope, Alabama researched and designed the monument at his own expense. It is composed of three figures, each representative of a phase of the operation; planning and execution, implementation, and aftermath.

The planning and execution figure is represented by the figure of a Navy Captain in a “take charge” attitude. Around his feet are various representative objects relating to the planning aspects of the invasion such as charts, codebooks, and plans.   

The sailor figure represents the action of implementation. The superb training and execution of their duties in the invasion is represented by the loading of one of the thousands of shells fired before and during the assault to both prepare for the landings and later direct support fire.

The third figure represents the immense strain on the Navy Combat Demolition Units (NCDU), which had to both precede the invasion by removing mines, obstacles and other explosive devices and then follow during and after to further insure the safety of the beachhead.

The figures are approximately 8 feet tall and rest on a black granite pentagonal base. The base is 4 feet high. On the sides of the base are engraved the Dedication Text and the names of all the Navy vessels that participated in the Normandy invasion.

Follow-on plans have begun to place five 5 foot high black granite pedestals that will commemorate the actions of particular Naval Forces such as Destroyers, LST’s, and SeaBees and also house, embedded in their bases, light s for illumination of the Main Monument during hours of darkness.

The Monument was dedicated on September 27th, 2008 and now rests on Utah Beach on land donated by the Town of Ste. Marie DuMont in Normandy. The overall cost of the project was $500,000.