A slab of whitish-gray spalled concrete looking like cast-off debris from a neglected highway project sits along a street next to the National World War II Museum in downtown New Orleans. Itâ??s drab and unsightly, but it has a unique pedigree. It was once part of the Atlantic Wall, a vast network of coastal defenses erected by the Germans that ran from France to Norway with the aim of repelling (or at least discouraging) an invasion by sea. This particular slab was salvaged from Utah Beach, and is pocked by multiple rounds of gunfire incurred during the landing of Allied troops on D-Day (June 6, 1944).
Tom Czekanski, the museumâ??s director of collections and exhibits, walks by the slab, then stops and examines it. The fragment had been here for a few months, he said, but it wasnâ??t until he peered down on it one dayâ??he points to an upper-story windowâ??when the light was just right that he noticed something new: subtle footprints tracking across the top of it. Theyâ??d apparently been left by a German soldier who walked along it in hobnail boots before the concrete had fully set.
These remarkable details make it the perfect artifact for the museum; this isnâ??t a silent collection of materiel and guns and tanks and other inanimate leftovers from the war. Itâ??s a repository of stories of those who fought itâ??the people who left the footprints behind.
The National World War II Museum opened in 2000 (it was originally called the D-Day Museum), and was the brainchild of historian and writer Stephen Ambrose (1936-2002), who taught at the University of New Orleans and was author of the well-regarded Band of Brothers, among many other books about the war. In the course of research, Ambrose amassed some 2,000 interviews with war veterans who recounted daily action as they saw it, moments both glorious and ordinary. Ambrose spearheaded a drive to establish a museum to tell the story behind the war, of the men and women who fought it, of the reasons why it was fought, and why it matters today.
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