Eighty years have passed since “D-Day,” yet its memory lingers on the beaches of Normandy. And not in a spiritual and symbolic way. No. The landing of Allied troops in French territory in June 1944 leaves a tangible mark on the sandy shores of this region, beyond memory. It’s something that can be touched and seen, but the latter requires an electron microscope. This was confirmed by a group of geologists who collected sand samples at Omaha Beach many years ago. When they took it to their laboratory and examined it in detail, they discovered to their surprise that 4% of it was shrapnel residue.

A microscopic memory of a historical date.

hiking in normandy. That’s what geology professor Earle McBride of the University of Texas at Austin and his colleague Dane Picard of the University of Utah did one day in 1988. While doing field work in France, they decided to take a break and visit the famous Omaha Beach, one of the main landing spots of D-Day in Normandy.

They didn’t have much luck on their Norman journey. The day they walked on the beach, which was about eight kilometers long, was unpleasant, cold and windy; But that didn’t stop McBride and Picard from taking home a souvenir honoring their education: a small sand sample. After a while, they decided to salvage the bag of Normandy beans and examine them under a microscope.

And the surprise came. What McBride found in a sample of sand collected at Omaha Beach caught his attention. In addition to the remains of quartz and other materials that he had already taken for granted, the geologist also observed small fragments of metal. Examining them in detail with a microscope, he found that they were round in shape, rough, laminated and had a dull shine with some rust spots. Some pieces were around a millimeter wide. Others did not exceed 0.06 mm.

Remnants of the war. So millimeter-sized metal beads that have been eroded by waves and the passage of time can be difficult to detect, but McBride eventually came to a fascinating conclusion. What stood before him were the remnants of the Normandy landings. Here are the details from the University of Texas: “These turned out to be shrapnel from the World War II invasion. Closer inspection also revealed iron and glass beads from the intense heat released by explosions in the air and sand.” in Austin.

His discovery was so intriguing that Professor McBride decided to write a paper with Picard and publish it in the journal. Sedimentary Record.

Both experts commented, “Of course it is not surprising that shrapnel was added to the sand on Omaha Beach during the war, but it is surprising that it has survived for more than 40 years and is undoubtedly still there today.” Their sample was from the late 1980s and the report was published in 2011; but everything shows that the situation remains the same today. In 2011, experts estimated it would still take a century for corrosion to destroy the shrapnel.

A well measurable footprint. If McBride and Picard’s research is surprising, it’s because it did more than confirm that shrapnel debris was still scattered across the beaches of Normandy, decades after D-Day. Equally or more interestingly, experts have managed to provide a fairly precise idea of ​​what the footprint on the beaches represents. Examining the sample in detail, the Texas geologist found that metals represented 4% of the sand.

Although McBride and Picard note that there may be differences depending on where and when the sand was collected, the data is revealing. “We do not know to what extent this is representative of the beach sand as a whole, due to the possibility of plasticization of shrapnel and heavy minerals by waves and currents on the day we collected our samples.” Omaha was one of the main landing points on D-Day, but the Allies also had other beaches in Normandy during Operation Neptune, known as Utah, Sword, Gold, and Juno.

with an expiration date. Although the beads discovered by American geologists are a strange souvenir of D-Day and have survived for decades, McBride and Picard warned years ago that they would not last forever. Shrapnel debris could resist erosion for thousands of years, but geologists discovered particles of rust while examining the grains, leading them to be pessimistic about their future. “The waves agitate the iron pieces, which removes some of the rust and exposes fresh material more prone to oxidation, which then falls off and so on,” notes the University of Texas at Austin.

“As a result, they will become smaller and smaller, and eventually storms or hurricanes will wash them off the coast,” McBride put it in 2011. Calculations showed that 4% of the shrapnel detected on Omaha Beach would become insignificant within a century. The Allied landings will continue to be remembered, yes, monuments and memories.

Image | Anonymous (Flickr)

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