Original subtitles

June 6, 1944, early morning.

150,000 soldiers are getting ready to land

on the Normandy beaches.

This operation, known as Overlord, has been prepared

from England for several years.

It aimed to take France back from the Germans.

5,700 boats, 12,000 airplanes, thousands of paratroopers,

all involved in the biggest military operation in history.

Out of such an unprecedented battle, thousands of

hours of images and eyewitness accounts have

been preserved.

We have promised ourselves never to forget the

sacrifices made by those who gave their lives

for the liberation of France.

Still, 70 years later, previously unknown remnants

of the D-Day landings are still being discovered.

Thanks to the use of 3D technology and new field studies,

experts will be shedding a whole new light

on the landings themselves.

They are archeologists, divers, and speleologists

who explore the region looking for long forgotten

hidden places and objects dating from the war.

With each new discovery, secrets are unlocked

concerning the thousands of bunkers built by Hitler,

the daily lives of soldiers during the battle, the lives

of civilians when bombs were falling, or the fate

that awaited German prisoners.

In this brand new line of inquiry, history mingles

with the Earth, and archeology offers a brand new

perspective on the allied D-Day landings in Normandy

on the 6th of June, 1944.

Along the French coast, hundreds of bunkers

overlook the beaches.

They are symbols of the Second World War,

visited by thousands of people each year.

They are now part of the French heritage.

During the war, these bunkers were the cornerstones

of a huge line of defense for the German

occupied territory.

Imagined by Adolf Hitler himself, this structure

was named der Atlantikwall, the Atlantic Wall.

These fortifications stretched from the Spanish border

up to the north of Norway, forming a bastion designed

to protect Nazi Germany from any possible Ally landing.

In Normandy, the Germans focused their efforts on Ports.

The town of Cherbourg, Dieppe, and Le Havre

became fortresses.

Bunkers complied with precise standards.

These were defined by the TODT organization,

which regrouped engineers of the third reich.

The shape, the surface, the distribution of rooms,

everything was standardized, with codes identifying

each type of bunker according to its use.

In order to defend the coastlines, the German army

needed artillery batteries that were equipped with

canons, ammunition shelters, command posts,

accommodation for soldiers, hospitals, and radio stations.

All of which had to be equipped with water,

electricity, and means of communication.

Little by little beneath Normandy, an underground

concrete city was formed, filled with galleries and bunkers.

After the war, soil and vegetation slowly covered

these constructions.

70 years after the events, archeologists have renewed

efforts to explore and carry out an inventory

of the Atlantic Wall bunkers.

Here on the heights of Cherbourg, the German army

had built an anti-aircraft unit command post.

Its code name was L 434.

A photograph from 1947 allows us to picture the

bunker's shape, as well as the annexes around it,

which have now disappeared.

Ludovic Le Gaillard and Elise Sehier are in charge of

conducting an archeological survey of the area.

They will first of all enter the bunker to

examine its state of preservation.

It's really well preserved.

Yes, it's a little humid, but

in very good condition.

We can see the traces of the boards that were used

for form work into which the concrete was poured.

Paint, white uniform paint, a metal roof.

Elise and Ludovic follow the map

to try and find their bearings inside the bunker.

So what is this, the airing room?

The ventilation unit.

The ventilation equipment must have been set up over here.

I think this is the metal support for the machine

that must have been attached here.

What's the thickness here?

There's two meters of concrete above us, right?

Two meters for the exterior walls

and two meters for the roof.

Occupants could live in complete isolation

from the outside thanks to special ventilation,

heating, and waste water collection systems.

In the walls, secure firing stations defended the entrances.

This is an armored door with four to five

centimeters of sheet metal.

And here is a sliding window system for light weapons,

small arms, rifles, and machine guns.

70 years have passed and yet the

premises are still perfectly preserved, as if

they had just been abandoned.

The survey continues around the main bunker.

The objective is to uncover the concrete structures

that surrounded the command post.

On the aerial photograph, we could see

small white dots at the end of these trenches.

This is actually what the white dots are.

They're called tobruks.

Tobruks are machine gun nests.

The gunner was positioned in a round ditch at

ground level, with only his chest protruding

from the structure.

Thanks to the archeological survey, we can now pinpoint

the precise position of the external line of defense

formed by tubruks.

Here we actually have the date on

which the tubruk was completed, March 22.

Yes.

1944.

We never usually come across such an

accurate date, it's a really exceptional find.

This is very, very rare.

Along with Cherbourg, Dieppe was another

bastion for the German army during the war.

Hundreds of bunkers are still scattered around the town.

Some have even faded from memory.

The entrance to an exceptional bunker was recently

rediscovered by archeologists.

This 300 square meter compound has been

completely forgotten.

While exploring its interior, the archeologists came

across unique and perfectly preserved murals.

This mural represents an Anglo-Canadian

soldier trying to climb one of Dieppe's most

impregnable cliffs, and he is mocked in the process.

As he tries to climb, a German soldier steps on his hand

and is about to hit him on the head to knock him down.

These propaganda murals aim to unite

German troops and reinforce their feelings of

superiority towards the Allies.

In a room at the back of the bunker, another drawing

mocks an English soldier.

Isolated on this little island, carrying a harmless rifle,

he is drawn as if trembling with fear when faced

with the powerful canon of the German soldiers,

who are, in contrast, perfectly relaxed.

The message that is promoted here is

that the Atlantic Wall is ready, we are ready.

We are armed and relaxed.

You can come, we're waiting for you.

In June of 1944, 12,000 concrete buildings

protected the coastline of Western Europe.

The Atlantic Wall as imagined by Hitler seemed

to be impenetrable.

But the Allied forces didn't have a choice.

If they wanted to win the war, they had to take back France.

After months of preparation, they chose to land

in Normandy, on a segment of the coast located

to the north of Caen, 150 kilometers from England.

This zone had its advantages.

The sand beaches would make it easier for the

troops to land, and the area was close to the ports

of Le Havre and Cherbourg, which would be useful

for transporting equipment after the operation.

The region became the scene of the biggest military

operation ever launched, code name Overlord.

Many remains from this unprecedented battle have

been hidden underground for the last 70 years.

At the Borgebusse laboratory, archeologists catalogue

thousands of objects from the Second World War

found during excavations.

All objects are examined by experts before being

cleaned and analyzed.

During a dig in Ranville, Vincent Tessier and Emmanuel

Chesquiere recently uncovered fragments of objects

that were hard to identify.

The site was located near the Benouville bridge,

called the Pegasus Bridge, after the war.

It was one of the first bridges to be

attacked by the Allies.

The discovered remnants could be precious evidence

of the event.

When surveying the site in Ranville, we found

fragments of a buoy, which was an element of the

soldiers' equipment.

The soldier carried this buoy hanging from his waist,

and we also found the inflating nozzle that went with it.

Soldiers used their mouths to inflate the buoy.

We also found fragments of the gas masks

that each soldier would carry.

These elements are typical of the

Allies military equipment.

Around them, tin cans indicate at which moment of the

operation the soldiers were on site.

Here's a can that contained an ointment

in case of a gas attack.

I don't think that it was used here.

There were also other smaller tin cans which

would have contained chocolates and energy bars,

which are survival rations rather than usual rations.

The fact that these cans are here means that the

soldiers didn't stay long, and that they were left to

survive during the first hours or even days of the landing

without a canteen or logistical services.

They had to make do with the few cans they had

received in their military kits in England.

These remnants were left by the soldiers

who were in the first units to enter Normandy.

Three clues tell us how they managed to get to the bridge.

The first clue we found is made of

plexiglass pieces.

There were several fragmented pieces.

On one of which we can see a hinge.

On an original photograph from a reference book,

which has been helping us to identify remnants,

we can also see the same hinge.

It seems to be part of a cockpit.

The second clue is a lamp.

We found it alongside the plexiglass fragments.

This lamp is engraved with a crown as well as

the letters A M, which stand for Air Ministry.

So these are objects that are produced by the

Air Ministry and which equipped the aircraft series.

It is probably a ceiling lamp.

And the third clue consists of fuselage fragments

with a blue, white, and red tricolor cockade

and a yellow circle on the outside of the cockade,

identifying the aircraft as a bomber, or a glider.

And here we actually found gliders.

Because of the wooden fuselage,

the option of it being a bomber was excluded.

The remains of this plane are those of a British glider,

which landed a few meters away from the bridge

within the first hours of the operation.

These horsa gliders could transport up to 25 soldiers.

They were made of light material and were hauled by

planes toward their targets, thus nicknamed

silent coffins.

These gliders dropped the airborne troops on the

6th of June, 1944, from midnight to 6:00 AM.

The paratroopers were set with two targets, located

on either side of the landing beaches.

To the west, Sainte-Mere-Eglise was the target

for the Americans.

To the east, Benouville Ranville and Merville Franceville

were targets for the British army.

24,000 men were air dropped in the middle of the night.

After a few hours of fierce fighting and despite

heavy losses, the airborne troops managed

to seize their targets.

Thanks to this operation, both sides of the beaches

chosen as the landing site were secured.

Within a few hours, Europe's fate was about to be

played out on a strip of land that was barely

80 kilometers wide.

The area was divided into five sectors that had code names.

Each unit had a precise target.

The American, British, and Canadian units shared

the beaches of Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword.

150,000 men invaded these beaches with the

objective of penetrating inland as of the evening

of June the 6th.

Today some parts of the coastline are still scarred

by those very first moments of the D-Day landings.

On the Caen, at the top of a steep cliff,

German artillery batteries were shelled by Allied bombings.

The ground is dotted with shell holes, now symbolizing

the violence of these combats.

Among the five D-Day beaches, Omaha beach was

the seat of the most ferocious battles.

This beach is six kilometers long, framed by cliffs

and thus protected by the wind.

It seemed like the ideal place for an Allied landing.

Bennit Labbey, a young archeologist, tells us how this

beach became the bloody Omaha in only a few hours.

To do this, he compared his own topographical

analysis with historical data.

On the sixth of June, 1944, approximately

34,000 soldiers were about to land on this beach.

Opposing these American soldiers were about

1,000 German soldiers.

The Germans had the stronger position, since,

as we can see, the landscape gave the Germans

the advantage.

The beach was completely dominated by the hills,

so the soldiers had a clear shooting range

and an ideal position.

Hitler put Marshall Erwin Rommel

in charge of defending the coastline.

Rommel very quickly realized that this was the

perfect site for a landing.

He therefore reinforced the defensive structures

of the beach and deployed 600 additional soldiers.

The Allied troops had to land at low tide, after having

jumped from their landing crafts, the men had

300 meters of water to wade through before

reaching the beach under heavy machine gun fire.

For these American soldiers,

it was an enormous distance.

The soldiers carried heavy equipment.

Some landed with water up to their knees,

others landed with water up to their shoulders.

To cross the beach they had only two means of cover.

They could either use the obstacles created

by the German soldiers or use the bodies of

their fellow soldiers who had just been killed.

To talk about the Omaha landings

from a German perspective, Bennit Lebbey

used the memoirs of Corporal Heinrich Severloh.

On the 6th of June, this young 19 year old soldier

was posted on the heights of the beach.

He recalled all that happened to him in a book

published in 2004.

In this book he stated that he alone killed 2,000

American soldiers and fired 12,000 gunshots.

With this testimony, he acquired the nickname of

the Omaha Beast.

Bennit Laddey used information from Severloh's book

as well as his own knowledge of the field to find the

exact location where the events took place.

The first element in his investigation was the name

of the book, WN62.

This was the code name for the resistance nest

close to where Corporal Severloh was posted.

So here we are on the WN62, one of

the 15 strong points on the bay of Omaha beach.

Just behind me you can see a bunker.

This bunker was an observation post that inside

it was our young soldiers' lieutenant, Bernard Firkin,

who was killed on the 6th of June at the post's entrance.

This lieutenant belonged to the 352nd infantry division.

He was in charge of observation and the young corporal

at his side was meant to protect both the lieutenant

and the observation post.

In his memoirs, the young soldier claims

that he was positioned seven meters away

from the bunker inside a trench.

Today the ground has changed, but there are still

some elements allowing us to locate the exact

position chosen by Heinrich Severloh to set up

his machine gun.

We can still see the entrance of the bunker,

as well as the beginning of the trench.

Shortly after the landing, the Americans leveled

the terrain, but we need to imagine that

there was a trench here.

Our soldier placed his machine gun at the

extension of the trench.

The soldier could fire on the Americans with a

range of over 90 degrees.

The number of Allies who died on Omaha

beach is estimated to have reached approximately

1,000 soldiers.

The figure given by Heinrich Severloh, 2,000 Americans

killed, is therefore exaggerated.

This shows that time and traumas linked to combat

can impair a man's memory.

Once his ammunition was exhausted, the young German

corporal managed to escape towards the forest.

Wounded and starving, he surrendered on June 7

and was made a prisoner.

He was one of the rare German soldiers who

survived the Omaha beach landing.

In order to support the progression of troops on land,

an armada of warships was positioned in front of

the Normandy beaches.

All ships were under constant fire from German

marine artillery batteries and the Luftwaffe bombers.

Out of the 5,700 ships marshaled for the Overlord

operation, an estimated 2,000 ships were lost.

After the landings, the Royal Navy recorded the place and

date of each shipwreck that occurred during the operation.

Within a few weeks of battles, the bay was transformed

into a vast underwater archeological site.

Having dived here at least 100 times, Yves Marchaland

knows the area perfectly well.

He brings divers here to train them and show them

how to explore Second World War remains.

Today they are going to be diving off Juno beach.

An 88 meter long Canadian friget sank there

on June the 8th, 1944 at 4:45 AM.

The ship's name was HMS Lawford.

This boat was what we might call

a headquarters ship and regulated some of the

landings of the Canadian troops.

A German plane managed to find a way around the

air defenses on the beaches and launched a torpedo.

The torpedo hit Lawford midship and the boat sunk.

At the time of the attack, there were more than 100

people on board and at least 20 people lost their lives.

Images obtained with a sonar device

showed that the wrecked ship broke into three pieces

and spread over a surface of 100 meters.

In the middle section, we can see the German torpedo's

precise point of impact, which made the ship sink.

Here it is, we're right above it.

This is the bottom of the ship.

We're just above the wreck that sticks out three meters.

The boat is lying on its port side, which has collapsed

somewhat after being 70 years underwater.

(eerie music)

At the front of the wreckage, the divers

first find one of the ship's canons.

A little further away, they identify projectiles

meant to cause enemy submarines to explode.

70 years later, the charges are still active.

Exploring the Lawford allows us to see the extent

to which it is torn apart by the German torpedo.

The boat is now a tangle of perturbing corroded

tubes and electrical wires.

When you reach the ship, there is an

eerie kind of atmosphere.

The fact that you're entrapped in a visibility of

only 10 meters pulls you into the grimness of the sight.

You can imagine the people who were there.

You can picture a captain right here giving orders

all those years ago.

In certain areas, the only thing that's

left of the hull is its frame, the rest having

been washed away by storms and corrosion.

At the back, the divers discover the shafts

for the boat's propellers.

Fishing nets now hang from the propellors.

The Lawford was previously a warship, but has

now become a shelter for marine wildlife,

which has now claimed the ship as its own.

After having taken the beaches, the Allied troops

advance inland.

The Battle of Normandy commenced.

To force the Germans to surrender, the Allies

triggered massive bombings in occupied towns.

Thousands of civilians were forced to flee.

In Caen, some people found refuge in the stone

quarries that surrounded the town.

20,000 Caen residents stayed there underground,

waiting for their town to be liberated.

Today nature has reclaimed these shelters and we

almost forget that they had been used during

the Battle of Normandy.

A group of archeologists and speleologists therefore

decide to explore these forgotten sites to understand

how the local civilians organized life underground.

The team's mission today is exploring a quarry

located 12 meters underground.

Okay, I'm going down.

This place was dug out in the 19th century

to extract limestone, which is typical of the region.

It is known as the Caen stone and is used

for many of the town's buildings.

A little more slack please.

That's good, perfect.

At the beginning of the 20th century,

the quarry became a storage area for the

Saint brothers, who were beer brewers.

They installed an elaborate electrical system inside.

As soon as the landing started, the brothers

realized that their storage site could be used

as a refuge for displaced residents.

On the 6th of June, 1944 in the afternoon,

the Saint brothers left their factory and informed

the Caen population, who were the victims of very

heavy bombings, about the entrances to the quarries.

And very quickly, about 1,000 people settled there,

living underground for a few weeks.

These were hard living conditions and some people

remained there until the end of the 19th of July, 1944.

Artifacts are very well preserved in this

underground environment, which is temperate

and closed off.

The objects found here seem to have fossilized

in the last 70 years.

There's emotion involved, because our

job is also to revive the past.

We lack sources, especially about those who

found refuge in the quarries.

It was a short lived moment in history and the

archives don't provide us with much information.

We're able to establish something of what their

daily lives were like during the bombings thanks to

objects such as these toys and the camera.

We do have some moving testimonies of what their

lives were like during the war.

Laurent Dujardin was one of the first to

explore the quarries, which served as wartime shelters.

His archeological discoveries helped surviviors

tell their story.

The investigation I initiated made it

possible to speak out.

Speaking freely about this had been difficult

for a very long time.

It had all been experienced as a dramatic event.

No one talked about what happened in

the quarries with their families.

Then, slowly but surely, older people felt the

need to talk about it.

Yvonne Trollez is the face and voice

of this underground life.

She's 88 years old and still remembers D-Day very precisely.

Back then, she was a young student and her life was

suddenly transformed at midday.

That day, severe bombings hit Caen.

300 civilians died on the first day.

On the 6th of June, 1944, I was in

my parents' house, here.

We'd been warned by the sound of machine gun

fire and planes above us.

We realized that something significant was going on

and we left to find shelter.

We had to be careful because the Germans

were also looking for shelter, and they were

already using the basement in our house.

Yvonne's family chose to hide in an

underground quarry 20 meters away from their

house, known as La Glaciere.

70 years after their events, the shelter still exists

and now underneath a public park.

The temporary shelter became a living space.

The Trollez family, along with 50 other neighbors

cohabited it in the dark and in the cold.

It was difficult.

But we were able to provide light with lamps and candles.

So that some children could play dominos and cards.

Little by little, people brought in a table and chairs

to make the space more comfortable.

But lacking basic necessities,

they soon had to leave the shelter to find food.

Artillery fire came at pretty

constant intervals.

And that's when we came out of hiding.

But it was still very risky.

One of the people from the tunnel was actually

killed in her kitchen, 50 meters away from the refuge.

This warned everyone to be very cautious

and only go outside if it were absolutely necessary.

On the 8th of July, Caen was the target

of a large scale bombing to destroy the enemy.

2,500 tons of bombs were dropped in 45 minutes,

three quarters of the town was destroyed.

The continuous shelling was a hellish

moment for us.

And it lasted quite some time.

This wall gave us the impression of being solid and safer.

We clung close to each other.

Panicking while the ground shook.

Everything around us was shaking.

The next day at 6:00 PM, Caen was liberated.

Civilians welcomed their liberators joyously.

Two military photographers captured the fate

of the glaciere refugees.

A picture of Yvonne was among the many photographs.

It travelled around the world and became a

symbol of the lives of civilians under the bombing

and of the liberation of France.

When I look at these photographs,

I think of those times.

I tell myself that we were very lucky.

Unlike many others.

Caen was only partially liberated.

The Allied forces only held the northern part of the town.

In the south, fighting went on and the Battle of

Normandy dragged on for a month and a half.

The Allies organized themselves as well as they could

within the vicinity of the towns and in the country.

They had to alternate between periods of rest,

surveillance, and progression toward the German lines.

This all had to be done while taking maximum advantage

of the terrain to protect themselves from gunfire and bombs.

70 years later, at the gates of Caen, evidence of

Allied soldiers who passed this way have been

unearthed during excavations.

Here archeologists are conducting a survey before

allowing a housing development to be constructed.

The person responsible for this operation

is Emmanuel Chesquiere.

It's fragile.

No, it's okay.

There are quite a few metal fragments in the area

at vertical angles.

Here I'm excavating the second part of what we

call a manhole.

They were pits dug out by soldiers during battle.

They took shelter in these to avoid mortar attacks

and German sniper shots.

They dug holes one meter 60 to one meter 30 deep,

according to the soldier's size and packed some of

the earth around the hole as a protective mound.

The ground level would be here.

The hole would protect them up to here

and the only things jutting above the protective

mound would be the rifle, helmet and the soldier's

eyes to aim and shoot.

The Battle of Normandy was a

war of progression.

Soldiers had to dig new manholes regularly to protect

themselves, either alone or with a fellow soldier.

These holes then became temporary shooting zones

and confined spaces in which soldiers had to survive.

This is a combat area.

But it's also a place where they had to live

for one, two, or three days.

We didn't find many items here, only a few

ceramic fragments and a piece of metal chain.

But we don't know how they were used.

In other areas, soldiers stayed in manholes for

longer periods and we came across several

characteristic elements.

For example, we found an English military mess kit

on which the soldier had etched his name,

although not very visible through the rust.

Otherwise we would very often came across tin cans,

boxes of military rations, tea, food, and beer bottles.

These are bottles that were given by the local people

who befriended Allied armies very quickly.

It's an emotional experience because you can imagine

what that was like.

Your feet are in the same place as theirs and you become

aware of the fear they felt in such small structures

in which they risked being buried at any moment.

You can feel their emotional stress.

The Battle of Normandy lasted 11 weeks.

Village after village, the Allies reclaimed areas that

had been occupied by the German army.

It's only in the first few days of September that the

whole of Normandy was fully controlled by Allied forces.

During the liberation, Allied soldiers were welcomed

as heroes by jubilant crowds.

Their arrival marked the end of occupation and a

return to freedom.

These images of joy contrast those of the defeated troops.

Thousands of German soldiers became prisoners.

By the end of August 1944, there were already

250,000 German prisoners.

Huge prison camps were set up to detain them.

The first Norman prison camp was built by the

Americans in Cherbourg in the Glacerie neighborhood.

70 years later, traces of the former prison camp were found.

Archeologists identify the locations of the barracks

and found 4,000 objects that belonged to the soldiers.

Here we can see the remains of a raincoat.

On it there are the traces of the letters P W,

prisoner of war, which are clearly visible.

This is the only one we found like this.

We also found identity plates.

The famous American dog tags, which are quite

particular in this case, as they were not meant

for American soldiers, but for German soldiers.

When German soldiers were captured, they were

stripped of their original service numbers

and given new ones as prisoners of war.

Following the 1945 armistice, the German

prisoners were transferred to the French authorities

and were put to work to clear the ruined buildings.

In Normandy, this was a colossal task.

The Allied bombings left behind them ruined

and crippled towns.

A total of a million soldiers from the Wehrmacht

participated in France's reconstruction.

On the Glaciere site, archeologists were able to trace

the evolution of the prisoner of war camp

throughout the years of operation.

It was initially built as a village made up

of tents in 1944.

The space then evolved into a lasting structure

which the prisoners built themselves.

Each group of prisoners created their

own lodgings made up of salvaged material.

Each barrack was meant to lodge five or six men.

There was a dormitory section and a living space.

The barracks were dug into the ground, making

the buildings low in height.

They were also built with a crawlspace.

Sometimes there were benches that were

dug directly in the ground.

So we can imagine that there was a table

and a stove for heating.

Around these barracks there were drainage

systems to stay dry.

Everything was done so that captivity would be

accepted on the longer term.

The objects that were found in

excavations tell us about the daily lives

of these men, who understood that they would

be staying in France for a long time.

We found many ink bottles that were

left on the premises when the camp was abandoned.

These bottles were mostly American brands and

show that letter writing was very important to these men.

They also demonstrated creative ways to replace

what couldn't be found on the premises.

Here we have a shoe, which is actually

an American work boot

and which was transformed into a slipper

by cutting out the back of the boot.

The analysis of objects from La Glaciere

shows that the camp evolved from being a prison

camp to being a labor camp.

These prisoners were given a lot of freedom

and became almost self governing, especially when it

came to managing their own lodgings and daily lives.

The Glacerie camp closed in 1948.

The prisoners either went back to Germany or

stayed in France.

The memories of their four years in captivity

have faded with time, but the remains of the

Glacerie camp have brought them back to life.

Just like the German POW camps, traces of the

Battle of Normandy have progressively faded

with time, and with reconstruction.

But among the buried remnants, some have a

special importance for archeologists.

The bodies of missing soldiers.

Each year 10 to 20 tombs from the Second World War

are found during excavations.

When a skeleton belongs to a soldier from the

German army, only one man can investigate,

Lucien Tisserand.

He was trained in Austria to identify military men

who were killed in battle.

He is what we call an exhumer.

For 25 years, he has been the only person authorized

by Germany to study these Second World War bodies.

Today he's studying a skeleton which was recently

exhumed close to a farm in the Calvados region.

Various elements serve to indicate that this

soldier did indeed belong to the Wehrmacht.

This part here is a boot that has a

specific heel and shape.

Notice the small blue, blue gray buttons.

We also found half of an oval identity plate,

very distinctive, as it's the only country

that issued plates in that shape.

These small details allow us to say this is a

German soldier.

He carried a small leather wallet folded in half.

Inside there's a small Orthodox cross.

This could give us an indication on his origin.

In Germany, several nationalities had been incorporated.

This man may have been Ukrainian or Greek.

The next step consists in finding clues

pertaining to the cause of death of the soldier.

This soldier must have been

severely wounded, since he had what looks

like tourniquets on both arms.

This material seems rubbery.

It's very rare to find a soldier buried

with his bandages on.

I think hemorrhaging led to his death.

One of his arms was severed, as was the other one.

And the fact that there is no pelvic bone on

his left side is a sign that his leg was ripped off

during an explosion.

As part of his work, Lucien Tisserand

creates an exhumation report.

It contains all the information found on the skeleton

and is sent to the German war graves commission.

The information from the report is then compared

with the archival information.

This long investigation process can lead in some cases

to the identification of the soldier.

I sympathize with these families,

who are faced with the uncertainty of not

knowing the real fate of their relatives.

They must wonder whether they survived and went

on to live elsewhere, had they chose not to return

to Germany.

Did they die, and if so, where?

Did they suffer?

It's a small reward when we can say we found

someone from your family.

It makes me feel better because even when soldiers

were unidentified they will at least be buried

in a dignified way.

Lucien Tisserand is also the curator

of the La Cambe German war cemetery.

He has forged strong bonds with the families

of the deceased through his work identifying

bodies and taking care of soldiers' tombs.

They adopt me a little bit like a

member of their familiy.

They learn to know me.

I'm their eyes, looking after the place where

their family members are buried.

We form very strong bonds.

They need to make sure that the tombs are well tended,

that they are in good hands and that the

buried soldiers are respected.

Today over 21,000 soldiers from the

Germany army rest in the La Cambe Cemetery.

A few kilometers away, 10,000 Americans are buried

at the Coleville Sur Mer, close to the Omaha beach.

These tombs remind us of the sacrifices of the 210,000

soldiers who lost their lives during the D-Day landings.

Respecting and honoring their memory also calls

for continuing investigations in order to better

understand how the events of the war unfolded.

From the smallest object discovered in an excavation

to the huge concrete bunkers, the remains that are

examined by the archeologists shed new light

on this period of history, which seemed to have

no more secrets for us.

These remains are the witnesses of a war that

transformed the world.

They form a part of our history and human heritage.

Analyzing these objects and preserving them is our duty

so that the D-Day events may never fall into oblivion.

(moving music)