Personal Fates
The majority of the German war dead buried at La Cambe fell between June 6 and August 20, 1944 and their ages range from 16 to 72. They died during the Allied landings and the ensuing combat. Casualties of the war in Normandy are still being found after some 50 years, although formal burial ceremonies are less frequent these days. In total, as of July 2008, there are the remains of 21,222 German soldiers, sailors and airmen buried at La Cambe. The buried include:
- SS-Sturmbannführer Adolf Otto Diekmann: the most senior officer at the massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane on 10 June 1944. Ordered to be court martialled, he was killed in battle in Normandy on 29 June.
- SS-Hauptsturmführer Michael Wittmann: Tiger tank ace, who along with his tank crew was informally buried in an unmarked site following their deaths on 8 August 1944. Rediscovered in 1983, the entire crew were and reinterred together at La Cambe.
Read more about this topic: La Cambe German War Cemetery
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or fates:
“Keep your own secret, and get out other people’s. Keep your own temper, and artfully warm other people’s. Counterwork your rivals with diligence and dexterity, but at the same time with the utmost personal civility to them: and be firm without heat.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“The fates are not quite obdurate;
They have a grim, sardonic way
Of granting them who supplicate
The thing they wanted yesterday.”
—Roselle Mercier Montgomery (1874–1933)