Back on land, a marching band strikes up a salute to the returning pilgrims. In the driving rain, the band plays on.
	Just outside of Grandcamp, a new rond-point (traffic circle) is inaugurated in honor of the Rangers. Raincoats and umbrellas are de rigueur. "The weather's treating us the same way it did on D-Day", one veteran remarked. "Yeh", added another, "cold, windy, and damp".
	Throughout hundreds of towns and villages in Normandy, the scene is replicated. General Montgomery gets a traffic circle in Port-en-Bessin; Eisenhower, a bronze colossus on a rond-point in Bayeux; Elsewhere, streets, town squares, walk ways, parks, and more traffic circles, are renamed in honor of WWII units, divisions, or individual soldiers. Hundreds of commemorative plaques are unveiled; hundreds of steles are dedicated.
	By evening, everyone will be back in dry clothes and back in the soccer stadium-- now converted into a banquet hall -- for a dinner offered by the Pointe du Hoc Committee.

© Copyright 1994-1998 Vivian E. Corbin. All text and photographs contained herein are the work and intellectual property of the author and may not be used without the author's express written permission.