On June 6, 1944, the three slabs of steel reinforced concrete before you constituted 20 feet and 16 tons of German fortified coastline that ran from the Franco-Spanish border in the south to Norway, over 2,400 miles to the north. "Atlantic Wall" was the bunkers that housed German troops artillery pieces, machine-gun nests, and the six million mines, barbed-wire entanglements, and landing craft obstacles that lay before it.
By D-Day, the Germans had poured 17 million cubic yards of concrete, reinforced by 1.3 million short tons of steel — enough concrete to build 270 Empire State Buildings and enough steel to build the Eiffel Tower 160 times over. Despite these efforts, the end of D-Day saw all five beachheads secured by the Allies and 10 Allied divisions ashore, advancing inland.
These fragments came from the section of the Atlantic Wall that was part of the anti-tank defense spanning Utah Beach. The pockmarks are a result of thousands of American weapons fired upon the German-held coast that day.
Gift of the Utah Beach D-Day Museum With additional support provided by Mr. and Mrs. R. Randolph Richmond, Jr. The National WWII Museum, 2011.292
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