D-Day’s historic beaches threatened by rising sea levels

As France prepares to mark the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings that helped change the course of World War II, the historic beaches and coastlines where Allied forces landed are once more under attack – but this time from rising sea levels linked to climate change.

A 100-kilometre stretch of Normandy's coastline bears witness to the 6 June 1944 D-Day landings.

Millions of visitors are drawn each year to walk its coastal paths and contemplate bunkers, shipwrecked vessels and other vestiges of war in memory of those that died or suffered.

Nowadays, the sea that brought in 150,000 Allied soldiers is threatening those heritage sites. Chalk cliffs and dunes are being eroded, while marshes and land reclaimed in the 18th and 19th centuries risk submersion.

According to the Normandy climate change report, two-thirds of the coast are being eroded and – over the last 80 years – "Normandy's chalky cliffs have moved back by an average of 20-25cm per year".   

The famed D-Day beaches – codenamed Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword – look nothing like they did in 1944.

“They're suffering from both erosion and the risk of flooding,” Régis Leymarie, a geographer with the Coastal Conservatory in Normandy, told AFP news agency.

“We're in the process of moving from historic sites to places for interpreting history”.

In low-lying areas like the Gold Beach, marshes at Ver-sur-Mer “the environment will be transformed in 10 years or so,” he added.

Powerless to intervene

In Graye-sur-Mer, north of Caen, the sea has toppled entire bunkers, with locals fearing the changing landscape is washing away important souvenirs of the war.

Charles de Vallavieille, mayor of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont and director of the Utah Beach Museum, recalls seeing “veterans waving to the sea and crying 'Utah is the beach, it's the emotion of the beach'”.

He regrets they receive little help in trying to battle mother nature.

“We don't have the right to lay down stones [or] to do anything to stop the advance of the sea,” he told AFP.

“The law protects dykes but not dunes. We can't get help, even though it's a problem that affects the whole coast – protect one place and the water will go elsewhere”.

US investment

The Bessin Cliffs – where German artillery batteries pounded the beaches from hard-to-reach promontories such as Pointe du Hoc – are gradually wasting away under the impact of waves, sea salt, thawing and refreezing.

The site is of special importance to Americans. On the morning of 6 June, 200 US rangers scaled the 30-metre-high Pointe du Hoc and seized the German artillery installations that could have fired on American troops landing at Omaha and Utah beaches.

The site is managed by the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) in memory of the 135 rangers who died on that day.

In 2010, US authorities spent nearly €5 million to reinforce the cliff and prevent the observatory from falling into the sea.  

By 2022, the US invested another €6 million to try and secure the whole site after the Pointe was badly damaged.

Coastal paths have been “set back 20 metres" to ensure public safety, the ABMC has said.

Sea levels are currently rising by a few millimetres every year so "it's only over two or three generations that we realise this," said Leymarie. 

"We're coming to the end of the D-Day landing sites as we knew them, and nature will reclaim its rights."

(with AFP)