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Joe Steinbring

La Cambe

A wet lawn of flat grave markers and groups of five dark stone crosses, with oaks, on a misty day.
La Cambe from the top of its burial mound, looking down the path to the entrance.2006 · Photograph by Joe Steinbring
Static offline map showing La Cambe in France with a location pin.

I visited the German war cemetery at La Cambe in the summer of 2006, on the same college trip to Normandy that took me to Sainte-Mère-Église and Utah Beach at Sainte-Marie-du-Mont. More than 21,000 German soldiers who died in the Battle of Normandy are buried here, most under flat stone markers set into the lawn, with small groups of dark crosses standing among them. At the center is a grassy burial mound topped by a basalt cross between two figures, and from the top you can see the whole cemetery. It was a gray, wet day when we were there.

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  • A grassy mound ringed by a low stone wall, a massive dark cross between two stone figures on top.

    The burial mound at the center of the cemetery, with its basalt cross and two figures.

    2006 · Photograph by Joe Steinbring

  • Looking up at a bearded stone figure holding out a hand, the dark stone streaked with rain.

    One of the two figures that stand beneath the cross.

    2006 · Photograph by Joe Steinbring

  • A flat, cross-shaped reddish stone marker set in wet grass among fallen oak leaves.

    The grave of Josef Christ, a German private first class killed at 19 on June 16, 1944, which he shares with an unknown German soldier.

    2006 · Photograph by Joe Steinbring

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