9,000 Fallen Soldiers Etched onto Normandy Beaches in this Amazing Artwork | History Hit

9,000 Fallen Soldiers Etched onto Normandy Beaches in this Amazing Artwork

Laura Mackenzie

02 Jun 2019

It is hard for us to imagine the scale of the D-Day operation today. The idea of 150,000 Allied forces descending on the beaches of Normandy in Nazi-occupied France seems more the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters than of real life.

But in 2013, British artists Jamie Wardley and Andy Moss went some way in helping us to visualise the number of people killed on 6 June 1944 with their conceptual art piece ‘The Fallen 9,000’.

Documentary covering events of June 6 1944 from the airborne drops of the early morning through to the German fightback of the late afternoon.
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Armed with rakes and stencils and helped by 60 volunteers, the artists etched 9,000 human silhouettes on the beaches of Arromanches to represent the civilians, Allied forces and Germans who were killed on D-Day.

James Holland, author of Normandy ‘44: D-Day and the Battle for France, answers the key questions surrounding D-Day.
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Laura Mackenzie