wrecks from the D-Day invasion include the USS Glennon and the USS Rich. Lemonchois has brought up numerous items from the Meredith, including a capstan that sits in his museum. “Today, she lies fragmented on the sea bed with the barrels of her guns splayed out around her,” says Sciboz. Much of the wreck has been raised and sold for scrap.īut bodies are believed to be on board what remains of the ship. Severely damaged, with seven killed and more than 50 missing, the Meredith was a sitting duck for German bombers. In the early hours of the following day, still within sight of Utah beach, she struck an enemy mine. The Meredith came close to shore on D-Day to protect landing craft and limit casualties on the bullet-raked beach by firing on German shore batteries. One of the ships Sciboz and Lemonchois have exploited is the destroyer USS Meredith. Some 250 landing craft packed with men and tanks were lost before they could reach the beaches. At least 2,500 of the invaders were killed on the first day, many of them never reaching shore. THE D-Day invasion was the largest amphibious assault in history and involved more than 5,000 ships and 155,000 troops. It also includes exact locations, blueprints and other information – a virtual how-to book for grave robbers. He published a lavishly illustrated book just last month containing photographs of the wrecks and individual items that appeared to have been removed and restored. Many treat the wrecks with respect, but others take anything they can carry to the surface.įrench diver Bertrand Sciboz has also forged a career salvaging the D-Day wrecks. The divers, who include Americans, have their own Internet message boards on which they swap information and navigation readings to help each other find wrecks. Ironically, scuba diving over the Normandy wrecks has become very popular since the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994 and was given a further boost by the success of “Saving Private Ryan.” His encyclopedic knowledge of the area also enables him to cash in by chartering boats to scuba-diving clubs, which pick over the sites. He allegedly called objections to his grisly work “romantic nonsense.” He told a British newspaper last week: “By law, I can do what I want with them. He denies he is desecrating war graves by plundering wrecks and removing souvenirs. Lemonchois claims the items in his museum were found abandoned and not removed from bodies. They include weapons, helmets, binoculars, razors, full whiskey flasks and even letters home from soldiers who realized they may be spending not only their longest day, but their last, at Normandy. The rest he has sold as momentos or scrap.ĪMONG the 2,000 items in the “Museum of Underwater Wrecks” are the personal belongings of American GIs and Naval personnel who never made it to shore. He has brought up enough to open his own private museum in the Normandy town of Port en Bessin. Army tanks, trucks and Jeeps – in which American servicemen likely died – have been dragged up. He has spent 30 years, using teams of divers and a 60-ton crane mounted on a barge, retrieving submerged booty from the sea bed. One of the salvage operators licensed by the French government to work in the area is Jacques Lemonchois, 58. Still, many ships and landing craft remain where they sank in the battle. The French government has already removed thousands of tons of twisted metal from the beaches and the water for cosmetic and safety reasons.
There’s no difference between this and digging up someone’s grave,” he said. “When you are lost at sea you are lost at sea.
Navy Memorial Foundation, said: “It’s desecrating an area everyone should hold sacred. government to recognize this area as being a consecrated area. “I would think there would be a move by the U.S. “It’s shocking and deplorable,” Bill Smith, national spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, told the Post. Many of the wrecks lie only a short distance off Utah and Omaha beaches, the areas stormed by American troops on June 6, 1944. Most are from D-Day, the invasion of German-occupied France vividly recalled in the movies “Saving Private Ryan” and “The Longest Day.” servicemen are being systematically desecrated and looted for souvenirs.įor years, French salvage operators, professional treasure hunters and hundreds of amateur scuba divers have been pillaging the remains of warships, transport vessels and landing craft lost in action off the coast of Normandy in northern France. THE final resting places of thousands of U.S.