History gets things wrong all the time. Sometimes it’s an honest mistake, a name misspelled in a record, a place misidentified in a report. Other times, those small errors snowball until entire events are misremembered, misfiled, or just plain lost. That’s exactly what happened when I came across a strange entry in a WWII Signal Corps film log.
I was searching for records on the Normandy American Cemetery while updating an old post, hoping to find early documentation of its existence. I had a clip from a Signal Corps film showing early burials, and I wanted to include it in my post, but something didn’t sit right. The footage looked like it was from Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, but the log entry said it was filmed at an ‘American cemetery near Etuville, France.’ That single word — Etuville — threw me off. I wasn’t going to claim the footage showed Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer until I knew for sure. But there was just one problem — Etuville doesn’t exist. Not in France, not anywhere.
That single mistake sent me on a historical scavenger hunt — digging through archived footage, cross-referencing military reports, and comparing wartime photographs to piece together what actually happened. The answer? The cemetery was real, the burials were real, but they weren’t in Etuville. The log had misidentified one of the most important sites of the D-Day aftermath: the first American cemetery in Normandy, located at Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer.
This is how a small clerical error led me down a historical rabbit hole and how I confirmed the real story behind Omaha Beach’s first burials.
Following the Clues
The first thing I did was check the surrounding Signal Corps records. While “Etuville” turned up nothing, the other log entries referenced locations that were well-documented sites of early burials and combat operations, including:
- Omaha Beach
- Colleville-sur-Mer
- The First POW Camp in the Cherbourg Peninsula
If all these burial and combat records were centered around Omaha Beach, it seemed likely that “Etuville” was simply a misidentified or mistranscribed location near there. If this burial took place near Omaha Beach, there had to be visual proof. The next step was to see what the actual footage showed.
Visual Confirmation: The Omaha Beach Connection
One of the first clues came before the burial footage even started. A Signal Corps slate marker at the beginning of the reel identified the location as:
”Road E1, Easy Red Beach, Omaha Beach, June 9, 1944”
This was huge. Road E1 was one of the designated exit points from Omaha Beach, leading directly to Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer. That meant the burial footage that followed had to be nearby.
As I watched the footage, more details confirmed that this wasn’t some unknown cemetery, it was the earliest version of the burial site that would eventually become the Normandy American Cemetery.
Key Evidence from the Burial Footage
- Graves Dug at the Edge of the Sand
- The footage showed freshly dug graves in loose, sandy soil, consistent with the terrain near Omaha Beach. The site appears to be in an area where the beach’s sandy terrain begins blending into the grassy inland fields.
- A tree line in the distance matched known images of the temporary cemetery at Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer.
- Wrecked Gliders in the Background
- Several shots revealed CG-4A Waco gliders near the burial site. Clear evidence that this was an airborne landing zone.
- The 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions used these gliders during D-Day operations, and many crash landed inland from Omaha Beach.
- Their presence confirmed that the burial site was located in a known glider landing area, further reinforcing that this was Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer.
- French Civilians Digging Graves
- One of the most compelling moments in the footage showed French civilians working alongside U.S. troops, digging graves.
- The Signal Corps log for Invasion 94 (June 10, 1944) explicitly stated: “Frenchmen bury Americans.”
- This perfectly matched the film evidence, confirming local civilians participated in the burial efforts.
Misidentified Archival Photos Add to the Mystery
Further investigation revealed another layer of historical mislabeling. Several archival photos were captioned as:
“French civilians workers place crosses on graves on an American cemetery on the Normandy Beachhead, Omaha Beach, France.”
However, the actual images showed mass grave digging – not civilians placing crosses. This suggested that even official wartime archives contained errors, reinforcing how small transcription mistakes – like “Etuville” – can mislead historians.
Final Confirmation: The Cemetery’s Evolution
The last piece of evidence came from a postwar aerial image of the Normandy American Cemetery. The image, taken years later, showed the fully developed cemetery, but at the upper right edge of the image a treeline still marked the site of the original burials.
Then, I found the ultimate confirmation – a wartime photo of a sign at the cemetery, dated July 20, 1944, which read:
”This cemetery was established on 11 June 1944 by the 29th Infantry Division, United States Army, as a final resting place for officers and men of that division who made the supreme sacrifice on the battlefields of Normandy.”
This confirmed everything for me. The burials in the footage (June 10) directly led to this cemetery’s establishment (June 11). The temporary cemetery at Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer was always the burial site in question. There was never an “Etuville Cemetery” — this was Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer all along.
Conclusion: Restoring Historical Accuracy
By tracing the evidence — film footage, Signal Corps records, archival photographs, and aerial images — I was able to confirm that the cemetery listed as “Etuville” never existed. It was always Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, the first major American burial site in Normandy, later developed into the Normandy American Cemetery.
This investigation is a reminder of how small errors can obscure real history. A single misplaced name in a military record could have left this story buried under decades of misfiled documents. But by cross-referencing footage, historical photos, and official records, the truth becomes clear:
The fallen soldiers of Omaha Beach were never in Etuville — because Etuville never existed. They were always here, at Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, where their sacrifices are honored to this day.
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