The Star-Spangled Banner flies proudly over this small piece of French land where 9,387 American, British, and Canadian soldiers are buried. On 6 June 1944, the first wave of the assault landed at 6.35am on Omaha beach: 1,450 soldiers on 36 landing crafts. The tide was low, leaving exposed the mined piles installed a few months earlier by the Germans. The assailants needed to run 500 metres in the open before they would reach cover, at the foot of the cliff. By the evening of the landing, 1,500 American soldiers had died or gone missing. They had come to liberate France and they would never leave it.