Amateur historian/archaeologist uncovers Nazi battery.
Saturday January 5, 2008
I’ve just finished reading an excellent story about a passionate amateur called Gary Sterne, who made a discovery after sticking with his convictions and having a little bit of luck. The events began after he found a crumpled map in a pair of ex US service trousers at a military memorabilia fair in Britain. The map was an invasion plan for Omaha beach on D-Day, and one spot, often thought to have been just fields, was marked as ‘high resistance’.
Believing that this spot contained previously lost Nazi gun emplacements, Sterne travelled to Normandy where he discovered enough in the ground to convince him he’d found something. Over the following years he purchased a house near the site and forty acres of land, from thirty two separate landowners, to enable an excavation, which uncovered a large complex of bunkers, offices, gun housings and even a hospital, the ‘Maisy Battery’. The location will now be turned into a museum.
Comments
I have just been in Colleville-Sur-Mèr at Omaha Beach and wish to know where this spot is situated.
Where did you read about this? I’d be interested to know about analogous successes by amateur historians over the years.
Am reading Simon Schama’s Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution. Very interesting, albeit long and pleasantly rambling. Sort of depicts the Independence War as a First Civil War — at least to this novice.
Anywhere on yr site I can find a good review of it?
Cheers,
Bert, in Ottawa, Canada
Sorry, no review of the Schama book. I was alerted to the story in last Saturday’s edition of the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper.