June 6th, 2000 was the day the D-Day Museum opened in New Orleans. They chose the Crescent City as the location for the museum to commemorate the creation of the Higgins boat in the city. The LCVP -Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel was a startling new vessel created to land invaders directly onto a beach.
Andrew Higgins, a New Orleans boat builder had the idea to build wooden flat bottomed boats to carry soldiers or tanks into battle anywhere there was a beach. The ability to land soldiers outside organized harbors changed the way World War Two was fought, most notably the invasion of France in 1944. Not to mention the island hopping struggled in the Pacific.
The museum, since expanded and renamed the all encompassing World War Two Museum, is a series of vast palaces all connected and impossibly huge to see in one or two visits. We ended up walking the European and Pacific battles and only then realized the home front exhibits might have been more interesting. Next time…or the time after that.
The collections are astonishingly complex and detailed.
They throw you into the middle of the lives lived in time of war. They don’t hold back and you see dioramas with blood death and despair as well as humor and pride and relief (I lived! some participants admit with surprise). It is overwhelming.
They have perfectly preserved sewing kits, guns, razors, uniforms, films, memoirs and miles of stories intimately told.
The marine Ira Hayes photographed helping raise the second flag on Iwo Jima couldn’t stand the publicity and took to drink. He lived but never the same.
In its own way you come out of here changed. Second hand experience it may be, it has to be, but the intimacy of the exhibits… they put you there.
