Qualla: Orglandes German War Cemetery

Orglandes German War Cemetery: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JFrischkorn, CC BY-SA 4.0. Each stone cross at Orglandes carries six names. Six dates of birth, six dates of death - and the math is always the same. The soldier born in 1925 died in 1944. The one born in 1926 died in 1944. Page after page across 28 rows, more than 10,000 young Germans share the ground here on the Cotentin Peninsula, 30 kilometres southeast of Cherbourg. They never made it home from the summer of D-Day. Most of them never got to be men.

Image: JFrischkorn | CC BY-SA 4.0

Orglandes German War Cemetery: A Field That Changed Hands

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lukemcurley at English Wikipedia, Public domain. The cemetery began as something else entirely. On 20 June 1944, two weeks after the Normandy landings, the 603rd Quartermaster Graves Registration Company of the United States Army cleared this Norman field for the burial of American soldiers killed in the breakout from Utah Beac...

Image: Lukemcurley at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Orglandes German War Cemetery: Six to a Cross

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lukemcurley at English Wikipedia, Public domain. The headstones at Orglandes are unlike anything at the American cemetery. Where the United States gives each fallen soldier a single marble cross or Star of David, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge - the German War Graves Commission - groups its dead in sixes. Each dark...

Image: Lukemcurley at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Orglandes German War Cemetery: The Ones Who Died After

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mairie de Bayeux, CC BY-SA 4.0. Tucked among the rows is a single mass grave that does not belong to the Battle of Normandy. Twenty-two German prisoners of war are buried together here, killed on 25 October 1945 - months after the surrender, when the shooting was supposed to be over. They were a mine clearance ...

Image: Mairie de Bayeux | CC BY-SA 4.0

Orglandes German War Cemetery: Quiet Among the Hedgerows

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Julien.scavini, CC BY-SA 4.0. Orglandes is the second smallest of the six German war cemeteries in Normandy, and that smallness is part of what makes it powerful. The famous American cemetery at Colleville draws millions; Orglandes draws hundreds. The crosses are darker, the grass less manicured, the atmosphe...

Image: Julien.scavini | CC BY-SA 4.0

Orglandes German War Cemetery: Reading the Stones

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thilver, CC BY-SA 4.0. Walk slowly here. Read a few of the crosses. The birth years cluster in the mid-1920s; the death dates cluster in June, July and August 1944. Some men were older - reservists, fathers, men who had survived the Eastern Front only to die in a Norman lane. But the great mass of them...

Image: Thilver | CC BY-SA 4.0