John Sheldon's photos with the keyword: La Cambe

… may go you or I. (Phil Ochs / Joan Baez.) Adolf Süssel (September 1914 – ? 1944) seems to have spent the first few years and the last few years of his short life in a Europe at war. We can imagine that like most people, his fate was determined by the place and time in which he was born and by his responses to whatever social engineering was in fashion. In the German Military Cemetery at La Cambe, Normandy, he shares his last resting place with more than 21,000 others, many of whose lives would have been similar; but (death being a great leveller) he also shares it with SS-Hauptsturmführer Michael Wittmann (a professional soldier who has commanded respect as a ‘Tiger Tank Ace’) and SS-Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann (who was responsible for one of the worst atrocities in the European Theatre of War).

In the German Military Cemetery at La Cambe, Normandy. This is the largest German war cemetery in Normandy and contains the graves of more than 21,000 German servicemen. Most of them died between June and August 1944 in the fighting following the D-Day landings. The ages of the dead range from 16 to 72 but as usual in these cemeteries the majority were young men. The sign at the entrance says: “With its melancholy rigour, it is a graveyard for soldiers not all of whom had chosen either the cause or the fight. They too have found rest in our soil of France.”