An old German bunker in Normandy and the American monolith above it

The beaches of Normandy are today a place that remembers the men who fell on them during the landing on June 6, 1944.

Maisy: the German Normandy battery that was mysteriously buried by the US
The Normandy American Cemetery and the history of the D-Day gravediggers

One of the most visited German fortifications on that beach is a German bunker of type H669 that was part of Widerstandsnest 62 (WN-62, Resistance Nest 62). This bunker is very visited because it is very close to the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer. The bunker was located in the eastern area of ​​Omaha Beach and covered the Fox Green and Easy Red, in which Manuel Otero, the only Spanish soldier who fell in DDay. This fortified position was manned by 27 German soldiers from the 716th and 352nd Infantry Divisions.

One of its defenders was the machine gun operator Heinrich Severloh, who in 2000 would publish a famous memoir claiming, exaggeratedly, that he had killed more than 1,000 American soldiers that day. The bunker in question was one of the two H669 type bunkers that were on WN-62, specifically the one located in the highest area (there was another similar one further down). These bunkers were designed to house two 75 mm guns (firing on the beach from the flanks), but that day there was only one in that position.

After the war, a monolith was placed on this bunker, remembering three units of American soldiers who fought in that place: the 5th Special Engineer Brigade, the 299th Combat Engineer Battalion, the 146th Engineer Battalion Combat Engineers and the 6th Naval Beach Battalion. Five years ago, The Battlefield Explorer posted a video visiting the WN-62 positions and the aforementioned monolith:

Two weeks ago, SmartHER News published a video in which the presenter from The History Underground explains what the bunker was like inside:

You can see some interesting screenshots from these videos here. Here we see the monolith above the bunker, specifically the plaque that commemorates the fallen soldiers of the 5th Special Engineer Brigade.

The interior of the German bunker. On the left we see the place where the 75 mm cannon would be located. On the right we can see access to one of the two ammunition stores in this bunker.

A unique detail of the bunker are these camouflage lines drawn on the concrete at the time of construction of the bunker, on its interior walls.

Finally, here we can see the hole caused by an impact from the Allied naval bombardment during D-Day inside this German bunker.

---

Main photo: Hansm.