Back to Normandy
Birds' Back to Normandy
Back to Normandy for Concert band
Do you want to play a composition by Fred Vogels about the story of D-Day? With the original pictures?! Experience yourself the first hours of D-Day, the preparation, and the first shooting of the Taskforce on the Normandy coast.
I combined a few original Back to Normandy compositions into one complete version to play with a video.
You can order the music here: http://www.molenaar.com/web/Details.aspx?isartist=0&id=20042
The Holland Legion Band (Michigan, USA) http://www.hollandlegionband.org played this composition during their tour in France, Luxembourg, Netherlands and in the USA.
On 16 April 2018, the website Back-to-Normandy (www.backtonormandy.org) will exist for exactly 15 years. The preparations to start this website started in June/July 2002 after my first visit to Normandy during the celebrations of D-Day (yearly on June 6th). It was an intense period with many beautiful, touching moments and I was introduced to the most impressive and important period of the last hundred years.
The coast of Normandy is a place where the biggest invasion army ever, with assistance from the greatest maritime fleet ever, landed to start the liberation of West Europe. On a yearly basis, the eighty-kilometer-long frontline changes into a touristic attraction with the main attraction being the veterans that ‘were there'. Every veteran, recognizable by the heaps of medallions on their chest, seems to have personally liberated the Nazi-occupied North Western part of Europe. They will tell their story to whoever w ...
In 2003 I wrote this music after I visited Omaha Beach for the second time. After this visit, I started www.backtonormandy.org.
The documentary (text by WWIIFouncation):
On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the green 29th Infantry Division faced some of the most brutal fighting on Omaha Beach.
Perhaps the worst area on the beach was Dog Green, directly in front of strong points guarding the Vierville draw and under heavy flanking fire from emplacements to the west, near Pointe de la Percee. Company A of the 116th [29th Division] was due to land on this sector with Company C of the 2nd Rangers on its right flank, and both units came in on their targets. One of the six LCA's carrying Company A [116th Regiment,29th Division] foundered about a thousand yards of shore, and passing Rangers saw men jumping overboard and being dragged down by their loads.
At H+6 minutes the remaining craft grounded in water 4 to 6 feet deep, about 30 yards short of the outward band of obstacles. Starting off the craft in three files, the center file first and the flank files peeling right and l ...
Omaha Beach Honor and Sacrifice - Main Theme. How I wrote this music.
Steven Spielberg, and Tom Hanks made a wonderful film: Saving Private Ryan. My idol John Willams wrote the music. I never suspected that I would write the music for the same subject - with the men who were really there. On Omaha Beach.
Narrated by Major League Baseball Hall of Fame Broadcaster Tim McCarver
Original Music by Fred Vogels (www.backtonormandy.org)
On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the green 29th Infantry Division faced some of the most brutal fightings on Omaha Beach.
Perhaps the worst area on the beach was Dog Green, directly in front of strong points guarding the Vierville draw and under heavy flanking fire from emplacements to the west, near Pointe de la Percee. Company A of the 116th [29th Division] was due to land on this sector with Company C of the 2nd Rangers on its right flank, and both units came in on their targets. One of the six LCA’s carrying Company A [116th Regiment,29th Division] foundered about a thousand yards of shore ...
Back to Normandy - Omaha Beach The Score, a composition made in the early years.
