Remembering D-Day: Cantigny exhibit shows how Allies fought for ‘Nothing But Victory’

The landing craft is empty but filled with dread.

It’s not the real thing, this barge-like vessel. The body of the craft is covered in mirrors.

You see yourself reflected in the glass. You’re meant to step aboard and visualize what it must have been like, so exposed, on the rough seas of the English Channel, approaching the Nazi war machine.

“It's really important to me, for those who can't go to Normandy or see the things that so many people have seen in their military experience, to have a powerful connection,” says Jessica Waszak, the curator of Cantigny’s First Division Museum and the architect of a new outdoor exhibit installed on the Wheaton campus for the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, the beginning of the end of World War II.

“Nothing But Victory” starts with the landing craft anchored outside the Cantigny visitors center. In a span of about 300 yards, the exhibit depicts how waves of men encountered one obstacle after another, from the water, on the beaches of Normandy, to the bluffs and farther inland.

“We tell an excellent historical story inside the museum,” Waszak said. “The timeline is very complete, and there's a lot of technical perspective in there, so we wanted this to be a more sculptural and reflective moment.”

Sculptural pieces represent explosions in the water and a second LCVP — this one sinking — a vessel that would have delivered troops to the shore during the largest amphibious invasion in history. Story kiosks placed throughout the exhibit humanize the Allied invaders.

A surgeon. Two brothers. Some names are not widely known. One in particular is — Theodore Roosevelt Jr.

“There are brothers that are fighting together, and there are fathers and sons that are fighting together,” Waszak said. “There's so much context that people hopefully will get from the space and the stories and relate to in their own experience in life.”

The power of movement

The museum team started planning the exhibit about a year ago. “Nothing But Victory” officially opens June 6, but oversized re-created anti-tank obstacles called hedgehogs are already scattered on a stretch of Cantigny lawn. Walking among the obstacles — assembled with mirrored, interlocking beams — is almost disorienting, and that’s the point.

“I think movement is really one of those important aspects of it,” Waszak said. “I wanted people to feel a distance and recognize that in whatever it took them to do in that distance, it was infinitely more for the soldiers on June 6 and beyond.”

There are running figures, brothers in arms, charging forward. The five landing beaches each had a code name: Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno and Sword.

At the top of a hill is a sculptural rendering of a German pillbox. As you make your way up the trail, you’ll see a triangle with a field of blue and white stars.

“As you're moving towards the top, I hope people recognize that as the shape of the folded flag,” Waszak said. “Victory is victory to some and not to others.”

‘Rising from the Waves’

The exhibit transitions from the D-Day assault to the “battles through French farmland that no one realized would be as difficult as they were,” Waszak said. Cantigny’s forestry crews re-created hedgerows, a tangled heap of trees and dirt and debris.

“Vegetation was so thick that the Americans couldn't necessarily get past and across an open field because there could be Germans in the very opposite side … with machine guns,” Waszak said.

They devised a solution: a “rhino” attachment on the front of tanks to push through the brush and advance.

“The term ‘Nothing But Victory’ is because that's what it had to be,” Waszak said. “There was no choice except to be successful.”

The outdoor exhibit concludes in a quiet courtyard behind the museum dedicated to the “Big Red One,” the Army’s oldest division.

Inside the lobby is a complementary exhibit, “Over Land, Over Sea, Overlord,” detailing the heroics of seven Allied soldiers and their careers after the war: civil rights activist Medgar Evers, director Sam Fuller, actor David Niven, golfing legend Bobby Jones, “Catcher in the Rye” author J.D. Salinger, “Star Trek” actor James Doohan and Yankees great Yogi Berra.

An excerpt from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's D-Day address is featured on the museum wall: “They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate.”

As the exhibit guide describes it, the courtyard is a place to remember those who never came home.

Here is the “Spirit of American Youth Rising from the Waves,” a replica of the statue at the Normandy American Cemetery in France. His arms are outstretched to the sky.

The 80th anniversary of D-Day

Cantigny’s D-Day observances include exhibits, lectures and performances throughout the summer. Here’s a look at some of the events:

• “Nothing But Victory,” an outdoor exhibit created by Cantigny’s First Division Museum with Bridgewater Studio, opens June 6. Free guided tours are scheduled for June 8; July 13; and Aug. 24.

• “Over Land, Over Sea, Overlord,” an exhibit inside Cantigny’s First Division Museum, is now open.

• “Commemorating D-Day in Music” features patriotic and military music, including the “Band of Brothers” suite and the “Saving Private Ryan” theme, performed by the West Suburban Symphony, in the Cantigny Tank Park at 7:30 p.m. June 8.

Info: FDMuseum.org