"Shrapnel and other debris from the D-Day landings is still present in large quantities in sand on Omaha Beach, scientists have revealed. Scientists now say the remnants of the battle have remained, hidden in the sand. 'It is of course not surprising that shrapnel was added to the Omaha Beach sand at the time of the battle, but it is surprising that it survived 40-plus years and is doubtless still there today,' Earle McBride of the Jackson School of Geosciences at The University of Texas at Austin and Dane Picard, a professor emeritus at the University of Utah, told Earth Magazine.The site of one of the most ferocious battles during the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944, Omaha Beach was one of five Allied landing points along an 80-kilometer stretch of coastline. More than 160,000 Allied troops came from planes and ships onto the heavily fortified shores of Normandy, supported by 5,000 ships and 13,000 airplanes." Shrapnel and debris during D-Day invasion found in Omaha Beach sand 68 YEARS after battle | Mail Online
Actually, the amount of ammo expended in the beach area of Omaha was not a very large amount. What little naval gunfire there was could be measured in the hundreds of rounds and German artillery targeting the beach was more of the nuisance variety - German batteries were not stockpiled with ammo. The Americans on the beach generated little in the way of small arms fire. When you look at the data of ammo expended, WWI was the world champion of shootfests. It wasn't unusual for a pre-attack barrage to last for days, expending over a million large caliber artillery shells.
