Top Photo: This German mine flag once indicated an active minefield on Utah Beach. The Herschel William Peterson Collection, 2022.314.031 

During World War II, it was common for overseas American servicemembers to collect souvenirs. They bartered, purchased, exchanged, and scavenged, gathering objects to bring home at the end of their service. Whether acquired in a foreign market or on the battlefield, these tokens of distant lands and dangerous missions helped returning veterans explain where they had been—and, often, what they had endured. 

But on the morning of June 6, 1944, amid the chaos of the largest amphibious invasion in history, souvenir collecting took on a different character. American troops landing on Utah and Omaha Beaches hit the sand under intense enemy fire, weighed down by heavy equipment, disoriented, and drenched in seawater. There was no time to seek out the perfect keepsake in the scramble for survival, so what they picked up to remember that historic moment were things at hand.

One such item in the Museum’s collection is a German stick grenade marked with the invasion date. Private First Class Herschel Peterson of the 286th Joint Assault Signal Company (JASCO) saved this so-called “potato masher” from Utah Beach, where his unit played a critical but often overlooked role in the success of the D-Day landings. Working under the 1st Engineer Special Brigade, the 286th JASCO was tasked with establishing and maintaining lines of communication between command posts. Peterson worked in the thick of enemy fire, crawling through sand and barbed wire to connect the scattered pieces of the American assault effort as artillery shells rained down around him.

Herschel Peterson kept this M24 Stielhandgrenate from Utah Beach. The Herschel William Peterson Collection, 2022.314.036

Peterson also collected a yellow cloth flag emblazoned with a skull and crossbones that once marked an enemy minefield—a memento that speaks directly to the perils that troops faced the moment they hit the surf. German forces heavily fortified the coastline along the Atlantic Wall with layered defenses, including deadly antipersonnel and antitank mines. For German troops, the flags signaled a danger zone to avoid. For Allied soldiers, they were grim indicators that they had entered one.

A similar sense of immediacy clings to a small, rusted piece of barbed wire saved by Radioman Second Class Richard Gibler, who came ashore on Omaha Beach ahead of most combat troops. As a member of the 6th Naval Beach Battalion of the 5th Engineer Special Brigade, his task was to establish a vital link between boats in the water and boots on the ground. Beach battalions were one of several types of specialized units operating on D-Day. They performed a range of vital tasks, assisting assault teams in blowing through obstacles, treating the wounded, clearing mines, directing traffic, coordinating casualty evacuations and the flow of supplies, establishing communications, and even repairing damaged vessels.

This fragment of barbed wire came from the defensive network at Omaha Beach on D-Day. The Richard Edward Gibler Collection, 2022.249.050

Gibler’s chief concern that day was ensuring that there was reliable ship-to-shore communication. His task required him to cross terrain littered with hazards, and the barbed wire fragment he brought home at the end of the war was once part of that lethal landscape. 

Many of the D-Day souvenirs preserved in the Museum’s collection might appear small or mundane: a strip of wire, a cloth flag, small bits of shrapnel, a grenade casing. But for the veterans that kept them, they carried tremendous weight. They symbolized a day of incredible loss and immense courage, commemorating a turning point in both the war and their lives. These objects are more than physical remnants of war, they represent painful and triumphant memories, and they carry the emotional residue of one of history’s most storied battlefields. 

In the quiet of a museum gallery, it is difficult to imagine the noise and fury of an event like D-Day. But artifacts such as these bring us closer to the soldiers and sailors that experienced it. They remind us that history isn’t made in abstraction—it’s made in wire, sand, steel, and sacrifices. It’s made by ordinary people facing extraordinary moments, doing their best in the most trying of circumstances.