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D-Day marked only the beginning of the Allied struggle to wrest Europe from the Nazis.

A commemoration Tuesday served as a reminder of this, in the village of Chambois, south of the Normandy beaches where Allies landed 75 years ago this week.

It took many more weeks of fighting to bring the Battle of Normandy to a decisive and bloody conclusion, around the ruins of Chambois and surrounding villages. Tens of thousands of German soldiers became trapped in a noose of Allied armor and fire.

In the spring that followed the battle, the grass grew especially thick and green, fertilized by thousands of corpses that had been plowed into mass graves. Soldiers nicknamed the wide, open plain "the Corridor of Death."

Its surviving witnesses are still haunted by the memory.