The Wisconsin Veterans Museum is pleased to partner with renowned military artist, Keith Rocco, on the exhibition of his traveling exhibit, D-Day, Omaha Beach. Rocco first collaborated with the museum in 1992, when he was commissioned to paint the murals found in the   galleries of the museum in advance of its 1993 opening. Rocco created the Battle of Antietam mural, depicting the bloody battle fought in western Maryland on September 17, 1862. Pleased with the results, the museum expanded the contract to include murals depicting the Island of Buna and the Battle of the Bulge in other sections of the museum.

The exhibit D-Day, Omaha Beach, designed by Keith Rocco, was created in 2024 to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day and has traveled the country since. On June 6, 1944, the world witnessed the largest seaborn invasion in history, which laid the foundation for the Allied victory on the Western Front of the European Theater of World War II. In our changing gallery, the exhibit focuses on the beach codenamed Omaha Beach, one of the five French beaches occupied by Germany along the coast of Normandy.  German forces had fortified Omaha Beach the heaviest, causing the bloodiest action on D-Day, with approximately 2,400 U.S. troops found to be killed in action, wounded, or missing. D-Day pays tribute to all the men and women who served during World War II, both on the battlefield and at home.

In addition to the travelling portion of Rocco’s exhibit, museum staff are also added items to represent the thousands of Wisconsin veterans involved in this fateful event. Museum staff were hard at work preparing to include items from the Wisconsin Veterans Museum collections. Before pieces can go out on exhibit, collections staff pulled the artifacts from their storage locations, completed condition reports to determine their stability, cleaned and stabilized pieces that required it, and then finally installed the items in display cases within the changing exhibit gallery.

Some of the artifacts to look for in the new exhibit include the garrison cap of Carl F. Hemauer of Stockbridge, Wisconsin. He served in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment and was captured on D-Day after landing behind enemy lines. He was taken prisoner and held at Stalag 3C for nine months before he escaped.

The museum also displays the boots worn by Martin F. Gutekunst when he landed on Utah Beach June 6, 1944. Utah Beach was adjacent to Omaha Beach in Normandy. Gutenkunst fought with the 2nd Naval Beach Battalion during the D-Day Invasion. He was with the Seabees, performing demolition of obstacles on the beach while taking heavy fire.

Also of note is the flag of the United States and pennant on exhibit. The flag and pennant flew high on D-Day aboard the USS PT 503, which was part of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 34, also known as "MTB RON 34." These small combatant motorboats, like RON 34, participated in the D-Day landing at Normandy and saw additional action off the coast of France. The flag and pennant flew on PT 503 for the entire D-Day battle. Following the battle, Radioman First Class Donald E. Fisher asked the quartermaster to replace the commissioning pennant and flag and to save them for him, which the quartermaster did, and Fisher’s son donated them to the museum in 2013.

Exhibits like D-Day, cover the larger historical events in our world and allow the Wisconsin Veterans Museum to show that Wisconsin was there by sharing the stories of the individuals in the thick of the fighting during these fateful days. We hope museum visitors will get a more intimate sense of what happened on the ground through the eyes of our fellow Wisconsinites who served. We hope you also feel the power of these individual experiences as we have. Museum staff are grateful for the opportunity to share these stories and more alongside Keith Rocco’s work. D-Day is open to the public through January 3, 2026.

"A Peek Behind the Scenes of the D-day Exhibit" was written by Sarah Kapellush, Curatorial Supervisor and Jennifer Van Haaften, Assistant Director at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum. Article adapted for the web by Jennifer Stevenson, Marketing Manager. This post is from an article first published in the Fall 2025 issue of The Bugle.