The false story of the 'Nurse who wrote the names of the fallen' in Normandy

An image is circulating widely on social media claiming to show an Allied forces WWII nurse taking the names of soldiers who died during the D-Day landings in Normandy in France.

The picture is typically shared with captions saying that the men were buried in makeshift graves on Omaha Beach before proper cemeteries were built, and that nurse Clara Thompson wrote down the names of each soldier that she tended to.

Her notebook was supposedly found decades later in her daughter's attic.

The image has appeared all over Facebook and X, but the story has been fabricated, with the picture having the hallmarks of being AI-generated.

The Allies established eight military cemeteries within four days of the D Day landings on 6 June 1944, with the first American and British nurses arriving on 10 and 12 June, respectively.

In the picture, the alleged nurse is not wearing an accurate uniform. Official archives show that army nurses serving in Normandy wore much different attire from what is depicted in the social media posts.

Additionally, some of the nurse's proportions in the AI-generated picture are wrong. For example, if you look carefully at her middle finger, it looks unnaturally long compared to the rest of her hand.

More than 4,000 Allied soldiers died on D-Day, with the landings eventually leading to the liberation of France and subsequently the rest of Europe.

It ultimately paved the way to an Allied victory against Nazi Germany, which surrendered in May 1945.