Normandy Area Tour: D-Day

For me this was a stand out day on a trip full of highlights. I was very excited to tour the Normandy invasion sites. Our guides picked us up at the hotel early on Sunday morning. I was still questioning how good the information was going to be having guides that consisted of a native french lady and a true Irishman giving us the history of D-Day from an American perspective. 

We left from Bayeux and drove for thirty minutes or so to our first stop, the Germany Battery at Longues Sur Mer. Going in to this tour I had heard of Omaha Beach, Utah Beach, and the American cemetery at Normandy, outside of that it was all new.  This site had a row of very large German guns aimed at the beach. When we were at the site it was odd to me that we could not see the beach or the water. It was just a bunch of trees and fields. I felt like we were much further away then the actual proximity to the coast line. Having the two guides was really just due to the capacity of their vehicles. I liked that they took turns giving presentations to the group as a whole at each location. 

Our Irish guide had already given a lot of the information to his vehicle occupants the day before. They spent a long time on the road with him. It sounds like he loves to talk about the Normandy invasion, even on days when he does not have to. I thought he did a better job presenting us the material. He was definitely passionate about the topic and did have clear knowledge about the sites. I am not sure I would agree with his politics, but he was a good enough tour guide. 

This gun battery appearance was what the Ferguson Four have become familiar with relating to Hitler and his style of construction. Thick, thick concrete protecting the guns along with a network of concrete tunnels connecting them. It was amazing to hear all of the planning and the many moving parts related to this Allied invasion. One theme we heard throughout the day was the failures related to the attack. These guns along with other German battery locations were supposed to be taken out prior to the troops landing on the beaches. Bad weather, poor visibility and other factors led to bombs being dropped on the wrong sites and paratroopers not hitting their landing zones. 

Our next location was Omaha Beach. I liked that our tour stayed away from the large group of tourists and parked in a different area. There were not many people around and we had a nice explanation of what happened here. 

These are just pictures of a beach now, but it was humbling to be there, to know what happened here. Today 70 years later it is very pristine and sterile, just a nice beach. After growing up seeing the movies and hearing the stories it was somehow more real now.

We did get to spend a few minutes on our own and the kids got to splash around for a while. 

We then walked up the hill to some of the memorial sites and took time for some more pictures. 

After Omaha Beach it was another short drive to get to Sainte Mere Eglise for lunch. This town is famous for the church where a paratrooper got stuck on the church steeple and depicted in the movie The Longest Day.

Like at Mont St. Michel, I got a sense of commercialism here. Everything was geared to attract tourists to spend money. The parachute and the fake soldier hanging from the church is even in the wrong area. He actually landed on the other side, but this is more visible to the square where all of the restaurants and shops are located. I am not put out so much by the commercialism, just trying to relay the feeling that I got from being there. It was still a good place to see. The inside of the church has stained glass pieces dedicated to the paratroopers. In fact this whole region of France is very pro-American. It was an unexpected pleasure to find how many people still appreciate the sacrifices made on this soil. Many of the towns have church stained glass memorials memorializing the troops that liberated their towns from the Nazis. 

We ate lunch across the street from the church and had some choices of American food items. That was nice for the Ferguson Four. After lunch we walked around a bit. Our tour guides also added a story about other paratroopers that landed here. We saw bullet holes in iron fences from where they were being shot at by Nazi forces. The American troops were hiding in and around the houses in this area. This was another example of the confusion over the drop zones. The 82nd Airborne was supposed to be in this area, but the 101st ended up here. I cannot begin to imagine what those guys went through trying to figure out where they were, wanting to complete their objective, figuring out if the person in the distance was a fellow American or the enemy, etc. 

After lunch we got to visit the amazing American cemetery close to Omaha Beach. I did not expect to hear that this was considered American soil after the French donated the land for the memorial and cemetery. The grounds were immaculate and beautiful. The above panorama is the outer wall with all of the names of the Americans that gave their lives in the Normandy campaign. It was our Irish guide who came in to this section of the memorial to give us some background. He was very emotional about this site and refused to walk into the section that has the grave markers. He genuinely told us that he cannot bear to see this place over and over again each week, that it was too much to take. The group proceeded in to walk around and pay our respects. Below is the 22-foot bronze statue entitled "The Spirit of American Youth Rising from the Waves."

To see the seemingly endless markers and then consider this represents only 9,387 of the more than 405,000 U.S. military deaths during WWII is too much. I still vividly remember seeing the Arlington Memorial Cemetery in Washington D.C. and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier when I was in 8th grade. That site is much larger but here it was the same feeling of awe and gratitude. All of the kids did a great job of being respectful. I was glad that they also got to see this for themselves and I hope they remember it.

Our next stop was Utah Beach. Here we learned about the Voie de la Liberte or The Liberty Road and saw Kilometer 00 marker. From http://www.ddaymonuments.com/ "Soon after the end of the Second World War, Mr Guy de la Vasselais, French liaison officer to General George Patton, suggested the idea of erecting a monument to commemorate the Liberation of France by the American Armies, and to honor the soldiers who sacrificed much in so doing: a monument that would symbolize the idea of Liberty. However he thought that a single monument would be inappropriate to express the immense gratitude of the French people toward their Liberators. He therefore suggested the installation of a distinctive marker placed at each kilometer interval along the roads followed by General Patton’s III rd Army."

The Liberty Road covers 1146 Kilometers all the way to Bastogne Belgium. I find this little piece of the overall plan and days following D-Day to be fascinating. In short Patton was a decoy on D-Day sitting on the England coast with a fake army and inflatable tanks. His role was to make the Nazis think the Allied forces were attacking further north up the coast at a more narrow section of the English Channel. Only after the initial invasion did he lead the 3rd army into Normandy. 

Our Irish guide pointed out that here was one of the few memorials dedicated to the Navy in Normandy.   

We had a little time to enjoy the beach before we were off to the next stop. My kids love the beach.

I had heard of Pointe du Hoc but knew nothing about it. This is the part of Normandy between Omaha and Utah Beach. What happened here is another amazing part of the story. The 100' cliffs that the troops had to scale with fortified German guns still in play is hard to fathom. We bombed the heck out of it but missed most of the bunkers, and it turned out the Germans had moved the guns back. The craters are still there and even with the overgrowth in the middle of the summer they are deep and wide. 

It is a beautiful place and I love these pictures. Hard to imagine having to land here as part of the invasion. 

Our last stop was another unexpected and amazing story. The little town of Angoville-au-Plain. It is home to a famous church that was used by 2 US Army Medics as an aid station during the Battle of Normandy in World War II. Robert Wright and Ken Moore of the 101st Airborne treated a mix of 80 injured American and German wounded Soldiers and a child. Blood stains are still visible on the pews. 

At one point the German troops regained this town and stormed the church. When they saw that both German and American troops were being treated and cared for they quietly left.

Two stained glass windows commemorate the 101st Airborne Division, the first one is dedicated to the two medics of the 2nd Battalion of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment (101st Airborne Division). The second one honored the American parachutists.

There is also a hole in the roof and a large dent in the floor where a bomb came through but for some reason did not explode.

Our guides got us safely back to Bayeux to catch our late train back to Paris. To be honest I don't remember much about the two hour ride back or what we did once we got back to our apartment. This was truly an amazing day. This post has taken me longer than any other post I think I have ever done. Just thinking about all of the sites and stories from one day, I can see why people will spend days and weeks in the Normandy area. I keep looking up stuff on the Internet and getting sidetracked reading about it. Cindy and I have started watching the HBO mini-series Band of Brothers following the role of "Easy" Company, part of the 101st Airborne, during the Normandy campaign. In fact we are just now at the part when they get to Bastogne Belgium. Pretty cool to research the Liberty Road and realize that it is coming together with where we are in the Band of Brothers series. I can't wait to see what happens next, will Easy Company meet up with the 3rd Army and Patton? Not sure and I am not going to look it up either. I have been spoiler free for 70 years, so I can't ruin it now. We are planning on watching The Longest Day movie about the paratrooper landing on the church; and I found what is considered the best WWII documentary from 1973 called The World at War. It is only a 26 episode series, I will let you know if I ever get through it all. 

In the mean time "prost" to America! I am proud of you and all of the soldiers and families of soldiers that have given so much. We are very lucky to be able to call ourselves Americans.