Day 3: D-Day Tour

We woke up reeeeeeally early Saturday morning so we would have time to take the metro to the train station, print out our tickets, and get something for breakfast before our train left at 7:45. It was about a 2 hour train ride so we got there at about 9:50 and met up with our tour guide and the rest of the group. It turns out that 3 of the other group members are from Houston and Austin and one of them works as a coach at Round Rock High School! We never did get their names though. It was two men and a woman. I couldn't quite figure out how they were related. They two guys didn't really look like brothers and you could tell the woman was older than them but she didn't look old enough to be their mom. Oh well, they were nice. :)

After everyone we were waiting for found our guide, we took a bus from the train station to the museum to start the tour.

The Caen Memorial. The museum starts with the time period just after WWI and continues until after WWII.

The museum was really big and the tour guide led us through it so we weren't actually able to see all of it. It was interesting to go through it with her though, because she was able to highlight the most important points but still give us all the information without having to read everything. We spent the whole morning at the museum, had lunch, and then went to different areas along the coast that were significant on D-Day.

Photos from WWI. The tour guide talked about how the fighting style was so different in the two wars.

Before the war even started, Hitler had started taking over more and more land surrounding Germany. Hitler's invasion of Poland was what triggered the start of the war.

Hitler's propaganda started with young children and continued through adulthood. The cards would be sold in cigarette boxes and the buyer would then give them to their children. Hitler's book was given to young couples after they were married. With all his propaganda it's easy to see why so many people blindly believed whatever he told them.

This is a U.S. Sherman Tank. It had to be modified in certain parts of France because of the hedgerows. They had to add blades to the front to cut through the dense trees and hedges.

After going through the museum we watched a 15 minute video showing actual footage of Allied soldiers getting ready to attack the beach and German soldiers preparing to be attacked as soon as they saw what was coming. 

After the video, it was time for lunch. We had 3 options; steak, duck, and fish. I chose the duck and Daniel chose the steak. The duck was really good although the potatoes that came with it had a strange tasting sauce on them. Daniel's steak was really fatty and most of it was inedible, but the french fries that came with it were really good.

Our first stop on the landing beach portion of the tour was near a town called Arromanches. This is where Gold Beach was located. Gold Beach was assigned to the British on D-Day. After they had taken command of the beach and surrounding areas they built an artificial harbor. There was also an artificial harbor built at Omaha Beach but it was completely destroyed by a storm. The harbor at Gold Beach was badly damaged but they were able to fix it for use.

You can see what's left of the artificial harbor in the water.

We were up on a ridge but this is the town of Arromanches and the beach in front of it. There was also a small town to the right of this ridge that was part of Gold Beach.

This is a portion of a floating roadway. There would be many of these linked together to allow cars to travel onto land regardless of the tide.

Our next stop was at a location where German gun batteries can still be seen. I was really surprised at how good of shape they were in, especially because people are allowed to walk through them. I wonder if they have to clean graffiti off regularly. I hope not, but I'm often surprised by how disrespectful people can be to meaningful landmarks.

A German gun battery. The guns in all of these are the original ones from WWII.

The inside of the gun. It's really rusty and kind of banged up. You can see a hole from where an Allied shot got through.

This is where they would store the artillery. There would have been 10 to 12 soldiers in each one of these. Our tour guide told us all of them went deaf from firing the gun so often. Apparently doctors told them to cover their ears to try to prevent hearing loss but the guns were so loud that didn't really make a difference.

This is a badly damaged gun battery. The others are actually in really good condition. According to our tour guide the Germans had forced Polish soldiers and French prisoners to build the gun batteries. They would try to sabotage them by not mixing the concrete correctly or using sugar instead of sand which made them much more vulnerable.

This is the same gun battery as the picture above but from the inside. You can see the steel they used to make them even stronger.

It's hard to see but at the very edge of the land, in the middle, there is a concrete roof. This wasn't another gun battery, it was a command post. The actual gun batteries were pretty far inland so they couldn't see where to shoot. People in the command posts would radio coordinates for the gun batteries to shoot at.

Two more gun batteries off in the distance. There were four total and they could be used to defend both Gold Beach (to the right) and Omaha Beach (to the left).

Our next stop was at the American Cemetery in Colleville Sur Mer. The Cemetery is located just above Omaha Beach and is the resting place of almost 10,000 soldiers who died in the Normandy campaign. The crosses and Stars of David are made of marble and are arranged so that they are in straight lines horizontally, vertically, and diagonally. There is also a memorial to about 1,500 missing soldiers and a chapel. The whole site was just amazing to see. It was so beautiful and really made you realize the amazing sacrifice that was made to ensure freedom. There are also two statues at the far end of the cemetery depicting America and France. 

Part of the memorial to the missing soldiers. The states next to their names represent the location of where they joined the army, not necessarily where they were from. There were a few soldiers identified after this was made and their names are denoted by a small bronze rosette. There are only 12 out of over 1,500.

Another part of the memorial that shows the military operations in Western Europe.

A statue called "Spirit of American Youth." The average age of the soldiers who died was only 22.

The reflecting pool. You can also see some of the crosses and the chapel in the distance.

Omaha Beach from the cemetery.

This display shows all the beaches that were attacked on D-Day.

The crosses are lined up vertically, horizontally, and diagonally.

The soldiers who had the Star of David on their dog tags received these headstones rather than the crosses. There may have been more Jewish soldiers buried here, however, they must have decided not to denote that on their dog tags in case they were captured.

There were several crosses with this inscription. I suppose the name of this soldier might be up on the wall in the memorial but they weren't able to identify his body.

I can't remember exactly what each of these scenes represents but it has something to do with France showing their gratitude to the United States for helping free them from the Germans.

If families are not able to make it to put flowers on the graves, they often have someone from the cemetery do it. They get sand from the beach and rub it on the headstone so the name stands out. Then they take a picture and send it to the family.

I think the American Cemetery was my favorite part of the whole tour. The gun batteries were really neat to see as well, but this was much more moving. There were many more than 10,000 that died during the Normandy campaign but a lot of families decided to have their soldiers brought home to be buried. I believe the statistic was about 60% were brought home.

You can get to Omaha Beach from the American Cemetery but that was one of the stops we planned on making with the tour guide. This meant we didn't have to climb lots of stairs up and down :). I had had enough stairs after the Arc de Triomphe hehe. Along the way, we saw the crazy hedgerows the Americans had to get through to liberate the towns further inland. Like I mentioned earlier, they had to modify their tanks to be able to cut down the trees and bushes.

Some hedgerows along the roads. They also had hedgerows to separate fields so the soldiers had to go through a lot of them.

Omaha Beach. The plan was to go in at mid-tide so they wouldn't have so much beach to cover. At high tide the water comes all the way up to the rocks, visible at the edge of this picture. If they went in at high tide they wouldn't be able to avoid all the stumbling blocks the Germans had placed on the beach.

More of Omaha Beach. It's used as a regular beach today. Our tour guide told us that a lot of soldiers didn't want it blocked off because the whole point of them coming there to fight was for freedom.

You can see the terrain the soldiers had to cover once they landed on the beach. Imagine having to climb up that during heavy fire from the Germans in front of you and your own side from the back trying to give covering fire. Plus, as soon as they made it to the top, they would be met with fields and hedgerows to get through.

Our last stop before heading back to the train station was Pointe du Hoc. Pointe du Hoc is a ridge located between Omaha and Utah Beaches. The Allies believed that there were guns along this ridge that could be used to thwart their efforts to take over the beaches. They decided to send American Army Rangers to scale the cliffs leading up to the ridge and take out the guns. The Rangers actually ended up reaching the coast at the wrong spot, so they had to navigate along the coastline to reach their intended destination. It took them about 40 minutes to do so, giving the Germans time to see that they were coming. They had to scale the cliffs during heavy fire from the Germans and many Rangers were lost just getting to the top. What they didn't anticipate was finding fake guns in the gun batteries. The real guns had been moved somewhere else. The gun batteries are still there as well as lots of craters made by naval bombardment.

You can see one of the craters made by the bombings.

More craters and some remnants of German gun batteries.

A very badly damaged gun battery.

A view of the cliffs the Rangers had to scale.

This is one of the command posts that I mentioned earlier. There was just a small slit for soldiers to see out of. This has been turned into a memorial for the American Rangers.

This is a natural landmark that the Rangers used to find their location. When they didn't see this at first, they realized they were in the wrong place.

The inscription on the memorial honoring the American Rangers.

The memorial.

An overview of the land with all the craters in it. I wish we could have gotten higher to take a better aerial view.

After this we had about an hour long drive back to the train station. Everyone on the tour was so tired and I think almost all of us fell asleep at some point on the drive back. Daniel and I were sitting up front but I turned around once and saw lots of closed eyes, hehe. It was a wonderful tour and we had a really good guide. She did a great job of making it interesting for people with a lot of knowledge about the landings, like Daniel, and those with less, like me. I'm sure we'll come back another time to see more inland battle sites of WWII. When we got back to Paris we were exhausted and had another busy day planned for Sunday, The Louvre! Check back tomorrow for my last post about Paris.

Thoughts and prayers for Daniel would be greatly appreciated as he is having a hard time with his GERD and has now come down with a cold or flu. He's been really frustrated with his health issues the past few months so please pray that it will pass quickly, or at least come to a manageable state, so he can enjoy our stay in Europe. 

We love and miss you all!

Janelle