Normandy

Huge post today; I'm trying to get finished before I leave on Thursday.


That Thursday evening I boarded a train to Portsmouth. My journey to Normandy was a long one, since it isn't as popular of a destination as Paris, so it was quite expensive to fly directly there. So, I had to take a ferry between France and England to reach Bayeux, the town I would be staying in. After a two hour train, I boarded a overnight ferry.

Leaving Portsmouth

The ferry was much nicer than I expected. I had been expecting a barge with a small outboard motor, but this was more reminiscent of a small cruise ship. There were a few shops and restaurants, along with a bar, dance floor and cinema. However, due to the time, I decided to retire to my chair to get a few hours of sleep.



At six in the morning, the light came on, and by 6:45 I had left the ship and taken my first few steps into France. After going through border control, who decided to "randomly" play 20 questions with me, I managed to find a bus into Caen. After half an hour through the sleeping city, I arrived at the train station, and managed to get my tickets using some broken French. A fifteen minute train ride and I was in Bayeux.

Bayeux is an incredibly small town that isn't known for much. It has a single cathedral and a tapestry from the Norman times, but the reason why I had picked this town was because it was a good headquarters for D-Day tours to depart from. I had previously booked a hotel and looked up directions using google maps, and decided to strike out alone with a French map because I didn't know the cost of a taxi trip. However, after an hour of walking, I found myself on the small grassy side of a road, between the highway on one side and cows on the other, and I decided my hotel was not here. I managed to finally figure out where my hotel was after picking up some breakfast, and about two hours after I had arrived, I checked into my hotel and took a nap.

Eisenhower statue at Eisenhower Roundabout. Off of this roundabout is Churchill lane.

I woke up in the early afternoon and decided to explore a little. I explored the open cathedral, and went through the nearby D-Day museum.

A Sherman tank in front.

Luckily most of the popular exhibits in this town were in English as well as French, so I comfortably worked my way through the exhibits and WWII era vehicles that dotted the museum.

After I finished the museum, I headed across the street to the British cemetery here.

This cemetery is one of several, and also holds the coffins of German soldiers. It is seen as a sign of respect in Britainto their enemies to allow them to be buried with their kin.

I finished by looking through the cathedral briefly.

There wasn't a ton of stuff to do in the town, so I got dinner and retired early for my early tour in the morning.

After a hotel breakfast consisting pretty much of bread and butter, I walked towards my tour's meeting point.

 I found Oliver, our guide, and with the six other members of my group, and we began our tour.

It was 1944. The war wasn't going well for Hitler at this point. Although he had taken France and bombed England, he was stuck in a bitter war against Russia, and his ally, Italy, had American and British forces racing up it's penninsula. Nevertheless, he still held most of Europe comftorably. It was protected along it's coast by miles and miles of fortification and bunkers, known as the Atlantic Wall, which stretched from France to Norway. He considered it to be unbeatable, that no force could possibly breach it's defenses.

Of course, he was wrong.

On June 6, 1994, Operation Overlord began. It was an amibitious plan to take back Normandy, and from there all of France. The first phase, Operation Neptune, was critical to the success of their attack. It was known that in order to supply an invasion, an army needed a working port. However, after the failed Canadian invasion of the port of Dieppe, Allied command abandoned the idea of a port attack in favor of securing a beachhead first. So they began planning the largest amphibious assault in history. It took months of planning. This region was chosen because of it's light defenses; it wasn't thought to be a likely spot to attack, as another place up the coast of France was closer to England, and there they built their most intact defenses. And the Allied forces had succesfully misled the Nazis into believing their attack would be more north, where they stationed most of their veteran troops. Thus, the beaches of Normandy were much safer, commanded by troops who were too old or young for the fight in the East, and most were not experienced in battle.

And so on that fateful morning, the sky went black with airplanes, the sea was filled with five thousand ships, and the transport crafts with 160,000 Allied troops began to make their way towards the beaches of Normandy. The beaches had been divided into five sections. Gold and Sword were to be taken by the British and Free French, Juno was taken by the Canadians, and Utah and Omaha were the landing zones of the Americans. Over a period of two months, under heavy fighting, they managed to secure Normandy, and from there retake Paris and begin the march to Berlin.

Our first stop was outside a field along Gold Beach. We stopped and looked a few of the only fully remaining German bunkers left along Normandy. They were simple, concrete structures, with impressively large guns taking up most of the space, their barrels peeking past the opening.

Bombed bunker,

Room behind the gun.

Looking out from the bunker.

These guns were well off the beach, designed to attack enemy ships. But because communications were cut due to previous bombings, the guns failed to receive any coordinates, and these ones never sank a ship.

After that, we continued to Omaha beach.

This beach is the most famous of any of the beaches, because of the bloodbath that ensued here. Before the battle, each battalion had been ordered a specific section of their beach, which, using intel on enemy bunker locations, had drilled specific targets on English beaches. And just before the troops landed, bombs and shells should have hit the enemy fortifications, shattering them for an easy victory.

But that morning, nothing went as planned. The planes overshot their targets, bombing perpendicular along the beaches. Each bomb missed. Then the U.S. warships fired at the fortifications; again, missing the fortifications.
The German defenses were at full strength, and the army had to make its way up a flat beach, past mines and anti-tank devices, and take concrete bunkers firing at them from a hill. And to make matters worse, the boat drivers did not compensate for the currents, and landed at the wrong spots, and oftentimes wouldn't even land together. Half the Sherman tanks, which were to be landed close to the beach, didn't make it. The Germans had sitting ducks for targets. Those who could survive the initial onslaught made it's way to a small anti-tank ditch for cover, but it took hours longer than any beach to make any progress against the bunkers. This was the site of a slaughter; out of the 25,000 troops that landed here, 5,000 were killed. Out of a certain A company, starting with over a hundred men, six were left at the end of the day. But valiantly they fought on, and took the beaches.

A makeshift memorial for the American troops along the beach.

Bluff overlooking the beach.

It was almost a little strange to see this beach so peaceful now. Driving on, we stopped at another section of the beach, with a memorial to the National Guard members which fought here. We could also see a section of the artificial harbor here.

That little black line in the ocean is a remnant of the American artificial harbor.

After the beaches were won, Allied forces needed a harbor to keep the steady flow of supplies. Not having a harbor, they built two artifical harbors, the first ones in history. Although the British and American forces built one each, the American harbor was destroyed after less than a week of it's completion due to a storm (however, in a week they took Cherbourg, giving themselves a functional harbor.)

The next site we stopped at was the American cemetary.

 The French government actually gave this land to the U.S.A, so it's American soil. This probably had something to do with it being on the only American grave here, but serves as the resting place for any American killed in Normandy. The idea of "next of kin" is apparently a uniquely American tradition, as other countries will bury the fallen where they die. However, family members can choose where their soldier's corpse will rest, and so only a third of those killed in Normandy are buried here. But it still made me gasp to see the nine thousand crosses sitting in neat rows all over these beautiful fields.

 Made of pure white marble, they sat silently in the green grass, all facing west, towards America. They detailed the person's name, their state, and their date of death; apparently Eisenhower did not put their birth dates on the tombstones, as it pained him too much to see how young they were. Those that were unknown were only marked with the inscription:

"Here lies in Honored Glory
A Comrade in Arms
Known but to God"

Two in particular stood out due to their last names:

Roosevelt. The most famous was Theodore Roosevelt Jr. A general, son of the president Teddy Roosevelt, and cousin to FDR, his commanding officers refused to allow him to land with his troops on D-Day. But knowing the Commander in Chief has it's perks, and on that day he landed on Utah beach with his army. He was later awarded the Medal of Honor for his valor on D-Day.

A monument in the middle, of a man breaking through the waves, represented the American soldier's spirit, bursting through the ocean towards victory.

A reflecting pool similar to the one in front of the Washington Monument, but here it represents the sea.

The cemetery was immaculate and really well done, so we left and headed on towards St.-Mere-Egliese.

 This town was the first town liberated by the 82nd Airbourne, and both did this town love paratroopers. They had a museum filled with paratrooper gear, actual aircraft used in this era, and from the steeple of the cathedral hung a dummy paratrooper.

 This spot actually marks where an actual paratrooper landed on D-Day; he hung here for a few hours playing dead, before he cut himself down and escaped.

The museum itself was pretty neat. Here are some pictures of the stuff inside of here.

A torch of liberty breaking through the chain of slavery with an American parachute.

Plane used by D-Day airborne troops inside a covered pavilion.

Symbol of the 101st "Screaming Eagles."

82nd Airborne "All-Americans."

After lunch and the museum, we stopped outside the town with some more monuments to the 82nd Airbourne here.

There was a bronze map of sorts here. Look at the small bazookaman on the corner.

He is just to the left of the bridge. Notice the tanks on the right side of the bridge.

The 101st and 82nd Airbourne's objectives were to capture and hold points of interest behind enemy lines to slow the advance of reinforcements to the beachs, and some of the most important places were the bridges here. This bridge in particular was captured by the 82nd Airbourne, who setup some hasty defenses here. But after part of the force left to reinforce another bridge, they came under attack by four German tanks, as shown on the map.

The first tank was taken out by an anti-tank gun on a hill behind the bridge, but before it could fire again, it was destroyed. The bazookaman was the only thing left to stop the tanks from taking the bridge. His first shot destroyed a tank, but the second missed. He had only a few rockets left, so his loader left him, found more rockets, and returned so he could finish off the other tanks, and hold the bridge. Which is pretty awesome for one guy.

We then stopped at a small farmhouse. Look at these two photos.

Many famous Normandy photos were taken at this place, as one of the troopers here had secretly brought a camera. You can see the background of these photos are the same.

Our second to last stop was Utah beach.

This beach was actually filled with people, which was a weird contrast to what had happened here half a century ago. Utah beach was never as much of a bloodbath as Omaha however. The planes managed to hit their targets, so the U.S. troops landed to a broken German defensive line that was quickly overtaken.

There was also a neat Navy monument here.

Our last stop was at a tiny church in an even smaller town.

During D-Day, two medics used this place to treat the wounded.

Years later, one of these medics was randomly taken here by a tour, and recognized the spot. He found a few pieces of evidence to confirm his suspicions. Look at this bench.

This is blood left over from a soldier who bled out. It stained the bench.

Some of the older townsmen then spotted and recognized him! To honor him, they built a monument to he and the other medic, and he returns every year.

Cool stained glass inside of the church.

After a great day, we went back to Bayeux and I fell asleep.

The next day I took a noon train to Caen, relaxed a few hours before my ferry. However, my ferry was late in crossing the Channel, and I missed the last train to London. Desperate, I took the last train to another town closer to London in hopes that it was a bigger station with late trains.

I was wrong.

It was a tiny station. There were no trains to London til 5:07 the next day, and it was only midnight. Every store and waiting room was closed. The vending machines were broke. So my only option was to wait the five hours until the next train, and make my way back to London.

After a long, cold night the train finally arrived. I hopped on. My ticket had expired the previous day, so I had to ask the ticketmaster for a new ticket. Upon hearing my story, he thankfully waved my fine, and allowed me to buy a ticket to get home.

At 7 I finally arrived in my flat, and had two hours of sleep before class. It was miserable. But at least I was home.