A visit to Bayeux is not complete without a quick look at their D-day Museum. After our visit to the Portsmouth one in England we were interested to compare the arriving with the leaving.
Bayeux celebrates the fact that they were the first French town liberated by the Allied forces in June 1944 with this collection and a film of live June 6 and after footage. Bayeux is surprisingly intact considering it is the closest town to the first big clash. The Cathedral is still glorious and the ancient street plan, criss- crossing over canals, are much as they were in the past.
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| Is Gramps trying to stop the tank? |
We went to the Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy after buying a twin ticket
(€12, valid for 48hrs from date of purchase) at the Bayeux Tapsetry. If we had more than one day here I would have bought the triple ticket which included their fabulous Art Museum, a history of art from prehistoric to modern at the MAHB. This collection is housed in the Bishop's Palace where William I's half brother Odo would have resided.
This Museum had excellent displays on the leadership of the allied forces, it presented the German experience with balance, had original photos and footage of the beach battles, the Hedgrow battles and the airborne troops experiences. They had a large section celebration Charles de Gaulle who lead the free French from England until Paris was liberated. The photos were quite confronting, they have more of the Saving Private Ryan realism that the movie was damned for than the English one which keeps the blood and guts in the shadows of imagination. Have a look at their website for a brief overview -
http://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/musee_memorial_bataille_de_normandie_en.html
With these images fresh in our heads we walked down to the Bayeux War Cemetery. So many white stones, mostly British but so many others as well. Over 500 Germans are buried here too.
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| Very confronting to see that so many young soldiers died at Willow's age. |
The memorial across the road has listed 1800 names of soldiers who died in the early stages of the Normandy battle with no known grave. a pristine representation of the bloodbath on Normandy's beaches. There is an inscription in Latin across the top of the memorial, translated to English it says "We, once conquered by William,
have now set free the Conqueror's native land."
Is this a cunning way of those tricksy French implying that they liberated themselves, again?
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| Omaha Beach tallied the largest death toll of the Overlord operation. |
From here we toured down the coast and walked out onto the headland to look down onto the beaches where so many 'liberators' lost their lives, showed unparalleled courage facing down the machine gun nests, heroically helped the wounded to cover, crawled up the dunes and cliffs until the coast was secure. June 6, 1944 would have been such a horrifyingly long day.
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| M is standing in a crater - from Allied naval shelling, airforce bomb or a machine gun turret grenaded - they are everywhere. |
The beaches were golden and windswept on the August day we were there. As we drove the coast road between the beaches USA flags waved everywhere, The first stop was Pointe du Hoc, this site had large parking areas and gave a view of Omaha Beach north and Utah beach south beyond the laTaute estuary. Omaha beach had the biggest casualties because the scanty German coast guard were dug in here and cliffs had to be scaled before the German guns could be silenced. Did Churchill repeat his Gallipoli trick - keeping the easier targets for the British troops? Probably not as the American, General Eisenhower was the big boss of the operation. The US lost more men than any other country on that day.
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| Omaha Beach Memorial, Gun holes that bought the men down, Final resting place for a couple of Kiwis. |
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We felt as if we were in a War game
except we were shooting photos not bullets. |
The British troops and American airborne had a sprinkling of Australians and Kiwis but the antipodean units didn't land on the beaches that first day. The navy and air force had many Australasian pilots and sailors working hard to give cover to those landing. Gold beach was all British, Juno British and Canadian and Sword beach at the mouth of the river from Caen was where the Free French joined their British allies.
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| Air vent and bullet holes |
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| Gun shelter ruins after shelling from the Allied Navy, flame throwers from the soldiers and grenades. Granny is shooting through the back door. The Germans moved their guns 100s of meters behind their concrete boxes and kept shelling the beach. It took the Allies a long time to work out that their shelling was having no effect on the bombardment they thought was coming from the gun placements. Hours after the first boat landed they successfully knocked out the big guns. |
We drove past many different D-day museums, some no more than a collection of debris and memorabilia displayed in a farmer's spare shed. The main ones are the
- Musée Airborne at Ste-Mére-Eglise off the N13 inland from Utah
beach,
- Musee du Debarquement at the northern end of Utah beach,
- the Canadian one at Juno beach (Centre Juno Beach) and Arrowmanches 360 which houses a 45min circular cinema of the landings and overlooks Gold beach.
- The Batterie de Merville, close to Sword beach, has reconstructed bunkers and planes with sound and light 'immersion'.
Our imaginations at Pointe du Hoc had been quite enough so we were not too disappointed to run out of time in the day to have to seek a meal instead. The museums charge between €6-12 each per adult, visiting all would be quite overwhelming and expensive.
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| Gold Beach, the British took Arromanches with fewer casualties. These machine from the time sit in the local ca rpark. |
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The hull of some dead maritime vessel on Gold beach. In the distance you can see the remnants of Mulberry Port
(see below for details) |
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| Each to their own, a margarita pizza v a roast chicken dinner |
Arromanches-les-Bains is a very cute seaside town on Gold beach. It had the plethora of tourist shops and a large choice of restaurants as well as wrecked hulls and military equipment on the beach. I did not appreciate the gift left by someone's canine pride and joy that attached itself to my shoe. Luckily the combination of sand, gravel and water cleaned away the offensive smell. When purchasing souvenirs for Petal and Willow, a box of clickers - copies of those used by the paratroopers caught my eye. I foolishly gave in to impulse and got one each for M and Gramps. Answering clicks from the front of the van became unfunny very quickly.
Mulberry Port - Code name for the man made structure built for supply ships and troop transport after the beaches were secure. One of the reasons Hitler refused to believe that the Allies would invade the Normandy coast was because it would be suicide without a port to keep supply lines open. The plans for a portable, temporary port strong enough for the biggest ships was being played with early 1941. There is a life size model of the port running alongside the entry road into Arromanches.
Driving up to Calais for the Chunnel home we stopped in at Honfleur for breakfast. We found a marvelous bakery but the town itself was so charming we took it and ran down the main street and around the Hornblower style marina. Willow and Petal were sent back to the bakery for more - being able to speak the language makes huge orders in a long queue so much less embarrassing - right girls! Would love to come back here one day.
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| Last chance to get a French pave loaf |
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| Delish brekky treats |
D-DAY LANDINGS: JUNE 6, 1944
By dawn on June 6, thousands of paratroopers and glider troops were already on the ground behind enemy lines, securing bridges and exit roads. The amphibious invasions began at 6:30 a.m. The British and Canadians overcame light opposition to capture beaches codenamed Gold, Juno and Sword, as did the Americans at Utah Beach. U.S. forces faced heavy resistance at Omaha Beach, where there were over 2,000 American casualties. However, by day’s end, approximately 156,000 Allied troops had successfully stormed Normandy’s beaches.According to some estimates, more than 4,000 Allied troops lost their lives in the D-Day invasion, with thousands more wounded or missing.
Less than a week later, on June 11, the beaches were fully secured and over 326,000 troops, more than 50,000 vehicles and some 100,000 tons of equipment had landed at Normandy.
For their part, the Germans suffered from confusion in the ranks and the absence of celebrated commander Rommel, who was away on leave. At first, Hitler, believing the invasion was a feint designed to distract the Germans from a coming attack north of the Seine River, refused to release nearby divisions to join the counterattack. Reinforcements had to be called from further afield, causing delays. He also hesitated in calling for armored divisions to help in the defense. Moreover, the Germans were hampered by effective Allied air support, which took out many key bridges and forced the Germans to take long detours, as well as efficient Allied naval support, which helped protect advancing Allied troops.
In the ensuing weeks, the Allies fought their way across the Normandy countryside in the face of determined German resistance, as well as a dense landscape of marshes and hedgerows. By the end of June, the Allies had seized the vital port of Cherbourg, landed approximately 850,000 men and 150,000 vehicles in Normandy, and were poised to continue their march across France.
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