D-Day

After a quick breakfast at our hotel, we headed west along the coast again to La Cambre where a German cemetery containing the German war dead from the Normandy campaigns was located.  We were impressed with how well maintained it was but also by the black stones with the occasional group of black crosses instead of the white used by the Commonwealth.  Originally the Americans had buried their own in a separate plot along side this but after the war, the remains of those who wanted to be repatriated to the US were exhumed and the remainder transferred to the main US cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer.  This is one of six main sites containing the German soldiers in Normandy area.  The interesting thing is that the German government doesn't fund this... it is all done with private donations and the efforts of German students on summer breaks (exhuming remains found in other locations and re-interring them here).

Each of those flat stones is a dual grave marker.  The crosses are simply scattered throughout and do not seem to mark specific graves.

Here is an example.. an unknown soldier and Private Rudolf Herden who was killed about 3 weeks after D-Day (aged 19).

There were 21,000 soldiers buried here.

After that, it was off to Omaha Beach to see the site of the US invasion.  I had heard that the Americans had it much worse than the Canadians or British and the landscape bore this out.  The beaches themselves stretched out for hundreds of yards but ended in steep cliffs with large gun emplacements above them.  We toured those gun emplacements that were captured by the US Rangers special forces groups (that also participated with the Canadians on similar cliffs successfully at Dieppe).  The US lost about 3600 men on Omaha out of 24,000 or so and another 1200 or so on Utah.  The Canadian's lost about 1200 at Juno Beach (out of 20,000).

It was a cold and windy day with sleet and hail coming in from the channel and a coincidentally low tide (just as it was in the invasion).  When you look at the distance the troops at all five beaches had to cover under open fire, the courage of these men is astounding.

This is the start of the Utah beach (from Omaha sector)

This is the top of the cliffs at Utah Beach

A bomb crater left over from either Air (unlikely) or Naval Bombardment that am before the invasion

A German gun emplacement.  As the Rangers found out though, the big guns had been moved to the rear and these were just housing "just" machine guns.

These are the cliffs the 225 Rangers climbed that morning... 150 of them made it (but only 90 of them were still able to fight 2 days later as the fighting got even worse until reinforcements arrived).

The effects of the naval shelling in advance.  It gave the US troops plenty of foxholes to hide in as they advanced on the German bunkers

Some of the original barbed wire is still in place

Outside looking in

It would have been quite a climb!

You can see that most of the shells just bounced off..

Jen is walking down the rear entrance....  the US troops wouldn't have lasted long doing that.

Lots of fields of interlocking fire

Including down the stairs

A bullet hole

You can see the results of mortar fire against the machine gun emplacement

Bullet holes against the door frame... this must have been quite a battle

The Germans had quite a view out... but you can see the results of bullet hole ricochets and grenade explosions.

Here was their view that am... without the hundreds of ships and the falling shells.

It appears they used flamethrowers to get them out.  All of the ceilings were badly burned like this.

Another bunker (there must have been 20 of them like this on top of this cliff)

Here is one of the big guns the Germans had moved to the rear... they never got the chance to fire them.

The Utah beach area is best recognized at the Point du Hoc site where the 225 Rangers climbed the cliffs to take out the big guns (these are the same Rangers President Reagan talked about during his 40th anniversary D-Day visit with Prime Minister Trudeau in 1984, one of the best speeches of all time.... here's a bit in it about the Rangers - he talked about them but also about the British, the Canadian's, the French and even the Poles - but on balance it was about the Allies standing up for freedoms and encouraging the Soviets to meet us in peace.

"The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers -- the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machineguns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After 2 days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms."

After touring Point-du-Hoc we saw a little museum at the side of the road with some war relics and stopped to climb around them briefly.

A Packard built V-12 Merlin engine out of a P-51D Mustang fighter .

Looks like he went in with the prop still turning over (otherwise the blades would have shattered instead of bent).  It is possible he could have walked away from this.  Note the water cooled radiator on the back of the engine.

Some LST Landing craft...  and some German mine holder/beach obstacles... I have felt Aluminum canoes with thicker metal than they used with these.  The troops inside would have no protection unless they happened to be behind a beam that might deflect the bullet.

A big old German gun in the background with I believe is a Merlin V-12 Spitfire Engine in the foreground.  Note the three blade wooden propeller.  

This is a radial engine... I believe an 14 Cylinder BMW engine out of a German Folke-Wolf-190

These things are sprinkled all over the countryside... like they would have been around the beaches on June 6th, 1944.  There were designed to offer no shelter for troops to hide behind but to be able to rip the bowels out of any boats approaching at high-tide (and also to carry mines at the very top).  A good example of effective German Engineering.

After that, we drove down to Omaha Beach which was the other main beach the US was responsible for.  This was invaded by the National Guard and the famous Big Red 1 Infantry Division.

The National Guard Memorial... built on top of a German Gun Emplacement

The homes are right up against the cliffs/sand dunes now.

A look down the beach toward Utah

A side shot of the Memorial/Gun Emplacement....  

Look closely... this was aimed right across the beach so the troops would have had to pass this.

It looks so peaceful now... but imagine it sprinkled with barbed wire, those  concrete  blockade pylons and machine guns and shells from both directions.  This is low tide.... just like on D-Day.  They had to cross hundreds of yards of beach across interlocking fire.

I believe this is the remains of a barge

This is what they would have had to get tanks up and across...

The low spot in the hills behind is why they attacked here... 

Not much good territory to climb up after landing on this nice beach.... and no place to hide.

Either way...  I remember seeing a scene of a dock in Saving Private Ryan... thinking this might have been it.

See the gun emplacement on the hill.  That one could shoot all the way down the beach.

It's quite different when you aren't being shot at (although it was bloody cold and windy that day!)

Here's a shot from the water line back at the memorial and the gap in the hills.  Imagine crossing this under fire.

I believe this is a submerged LST or barge but even if were just a rock, it was enough to rip the bottoms of the LST 's out. 

It looks so peaceful now.

This is one of the barges they used to make a natural harbour.  It seems to have attracted a bit of German fire.

Some of the houses still show the effects

Omaha Memorial

A relatively new French monument to Normandy losses

These were spread all over the beaches as well... and used to hold up the barbed wire that ran between them

A US Sherman Tank

 After this, it was on to the US Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer where we toured the US museum (for free... well worth it!) and the cemetery.  This is the same one that the movie Saving Private Ryan starts out in.

A US Medal of Honor and a Purple Heart.  The Medal of Honour is the US's highest honour and entitles the winner's children to a place at one of the three main war colleges (West Point, Annapolis or the Air Force Academy).  The Purple Heart is awarded to those who were injured in combat.

The Canadian Flag we fought under in 1944.

Part of their wall with 1577 names of soldiers with no known graves.

It goes on, and on....

To the main monument

The sides were diagrammed with the battle sites of all armies

Looking out over the cemetery

It contains the graves of 9387 soldiers and airmen who died in these parts during WW2.

The US uses Crosses or Stars of David... no room for Atheists I guess.

No, this wasn't President George Washington... I just stumbled across this one.  Two of President Theodore Roosevelt's sons are buried here... one an aviator who died in WW1 and the other a general who died of a heart attack three weeks after the invasion.

 After Omaha, we traveled briefly by Gold beach which was a UK led beach.  It still has remnants of the harbour they tried to make to protect the landing sites until they could free Cherbourg and Cain three weeks later.

Some of those Barges on Gold beach

That's Gold Beach in the distance with the barges

It wouldn't have been easy to get tanks by this either.

One of the barges that washed in... you can still see the others in the distance.

It is often said that the American's got the toughest sector, but I would say that the Juno Beach conditions were not a whole lot better than that faced by the American's at Omaha or Utah as they also faced large sand dunes impassible to tanks and wide open beaches with interlocking firezones setup by the Germans.  The Canadians also faced the crack Hitler SS troops supplemented by the fanatical Nazi Youth (as opposed to captured Polish or Russian or wounded Germans faced by some of the other troops).  These "soldiers" executed 20 Canadian Prisoners of War and then according to the museum at Juno Beach forced French citizens to witness tanks driving backwards and forwards over their remains.

The Canadians were the last ones to land on the Normandy beaches (about 1 hour behind) but got the furthest on that day - about 3 kms from Caen which took the rest of the Allies up to 20 additional days to advance this far.

The French built this memorial to symbolize where most of the free world leaders came ashore in the days following... on Canada's Mike Sector on Juno Beach.  Churchill, Eisenhower and then De Gaulle all came in on successive days causing the Canadian's in charge to complain that they couldn't offload enough supplies because of all the leaders and their entourages.

X marks the spot where De Gaulle first set foot.

Here's proof (8 days after the invasion)

Canadian memorial at Juno Beach

The Titanium covered Canadian Museum.  It was setup by private fundraising and with little government involvement... unfortunately it shows as it was poorly organized had themes around irrelevant things like where current immigrants to Canada are coming from and charged 35 EUROS for admission!!! (The only time we paid anything for any museum ).  It is staffed by 4 students on assignment who gave a good tour of the grounds but we were disappointed that our government isn't picking up the ball and running with this.  It only opened recently (in Jeanie Cretin's time) but it will be an embarrassment come the 70th anniversary of D-Day in 2014.  

A nice model of an RCAF Spitfire... still one of the best looking fighters of all time (and one of the best performing in its short period of dominance around the Battle of Britain).  It would be later out classed by the much longer ranged P-51 Mustang at the time of D-Day.

A German gun emplacement... this was originally on the beach but the dunes have advanced over the years and now it's high and dry

Tunnels joining the gun emplacements... all of this built with slave labour from Russians to local French.

The escape route from the German tunnels.  They had neat "innovations" like a tube to tempt  Allied soldiers to throw in grenades that would dump the grenade back at their feet 2 seconds later.  There was lots of battle damage to this on as well so you could tell it was hard fought.  Apparently there were bunkers like this every 150' or so with interlocking fields of fire that made it a virtual death trap for infantry soldiers without heavy armour (which was not available as you will see in a few).

Our student guide in red... he was from Vancouver but spoke French like a native.

It got down to about 4 degrees and was blowing like hell... the waves were about the same as on D-Day he said.

A Canadian DD (Dual Drive) tank.  This had a propeller and a canvas skirt to keep it afloat as it came in.  Unfortunately due to the high waves, most of them sunk with their crews.  Of 37 who tried to launch, they lost 32 before they gave up and waited for calmer conditions.  This one they found a few years ago and fished it out to put on display.
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After our long but illuminating day on the Normandy beaches, we headed south through Tours and to Loche and then into the surrounding countryside to our new home for the next three weeks - the Gite Crene (Crene Farmhouse).

Mustard fields on the road to Loche.