April 24 - Cherbourg, Normandy

This morning we docked in Cherbourg on the coast of Normandy.  A couple I had been talking with online booked a van with driver and guide for the day and I and two other ladies decided to go with them.  My friend Claudia and I had been to Normandy before but the others had not.  Since it was a private tour we could set our itinerary and our first priority was to visit the D Day related sites, so off we went.  A word about the weather.  The forecast called for rain all day, but the weather gods must have been smiling on us because aside from a little sprinkle twice it was a nice day albeit a little cold.

The first two places we went I hadn’t been to before.  We  stopped first at Ste. Mère Église, the town that paratroopers landed in early on June 6, 1944.  They missed their drop spot and many came down in the middle of the town square.  One, John Steele who was portrayed by Red Buttons in the movie The Longest Day, got his parachute caught on the church spire.  In an attempt to get down he was shot in the foot by a German soldier and then he played dead until he could be taken down.  The priest in the church began ringing the bells and Private Steele hung next to the church and bells for hours before the Germans got him down to hold him prisoner.  He managed to escape and rejoined his unit.  The French have hung a replica of him hanging from his parachute on the steeple.  It had to have been a harrowing experience. Inside the church there are two stained glass windows commemorating the troops and units that landed at Normandy and liberated the town.  They were quite beautiful and moving.

That's a replica of Private Steele hanging on the left side of the tower

The two stained glass windows commemorating the invasion

Our next stop was Pointe du Hoc, another place featured in the movie I mentioned above.  This is a 35 meter high cliff which the Germans had fortified with a series of tunnels and big gun emplacements.  The Allies had been told that there were five 155mm artillery pieces there in positions which could fire on both Omaha and Utah beaches, the two US landing beaches.  Additionally, the guns could lob shells as far as 12 miles out to sea.  It was therefore imperative that the guns be taken out before the landing occurred. The US forces landed 225 Army Rangers on the beach below the cliffs just before the invasion and their job was to use ropes and ladders to scale the cliff and destroy the guns.  There was some kind of breakdown of intelligence and it turned out that the guns weren’t there, just the emplacements for them.  A team of Rangers found the guns hidden in a farmhouse a few miles away and destroyed them.  However, in the process out of 225 rangers landed only 90 survived.  The mission was a success, but had the intelligence been accurate perhaps it would have been at a much lower cost.

A gun emplacement

Some of the indentations in the ground of the cliff are bomb craters while others are remnants of the tunnel system the Germans had

This is an artillery piece like the ones that were supposed to be here

On we went to Omaha Beach.  If you’ve seen Saving Private Ryan you’ll know what the men landing there faced. The last time I was here the tide was at roughly the same place it was for the first wave landing.  The men who unloaded from their Higgins boats had to cross a large swath of sand covered with barbed wire and various steel obstacles to which mines and explosives were attached and all while under blistering fire. I cannot imagine the terror of the men running down the ramps of the landing craft.  Many of them were 18 or 19 years old and had probably never been more than 50 miles from home.  At the other beaches the resistance met was not as stiff, but at Omaha the battle remained in doubt for many hours.  Between 5,000 and 6,000 men were killed, wounded or missing at the end of the day.

Omaha Beach. The next photo shows the monument on the beach

 

From Omaha we drove up to the American Cemetery at Colleville sur Mère, a bluff overlooking the beach.  I wrote about this when we came here in 2018 so I’ll try not to be too repetitive.  There are 9388 US military personnel buried here, all but one casualties of the Normandy invasion. The one exception is Quentin Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt’s son who was an aviator shot down in WW I.  His body was exhumed from its original grave elsewhere in France so he could be buried next to his brother Theodore Roosevelt Jr., a general who died of a heart attack not long after landing on Utah beach.  It is very moving to see the long lines of white marble markers, most of them with crosses, but a few with stars of David.

Spirit of American Youth Rising from the Waves

Near the entrance and where ceremonies are carried out is a beautiful bronze sculpture called Spirit of American Youth Rising from the Waves.  In the middle of the cemetery is a multi-denominational chapel with an altar that’s inscribed with “I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish.”  I thought it was one of the most moving places I’d ever been the last time and my feelings haven’t changed.  As we walked along the beautifully manicured walkways we could hear birds chirping and singing and I couldn’t help but think of the difference from the sound springing forth from this bluff nearly 80 years ago when there were machine guns, rifles and artillery pieces firing.

Our last D Day stop was the museum at Arromanches   The Allies knew that they needed ports to be able to bring heavy armor (tanks), artillery and supplies and the Germans held the ports and had heavily fortified them.  The Allies had learned that the hard way when they made an attempt to capture the port of Dieppe in August 1942.  In that battle of the 6000 Canadian troops who were landed within less than 12 hours  more than 3600 were killed, wounded or captured and the Royal Air Force lost more than 100 planes.   So the Allies had designed and built the pieces for two man made ports with floating docks and bridges.  One was constructed at Omaha Beach and the other at Arromanches.  The one at Omaha was destroyed on June 19, 1944 by a huge storm, but the remnants of the one at Arromanches can still be seen and the museum there has all sorts of displays of the construction and equipment used.  It also has many things from the rest of the invasion.   Just a few weeks ago a new building was opened and the one I’d visited before was torn down.  It’s a worthwhile place to visit to understand the huge undertaking that was done 80 years ago.

A sunken caisson which formed part of the port

Hard to see but there are a few rectangular pieces in the water that formed part of the man-made harbor

We still had a little time so on our way back to Cherbourg we stopped in Bayeux and went to the Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux to see the Bayeux Tapestry.  This is a remarkable embroidered cloth that is about 20 inches tall and 220 feet long. It tells the story of the reason for William, Duke of Normandy, invading England and defeating King Harold in 1066, in other words the Norman conquest.  The thought is that it was created to tell the people, who were not literate, the story of the events in a set of 58 tableaux; you might call it an 11th century cartoon depiction.  What is amazing is that the tapestry is believed to have been made only a few years after the conquest making it nearly 1000 years old.  It tells the story in vivid depictions of people, animals and places and is truly remarkable to see.  Unfortunately but understandably no photos may be taken of this 1000 year old treasure, so if you want to see what it looks like you'll have to google it.

Then it was time to get back to Cherbourg and the ship. In fact, we arrived only a few minutes before we were due to sail.  We weren’t the last to board though because just behind us came another group.  Whew!  I was glad we made it although our next port was just a few miles down the road.

Anyway, It was a very nice and informative day.  Our guide Alain was great and gave us just enough information.  The weather held out and I saw some new things along with places I wanted to revisit.  The only downside was that we walked about 5.5 miles and I was frankly pooped.  Tomorrow I have a pretty easy day and then we have a sea day so I’ll be able to recuperate.  I’ll tell you more about the ship and the vibe here then too. À bientôt.