Normandy

As some of you may know, my Dad has been a life-long history buff with a special passion for World War II. While he and my mom were visiting in August, four of us (including Brooks but not Eric, who we unfortunately had to leave hard at work in London) took a special trip to visit the region of Normandy, France. This stretch of coastline just across the English Channel was the site of D-Day, the largest single-day military invasion of all time, which dropped over 130,000 Allied troops into Nazi-occupied France on June 6, 1944.

When my parents visited me while I lived in London in 1998, we spent one (ridiculous) day seeing some of these sights, but our return trip this summer was an incredibly different experience. The one day Normandy Blitz Tour of '98 generated some of my most vivid travel memories ever -
~ "what do you mean there are no Normandy tours from Paris this week?"
~ "(cough), no I said Caen!"
~ the purple bubble gum car
~ "uhh, Mom, can you drive stick?"
~ "okay we have 8.5 minutes at Omaha, GO!"
~ the potato salad sandwiches for lunch at 2:30pm,
~ the beautiful villages and scenery that we RACED through,
~ running through the station and collapsing in a joyful heap on the train only to discover that this was the newly arrived train FROM Paris... Ahh!!!

But this post is about Normandy Tour, Part Deux. For this visit we were smart enough to engage the services of a professional guide, a wonderful English historian with a particular passion for the US soldier's experience in France during the mid-1940s. We met Dr Thomson at the English side of the Channel Tunnel and rode in his car on a "ferry train" through the Chunnel to France. That evening we got an amazing outline of the battles and sights we'd be seeing and enjoyed looking through his maps as we zipped down into the French countryside. Stopping at Honfleur for supper, Brooks got to ride on his very first carousel while we soaked in the surroundings at this darling little harbor-front village.


The next day we saw Omaha Beach, the American Cemetery and Visitor's Center, Pont du Hoc, Utah Beach and Sainte Mere Eglise - I can not imagine how we could have possibly crammed more of these historical sights into a single day.

Here Dad and Dr Thomson are discussing invasion strategy and how the topography impacted the Ranger landings at Pont du Hoc. The large cratered landscape around this German clifftop fortification remains largely untouched as a memorial to those who died and was dramatic evidence of the beating that all this beautiful area of Normandy took in that battle.


Here we are in front of the Airborne museum in the town of Sainte Mere Eglise. In the background you can spot the steeple of the church I've pictured below...


This church was one of our destinations in part because of a colorful story of the American parachutist, John Steele, who dropped in on June 6th.


In the darkness before the June 6th dawn beach landings, over 13,000 Allied troops parachuted into German territory to reach specific objectives. One of them was Private John Steele who, because of a bad "drop", landed right in the middle of the Ste Mere Eglise town square, his parachute getting tangled up on a spire on the church roof. Because of a fire in a nearby house, the German occupiers had already sounded a midnight alarm and the whole town was out, forming a bucket brigade to douse the burning building. Can you picture this?! Church bells pealing, flames lighting up the town square, German soldiers on alert, Steele dropped his knife trying to cut himself free, so he just went limp and pretended to be dead. At dawn, after hours of intense fighting, the Americans were defeated and some German went to retrieve his body from the church roof. Shocked to find a wounded but alive American soldier, they decided, instead of finishing him off then and there, to send him to another town for interrogation. Their efforts failed. Not only did he not give them any information on his mission, he couldn't even hear the questions after hanging beside the church bell all night - he was deaf! He was later rescued by the Americans at Cherbourg, surviving the war to return home to the States. His effigy hangs on the church steeple to this day in homage to the liberating Allied forces.


Our last day in Normandy, we saw the huge German anti-naval guns that lined the coast at Longues - because of their incredible range, they were a huge threat to the Allied sea crafts and troops landing on both Omaha and Gold Beaches. If Rommel, the German field commander in Normandy, had been believed and given the resources to do as he saw fit, the French coast would have been peppered with countless of these well-protected and massively dangerous guns, making the Allies' landing even trickier. This location is the only one which still holds the original German guns, all disabled in the fighting.


Brooks and Grandpa Charlie sport matching cheeky grins at the Juno beach memorial.


Grandma and Brooks found that they could easily get some play time in anywhere - including a parking lot!


Dad and I had all kinds of fun crawling up and around this concrete German fort. Dr Thomson warned us of all the particular dangers of the sight, but this was one of the few intact fortifications we saw, so we couldn't resist.


I wish I could convey in pictures all the amazing things we saw. It's quite hard to see it in the photo below, but the gray dots in the water are the massive remains of the floating Mulberry Harbor that the British installed in the water opposite Arromanches several miles from us down the coast. Concrete blocks, floating pier-heads and approx 10 km of floating roads were constructed in England, hidden beneath the sea at the English coast, and then raised up and towed across the Channel at 5 mph the week of the invasion. This specifically engineered man-made port allowed the Allied forces to unload over half a million TONS of supplies, equipment and manpower into France over an eight month period, enabling the good guys to push further up and into France on the road to victory. Nick-named Port Winston, this engineering marvel was one of the keys to success of the entire invasion.


While the American cemetery was impressive and certainly a beautiful monument to our country's fallen men, I was personally more moved by the British cemetery we visited. Designed to resemble the parish churchyard cemeteries back in England, the smaller, more intimate scale highlighted the individual rather than corporate sacrifices of the war. Well-tended flowers frame each row of tombstones and underneath the soldier's name and religious symbol of choice (Cross, Star of David) the mourning families or loved ones were able to add a personal inscription - some were messages of faith, others were tributes to the man's courage and love of country, still others heart-wrenching words from a loved one full of grief. I left feeling sad and praying that our world never has to see another war like this one.


One of my particular highlights was our final sight - Pegasus Bridge, the very first target that was secured by Allied forces just after midnight on D-Day. Silent glider planes filled with soldiers were connected by ropes to heavier planes and pulled over the Channel to be released over the German soldiers in France. Floating to the ground with a heavy bump, the soldiers spilled out of their planes and taking the German guards by surprise, they had control of the bridge 15 minutes later. As one of the only places to cross the River Orno in Normandy, securing this bridge meant that they had effectively cut off the German reinforcements from the east and allowed Allied forces to move west towards Paris at will, without needing to capture and secure Caen. Not only was it special because it was *first*, it was incredibly important strategically and displayed the excellent planning of the Allied commanders. Here's the reconstructed Pegasus Bridge (the original is displayed on the grounds of the neighboring museum).


On the far left of the picture is an old building which at the time of the war housed the Gondree family and their road-side cafe. They were the first French people liberated by the Allied soldiers and after seeing the friendly forces take control of the bridge, they dug in their little garden and unearthed bottles of champagne to celebrate with the British soldiers!

The nearby Pegasus Bridge Museum had two of my favorite war displays ever. The first one was an example of the "toy soldiers" used by Allied forces during the Normandy invasion. These little airborne decoys were dropped from gliders close to the German lines during the night. The parachutes opened and they drifted slowly down, appearing in the dark of night as full-size airmen. Each of these toy soldiers was actually a bag packed with firecrackers that exploded on impact, fooling the German forces into believing that dozens of Allied troops had landed and were immediately engaging in action all around them. The chaos and noise created confusion and fear and indicated many more Allied troops hiding in the German occupied zones than there actually were.


This was another fascinating exhibit - one of the Horsa model gliders with its set of weights. The D-Day planners would use these tiny scales to balance out the cargo of the individual air-crafts, so that these engine-less vehicles could silently and smoothly float to a relatively precise, safe landing in Normandy. Without engines to maneuver the gliders, they basically had high-tech paper airplanes and the commanders had make sure that the crew, their gear, and any supplies were loaded accurately so as to not throw the balance off. There are weights to represent the pilots in the cockpit, the fixed wheels, and the movable objects - soldiers and their backpacks, jeeps, machine guns, etc. The individual holes in the model lined up in the real glider with clamps for securing each item. It was fantastic!


Dr. Thomson literally had to drag us away from this museum, in order to head back to our drop-off point. I loved the photos and stories and bits of history even after several days of similar stories and photos and history bits.

While much of this tour was still a whirlwind, I think this photo sums up lots about the trip. In the background, Dad and Dr. Thomson study the Normandy battle maps while Brooks and Grandma go exploring down the beach at a toddler's pace. Me, I'm jumping between the two groups, enjoying both the history and the family and snapping some photos. It was a wonderful, memorable few days!


Thanks for the spectacular and truly fun history lesson, Mom and Dad.