D-Day Tour

Inscription on a plaque at La Fiere - put in by the
Friends of the American Veterans Association.

Yesterday we toured some World War II sights. We used an audio tour that I bought online from a guide who does private tours that get rave reviews. It was a little difficult to follow because its meant to play as you're driving. He would say "in 2 miles there will be a post and then in 3 miles a statue." But what he meant was in 2 miles you're supposed to turn at the post, and also it was either in 3 feet or 8 miles. The idea was good, but it definitely required both Doug and me to be good navigators and sharp eyed. We ran into another family doing the same audio tour and they were just lost.

It started in Bayeux which is a town that was largely spared damage from D-Day because the Germans fled the town. From Bayeux, we took a route in the general direction of Utah beach, stopping first at a very interesting and tiny (5 houses?) town called La Fiere where a multi-day fierce battle was fought over this teeny tiny bridge that was crucial for rolling tanks on through Normandy. We also saw St. Mere-Eglise which is this huge old church that American paratroopers landed on and around on D-Day, famously pictured in The Longest Day (movie) except that movie had the paratrooper who got stuck on the spire on the wrong side of the spire.

Soldier statue at La Fiere with flower wreaths (including a
German one!) in front. 

Driving down these narrow lanes, through tiny towns with incredibly old buildings, you could almost see the soldiers and tanks. Many, many houses flew both French and US flags. The entire area is still decorated for the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landing.

From St. Mere-Eglise we made it over to Utah beach. The landing crafts landed at low tide, which was a surprise to the Germans who had assumed we'd try and land at high tide. At low tide, the beach is a truly huge 200 yards long. They had a landing craft up near the museum with some soldier statues to show scale. Looking out at that surf and imagining that craft packed full of soldiers made me feel sea sick. I can't imagine living through that.

Utah Beach landing spot

Girls next to a Sherman Tank, they (the tanks, not the girls)
are much smaller than I thought. The girls are much bigger than I think.

Landing vehicle with soldiers. MUCH smaller than I thought.

After Utah Beach we headed over to Pont du Hoc, which is where soldiers attempting to make landfall had to climb 100 ft cliffs. This was important because Pont du Hoc had artillery stationed high above that could fire on troops at both Utah and Omaha beaches.

From Pont du Hoc we made our way to Omaha Beach and then finally to the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville. The cemetery is set high up above the beach on a cliff. The American Cemetery used to be right at Omaha Beach but they relocated it up onto the cliff a few years later. It has the same solemn feel as Arlington National Cemetery. The vastness of the cemetery speaks to the vastness of the assault and the casualties incurred. The grounds are impeccably manicured. But the white crosses go on and on. Unlike Arlington you can't walk through each of the grave sites.

Endless rows of grave markers. 9,388 buried here with only 308 unknown. By contrast, at the German cemetery, there are thousands of unknown soldiers although they are still working to identify many of them. 

The entire tour took us about 9 hours and 15 mins, including the hour drive each way from our flat. We saw a lot of monuments and meaningful sites, but the two things that stuck out most to me were the number of American flags flying on people's private property and this quote on a statue of a book at the La Fiere monument. It says (its hard to read), "To pass on the memory, to remind that today we live in peace, freedom and dignity because others gave their life for us."

Inscription at La Fiere

Once we got back to Villers-sur-Mer we set out in search of crepes for dinner, which was harder than you'd expect. The tourist season here is July and August and so many places are not open yet or close really early. We found a woman willing to make us some crepes to go (their restaurant was closing!) and we took our crepes and ate them on the beach.

Villers-sur-Mer is famous for Les Vaches Noirs (the black cows) which are giant cliffs jutting out into the ocean. Around Les Vaches Noirs you can find fossils! We didn't quite make it all the way to the cliffs last night, but we found some fossils on the beach. They are lopha gregarea fossils from what we can tell, which are an extinct type of mollusk. Those are pretty common fossils to find around here, but we were just thrilled to find fossils. I'm so thankful to have nerdy children to do things like this with. We're going to a fossil museum today and then to the cliffs at low tide tonight to hopefully find more! It was a really fun way to end the day.

Searching for shells.

One of our fossils - a lopha gregaria.

our prized collection

Over the course of the day we had cold rain, cloudy and windy, then last night sunny and beach weather. Overnight there were massive thunderstorms complete with hail. It feels like they get all the weather here everyday and layers are crucial!

So, today we're doing a dinosaur museum and then hopefully finding a place to see how they make cider and getting some to go. We are in the Calvados region and they are famous for all things made of apples I hear.