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Published: October 28th 2015
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I’m headed back to London on a train, and I thought I should update my blog. I’ve been traveling all over Normandy for the past four days. It’s a place full of history, from the Bayeux Tapestry to the D-Day landings in 1944.
On Thursday, I took an afternoon train from London to Paris to Caen with my parents. This was my first real experience with a language barrier while I’ve been over here, but it wasn’t too bad because many French people know English and my dad also knows some French. On Friday, we rented a car and drove to Mont Saint Michele, a small island off of the French coast. This island has an abbey that was first built before the year 1000. It has had several renovations and expansions since then, and now covers most of the middle of the island.
On Saturday, we did a tour focused on what Normandy is most well known for these days: the D-Day invasion of Europe during World War II. I’ll explain what we saw, but first, some history (which you can avoid reading, if you prefer, by skipping the next two paragraphs). The Allied plans for the invasion
of Europe, known as Operation Overlord, were very complicated and required extreme secrecy to succeed. For D-Day, the 40 mile stretch of beach was broken up into several sections: the Americans were responsible for taking Utah and Omaha beaches, the British the Juno and Sword beaches, and several other countries the remainder. The location of Normandy was chosen because it was where the enemy least expected an attack. Normandy has no deepwater port, which is usually required for unloading tanks, supplies and the like. Hitler, fooled by an Allied ruse, was convinced that the invasion would come at Calais, hundreds of miles down the shore. Accordingly, the Germans heavily fortified that area, leaving Normandy relatively unprotected. Even the solders that were stationed there were mostly too young, too old, or conscripts from captured countries. However, it was not without defenses: under the direction of Erwin Rommel, the Germans were building artillery bunkers and machine gun pillboxes, laying mines, and placing barriers to ships in the water all along the French coast. Anywhere the Allies attacked, there would be fierce resistance.
On the night before D-Day, the Allies dropped thousands of paratroopers into France with the mission of destroying communications
and forcing the delay of the reinforcements that were sure to come in response to the attack the next morning. There was also a concentrated bombing effort to destroy as many German positions as possible. Unfortunately, this was mostly unsuccessful due to German preparation and the inaccuracy of the bombers. On the morning of the invasion, the Americans sailed into a bloodbath at Omaha Beach. The first several waves of troops were decimated, but they eventually managed to claw their way to the top of the beach and establish a foothold. At nearby Utah beach, the Americans had a much easier time. Thanks to planning, courage and luck, they took the beach with only a few hundred casualties. Once the Allies took all of the planned Normandy beaches, they built two artificial ports, made from a series of giant, hollow blocks of concrete that were towed over from Britain and sunk off the beach. This allowed the Allies to unload vast amounts of new troops, supplies and equipment from the deepwater ships and ensured the eventual fall of Nazi Germany. Hitler, still convinced that the real attack would come at Calais, refused to send significant reinforcements. Despite heavy losses, the
D-Day invasion had been a success.
Our tour guide, Alain, was the son of a member of the French Resistance during the war. During the tour, we were inundated with information and sights from the war. The first artifact I saw from the war was the British artificial harbor at Arromanches, or “Gold Beach” as it was designated on D-Day. Surprisingly (to me), many of the German defensive structures, parts of the “Atlantic Wall,” also still lie mostly intact across the French countryside. First, we explored a group of four German artillery guns in bunkers set four miles back from the beaches. With a range of around twelve miles, the guns relied on a spotter closer to the beach for targeting coordinates. Seeing the guns up close and going inside the bunker was surreal. We also explored a series of German bunkers at Pont Du Hoc, the site where Army Rangers scaled the cliffs to take out the Germans stationed there.
One of the sites that we visited was the American memorial and cemetery of Colleville-sur-Mer. Line after line of graves extend into the distance, and there is a granite wall full of the
names of missing soldiers whose bodies were never recovered. Notable people buried there include Teddy Roosevelt’s son and the two dead brothers that caused the title character to be evacuated in
Saving Private Ryan. In the midst of the graves, a solemn chapel sits for mourning and remembrance. Finally, there is a statue called “The Spirit of the American Youth Rising from the Waves” and a series of maps detailing the Allied and German troop movements during the liberation of Europe. It is a powerful place, the kind that one has to visit to really understand. To me, that was truly the Greatest Generation. To really drive that point home: one of our last stops was at an old church in a small French town. During the war, two American medics, Bob Wright and Kenneth Moore, utilized it as their field hospital. Not only did they treat their wounded American comrades, but also the enemy wounded and a 13 year old boy from the town. The medics were only 19 and 20 years old themselves, but they worked tirelessly and only lost two patients. The blood of those soldiers still stains the pews. A memorial outside the church commemorates their
heroic actions, and the new grave of Bob Wright sits in the nearby cemetery where he requested that half his ashes be buried when he died.
I saw other things in France, including the Bayeux Tapestry. It's an extremely old tapestry that tells the story of the Norman invasion of England in the 1000's. Someday, I hope I can go back to France and focus on the aspects that are unrelated to World War II. I'm glad that was the focus of my first trip, though.
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