The Grand Tour: Omaha Beach

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Our second full day in Normandy was spent visiting several of the D-Day sites. This was, of course, made more special by the fact that this was the 75th Anniversary of the landing on the beaches. When I was in Normandy over a decade ago, I visited the American Cemetery, but had not gone to any of the other sites. The best way to visit these places is by car; public transport keeps your time schedule too limited and most of the tours are rather expensive and give you very limited time at each place.

We began at the Omaha Beach Memorial. Above the beach stands a monument to the US Infantry while down on the beach itself is the sculpture Les Braves, honoring the hope of changing the future, the call to stand against inhumanity, and our responsibility towards each other. At the moment - I am not sure if these are permanent or just up for the 75th Anniversary - are several signboards explaining what the little seaside town was like prior to 1940, what happened to the town and its residents when the Germany Army arrived, and what happened on D-Day. Standing on the beach, you can see for miles and, beautiful as it is now, it is hard to imagine what it must have been like on June 6, 1944.

Looking down the beach, my dad saw a point or headland that stuck out into the water and said he wanted to go there. I was fairly certain it was Pointe du Hoc (I was wrong, but not by much), so we piled back into the car and started towards it. On the way, we passed at least 4 D-Day museums, so if you are a museum person, I would do your research well on which museum or museums are the best otherwise you could spend an entire day just going to museums. Currently, there are also banners hanging from every light post between the D-Day sites, each banner honoring a different hero from WWII and especially D-Day, which is a really nice tribute. We reached Pointe du Hoc - without any museum stops - and began our tour.

Pointe du Hoc was the promontory the US Rangers scaled and stormed to take out a German gun nest. However, the Germans had moved the guns further back enabling them to fire on both Omaha and Utah beaches, and it was this position that the Rangers took. The site is very impressive as there are still gun emplacements and bunkers as well as bomb craters - all of which are open for visitors to explore (except the one bunker that is currently full of water).

Our final stop - though not the last D-Day site, there are many and it would probably take a few days to properly see them all - was the American Cemetery.

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Photos

Pointe du Hoc
Bunker ceilings are very low