Marcie's Big Adventure - Day 13/France - Omaha Beach

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Hi Everyone,

Today we docked at the Le Havre Port in France. My tour went to go Omaha Beach. Driving from the port to Omaha Beach, much of the terrain was similar to Vermont. Except there were more wider pastures and fields. We saw tons and tons of Canola plants (also known as rapeseed plant), which makes Canola oil. They are yellow flowers that turn into pods to make Canola oil. The plants are packed together tightly in the fields and were beautiful to see mile after mile of yellow fields. We caught the very tail end of lilac season here which was disappointing as I love lilacs and their smell but I got to see some of them! The beaches of Normandy go on and on. I cannot possibly imagine what it was like for those soldiers to have gotten themselves off their boats and into the water with guns and bombs being thrown at them from above. Some say The Longest Day movie and the first 10 minutes of Private Ryan depict it best. The Longest Day had several D-Day survivors as consultants which lead to its authenticity of what really happened. The towns around those beaches, have a lot of signs in English, in addition to their French signs. There are also quite a few old stone building that have huge pictures on outside walls of real life on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. We also went to a museum as well as the America Cemetery. That has 9,387 soldiers buried there. In order to have been buried there, you must have 1) died on June 6, 1944 at the beaches and 2) your family must have agreed to having the burial there as some brought their loved ones home. I had not realized that the War of Normandy lasted 100 days. I thought D-day was the War of Normandy. There were 2 beaches of Normandy that the US troops landed in, Omaha and Utah. Our Allies landed on other beaches. To give you an idea of how long the Normandy beaches are, due to the awful weather, the troops that were to land at Utah Beach missed it by a mile, literally. Initially that was horrifying to everyone because only 1 "trench" had been built through the vegetation to climb the cliffs instead of the 3 that had been built at Utah Beach. However, because they missed their mark by so much, there weren't as many Germans there to barrage them with fire power so they were luckier overall. The Germans expected the US/Allies were going to invade France in Calais, France so that is where they concentrated the majority of their men. The expectation was valid as it was only 20 miles of sea that the Allies had to travel by boat. By landing in Normandy, all the boats and there were thousands and thousands of them had to travel 100 miles to get to their destination. Smaller boats, called Goat boats were let off the larger vessels closer to the beach - they could hold 10 men and their firearms. But get this, those Goat boats had a wooded floor and the boat sides were canvas! Can you imagine that, canvas?? Eisenhower figured that would throw off the Germans even though it meant the terrain from boat to top of cliffs were unbelievable. The US/Allies also caught a couple big breaks - Hitler was really ticked off about something the night before and when he went to bed, he took a sleeping pill and told his people not to disturb him for any reason. So Hitler's guys did not wake him when their top brass at Normandy started calling Hitler to get permission to get troops, machinery and fire power sent their way. The second was that Rommel went to some big party himself that night and also didn't want to be be disturbed. In the end, 80,000 German soldiers are buried in Normandy due to the 100 day battle. There were 90,000 Harley Davidson motorcycles utilized in France during WW2, which surprised me as did learning that Porche owned VW back then and a whole lot of VW Beetles were also utilized. If I thought the streets of Guernsey are narrow, I hadn't seen anything yet! :-). We had time in a quaint little town of 500 to wander around. Obviously, they make their living catering to tourists. Got back to the ship just before leaving. Met my solo buddies for drinks but didn't join them for dinner. Ended up with a salad and a little quiet for dinner. Tonight we move our clocks back an hour. So tomorrow, in England, I will only be 5 hours ahead of the Eastern Time Zone. Hugs

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