Thursday, September 15, 2016

Normandy - day 3: D-Day tour

Mike has wanted to see the D-Day sites in Normandy for quite some time and so we scheduled a full day private tour. Our guide Jonathan picked us up at our hotel and took us first to the batteries at Longues-Sur-Mer. There are four big gun bunkers still there though one was blown up by a lucky hit that went directly into the front opening of the bunker. The explosion blew out the back of the bunker and threw pieces of the gun into the surrounding area.  These bunkers fired on both Omaha and Utah Beach.

Next we headed to Omaha Beach, site of the fiercest landing battle the Americans faced.  Today it's a beautiful sandy beach, on June 6, 1944 it became "Bloody Omaha". This is the battle scene portrayed in the opening scenes of "Saving Private Ryan". So very many young men lost their lives on this beach and I found myself unable to control the tears that were gathering in my eyes. I hadn't expected to react quite so strongly to the beach, I thought the cemetery would be the place where I would have difficulty controlling my emotions. Looking down that long sandy beach, Jonathan explained that the Allied landing happened at low tide.  This was planned so that the soldiers could see the obstacles the Germans had placed in the water, they would have been underwater at high tide. What this meant though, was that the Americans had to cross a long (300 yards or so) stretch of beach under heavy fire just to reach the base of the bluffs and most of them didn't make it.

The Normandy American Cemetery at Colleville-Sur-Mer was next and I was still trying to dry my eyes after leaving Omaha.  The cemetery is huge. Rows and rows and rows of crosses. Jonathan told us that only about 40% of the men who died at Omaha are buried here, the others were sent home at the request of their families. Forty percent and the number of dead is still almost 10,000 in that cemetery.  We wandered through, looking at the various markers.  There were about 100 other people there, some appeared to be looking for a specific marker but most were like us and paying their respects to these heroes. The average age of the dead is 24 years old. So young and so brave.

Pointe du Hoc is a sheer cliff face nearly 100 feet high. The Germans had gun emplacements there they could fire on Omaha Beach, Utah Beach and even part of the British landing area at Gold Beach. A group of US Army Rangers scaled the cliffs under fire and destroyed the German guns they found. They would spend the next few days fighting off the Germans and would ultimately lose 70% of their men before reinforcement could arrive.  I looked over the edge of that cliff and thought "that cliff seems almost impossible to climb, especially with someone shooting at you".

Sainte-Mere-Eglise is a small town where members of the 82nd Airborne parachuted into and were spotted by the Germans due to a house on fire in the town. The fire made it easy for the Germans to see the parachutes and pick off the paratroopers before they could land.

Utah Beach was another American landing area guarded by German guns. Though the loss of life was lower than at Omaha, it was still a deadly battle.

At Angoville Au Plain, two American medics (aged 19 & 20) treated wounded soldiers in a church.  They cared for American and German wounded which was helpful when the Germans overran the town. When they saw the medics had treated German soldiers as well as their own, they let them continue their work. The church even sustained a mortar hit. Those two medics cared for over 80 men with the most basic supplies and only lost two of them. The Americans eventually regained control of the town.  One of the church's patron saints is St Damien, the patron saint of physicians. One has to wonder if it was more than chance that led those medics to that place.





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