D-Day
It was a sunny, blustery day. Very cold, very windy. This was our D-day tour. We had a nice breakfast of croissants and eggs for Bill and croissant and apple for Karen. As a side note, we discovered that Normandy is also known for apples. There are apple dishes in all restaurants as well as cider.
Now on to our tour. We met our guide, Bridget and our fellow travelers - 2 couples from the US and two gals from Canada. We started off at Longues-sur-Mer where the Germans had 4 gun batteries that could hit both Gold beach and Omaha beach on the bluffs. Bridget gave us a lot of information, history and tactics. The view from there was beautiful and sad at the same time.
We then drove down to Omaha beach. It was a beautiful flat beach with high hills behind it. The Germans had many bunkers on the hills from which they could attack the arriving troops. The beach was beautiful and can be enjoyable in warmer weather except when you think of the tremendous loss of life that happened there on June 6, 1944.
Our next stop was the American Cemetery - the one you always see with the perfectly lined up rows of crosses. After the war, Charles de Gaulle gave the US the land to be used for a cemetery and this is a little patch of land in France that belongs to the USA. Even those who work there are paid by the US. It is beautiful and very well maintained. It overlooks Omaha Beach. We had time to wonder around and read some of the crosses. We didn't know that Teddy Roosevelt had two sons burried there so we found the markers as well as those of the band of brothers.
After our visit to the cemetery, we went down to another spot on Omaha Beach. At each stop Bridget had lots of history to tell us about the action at that spot. This spot was where the National Guard troops came ashore and there was great loss of life there. There is a monument there to the US National Guard that was very significant for Bill to see.
Next we went to Point de Hoc where intense bombing by the Americans left the landscape with many deep craters. This was where our troops had to climb 70 foot cliffs to gain the ground around the German batteries.
By this time we were getting hungry so we drove to Sainte-Mere-Eglise for lunch and a chance to see the WW II museum. General Eisenhower is the second from the left.
The museum was great and the town has a special WW II feature - a paratrooper got caught on the church steeple and now a replica hangs there. He stayed there for 2 hours while the German snippers in the steeple forgot about him. He was able to cut himself down and was taken prisioner but survived the war and has come back to the town several times since the war.
After lunch we saw several sites portrayed in Band of Brothers showing what Easy company did on D-Day. We actually went to the field where they took out 4 German batteries. We followed them along with their activities. It was all very interesting since we had just watched those episodes before we came.
A very touching stop came at the end of the tour. We stopped at a church that had been turned into a field hospital by two US medics. They realized that a place was needed to treat the wounded so they thought the church would work. They laid the wounded on the pews and some still had blood stains to this day. The church has a stained glass window devoted to the 101st airborne.
Well, it was a full day and we could tell you more but, watch the Band of Brothers and you'll see what we saw. We can not begin to capture all we saw in pictures or the history, but hope this provides some perspective. See you tomorrow via blog - we miss you all.
Now on to our tour. We met our guide, Bridget and our fellow travelers - 2 couples from the US and two gals from Canada. We started off at Longues-sur-Mer where the Germans had 4 gun batteries that could hit both Gold beach and Omaha beach on the bluffs. Bridget gave us a lot of information, history and tactics. The view from there was beautiful and sad at the same time.
Our next stop was the American Cemetery - the one you always see with the perfectly lined up rows of crosses. After the war, Charles de Gaulle gave the US the land to be used for a cemetery and this is a little patch of land in France that belongs to the USA. Even those who work there are paid by the US. It is beautiful and very well maintained. It overlooks Omaha Beach. We had time to wonder around and read some of the crosses. We didn't know that Teddy Roosevelt had two sons burried there so we found the markers as well as those of the band of brothers.
After our visit to the cemetery, we went down to another spot on Omaha Beach. At each stop Bridget had lots of history to tell us about the action at that spot. This spot was where the National Guard troops came ashore and there was great loss of life there. There is a monument there to the US National Guard that was very significant for Bill to see.
Next we went to Point de Hoc where intense bombing by the Americans left the landscape with many deep craters. This was where our troops had to climb 70 foot cliffs to gain the ground around the German batteries.
By this time we were getting hungry so we drove to Sainte-Mere-Eglise for lunch and a chance to see the WW II museum. General Eisenhower is the second from the left.
The museum was great and the town has a special WW II feature - a paratrooper got caught on the church steeple and now a replica hangs there. He stayed there for 2 hours while the German snippers in the steeple forgot about him. He was able to cut himself down and was taken prisioner but survived the war and has come back to the town several times since the war.
After lunch we saw several sites portrayed in Band of Brothers showing what Easy company did on D-Day. We actually went to the field where they took out 4 German batteries. We followed them along with their activities. It was all very interesting since we had just watched those episodes before we came.
A very touching stop came at the end of the tour. We stopped at a church that had been turned into a field hospital by two US medics. They realized that a place was needed to treat the wounded so they thought the church would work. They laid the wounded on the pews and some still had blood stains to this day. The church has a stained glass window devoted to the 101st airborne.
Well, it was a full day and we could tell you more but, watch the Band of Brothers and you'll see what we saw. We can not begin to capture all we saw in pictures or the history, but hope this provides some perspective. See you tomorrow via blog - we miss you all.
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