After lunch we went to Pointe du Hoc where some of the Rangers scaled the cliffs to capture some big guns. I didn't realize that it actually took only 15 harrowing mins. from bottom to top for those who made it . But some of the guns had not been installed yet and were found more toward the town. The area had been bombed heavily and the craters have been left intact. They are huge! You can see them in the previous post. The other foggy picture was taken up there at the monument where they had just completed another ceremony.
One thing I didn't realize was just how far the guns on the cliffs could fire. If the had all been installed, the results might have been different. The bombings weren't terribly accurate so didn't do great job of knocking out the ones that were there. It was really our ships coming close enough to have their guns reach the cliffs that made a big difference.
It was a great day and I learned a lot.
Today we began with a trip to Arromanches. This was where the British landed, called Gold Beach. You can still see the remnants of the Mulberry Harbors which were built here and at Omaha Beach. As you can see from the picture, the day was much clearer and the tide was low, so it was gave a better idea of the conditions at the time. We went to a museum there that had a wonderful exhibit that explained how they worked in some detail. ( The museum also makes the point quite strongly that we have to remember that not only Americans landed on D-Day!) Suffice it to say that they were an incredible feat of engineering! However, in the end, only about 25% of the supplies were delivered through them in the end. The docks on Omaha were effectively destroyed in a huge storm around June 19th, 1944. They were a pet project of Churchill's.
We made two other interesting stops today. One was at a location just back from the cliff's where 4 of the big gun torrents and guns have been preserved in place. The forward lookout is there also. Although the fog had started rolling in, you could still get a sense of how commanding a position that was. At the beginning of the day Thomas read a first-hand account of D-day through a German ' eyes. The author had been stationed at such a location. Again, it set the tone for the day. He's very passionate about history in general, but especially the Normandy Invasion and loves to share that enthusiasm with us.
We then came back toward Caen to go to the big memorial museum there. It was very well done with tons of displays and videos. There was a lot of information about how WWI led into WWII. Someone in the last few days said that we can actually think of the together as the 30 Years War. There was a lot of information about life in occupied France. The most horrifying statistic I'd never heard before was that at the end of the war only 6-10% of Europe's children had survived. A stunning thought.
We made another stop that was special for a few reasons. A few days ago I mention the veteran we met at dinner who had helped capture the Pegasus Bridge. Well, Tom knows the son of one of the other men who landed there, so he had already hoped to take us there if time permitted. Fortunately our group is game for anything, so we were happy to make this unscheduled detour. We had a chance to walk over the small, but important bridge and to walk inside the first building liberated in France, the home and bar at one end of the bridge. The icing on the cake for me was that it was located in the town of Benouville where one of my ancestors, Marie Crevet, was born in 1647! She later emigrated to Canada.
Tomorrow we go back in time to another invasion, but from France into England when we learn about William the Conqueror and the Bayeux tapestry.
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