Blog Post 13/02/2012 Carentan, Bayeux, Caen and the Normandy Beaches

Blog Post 13/02/2012 Carentan, Bayeux, Caen and the Normandy Beaches.

As I write this I'm crawling through the French countryside on a train (snowfall has slowed the train right down) headed for my final stop in France for this trip, Paris.
My compartment.


Since my previous post I've been to Carentan, Bayeux, Caen, Ouistreham, and the Normandy beaches, Sword and Omaha. I arrived in Carentan in the evening of Tuesday 07/02, I had 2 nights there before heading off to Bayeux, 1 night in Bayeux, then 3 in Caen.
Bayeux Cathedral.


I spent my day in Carentan having a look around the town (Carentan was an objective of the 101st American Airborne on D-Day), I was planning on going to St-Mére-Église, but I missed the bus, (1pm, and the next one was at 6) (St-Mére-Église was the objective of the 82nd American Airborne on D-Day), so I spent more time looking around Carentan. It's a nice, small town, and it certainly was a nice, if not cold, day looking around.
The town hall in Carentan (and no, I was not drunk when I took this!)


The next morning I caught the train to Bayeux, where I looked around the medieval part of the town, which is really nice, with a big Cathedral as well. I then looked at the Bayeux Tapestry, which is bigger than I was expecting, it also covers more of the story before the battle of Hastings, which I thought was very interesting. After the tapestry I went to the British Cemetery, and had a look at the outside of the Battle of Normandy Museum, which was closed for the winter (just for a change), but had a Sherman,


M10 Tank Destroyer


and a Churchill Crocodile (a Churchill tank with a hull-mounted Flamethrower replacing the hull-mounted BESA machine gun.
Probably my all time favourite tank (the base Churchill, that is)


They were pretty impressive up close and live, I felt like a kid in a candy store. The cemetery was very sombre, it was one of the largest I'd visited up to that point, the only larger ones I can think of are Tyne Cot and Langemark in Ypres, and the American Cemetery in Normandy.
The memorial at the Bayeux war cemetery.


The next day I went on a tour of Omaha Beach. The tour started from Bayeux, just after lunch, went to Pointe-du-Hoc, Omaha Beach, the American Cemetery, and the German Battery at Lounges-sur-Mer, and finished in Bayeux at 6pm.



Point-du-Hoc:
The first stop of the tour was Point-du-Hoc, which was a headland that overlooked both Omaha and Utah beaches, it housed a battery of 6-Inch guns, which had been bombed by the RAF, but the bunkers had been rebuilt, this time with roofs. This meant that it had to be taken, a task given to a company of US Rangers, the only problem was the battery was at the top of a 100-foot cliff.
You read about how difficult it was for the Rangers, but nothing can prepare you for the reality. Those cliffs are high and steep, not to mention windy.


Omaha Beach:
From the Pointe-du-Hoc, we travelled to Omaha Beach proper. When we arrived at the westernmost exit of the beach, the guide explained that the water was higher than on d-day, the difference between the the day I was there and the 6th of June was about 300ft, which when you see the size of the cliffs and the bunkers that remain really show you a) how bloody inaccurate Saving Private Ryan was, and b) how bad it would have been on the day.
German bunker on Omaha


The way the Germans designed the Atlantic Wall was to create lots of cross and Enfilade fire, the best reason was that it made it easier for the bunkers to provide each other with fire support. Saving Private Ryan has people being mown down by machine gun fire while still in their landing craft, the positioning of the machine guns in real life would have made that impossible, the other big thing that SPR got wrong is they had too many casualties, if one believes the movie, then one would have thought that there would have been 60-70% casualties, in reality there was only about 10%
A part of the Beach.


We then went to the American Cemetery at Omaha beach, I had a look at the chapel there, and a few of the graves, I also helped to lower and fold the US Flag. I'm not sure what else to say except it was so large. Oh, yeah, when I was walking along some of the graves, there was a French school group, and some of the girls were being less than respectful, and when one laughed at the top of her voice, I walked over and (in front of their teacher as well), lectured them that "this is the grave where thousands of American troops died to save your country, so why don't you show some bloody respect!?" they at least had the decency to look abashed. (don't worry, the lecture was given more from the anti-French than the pro-US side of me :-P)






From there we visited the village of Port-en-Bessin, which filled the role of Ouistreham in the movie "The Longest Day", (I visit Ouistreham the next day), the reason that it filled the role in the movie, was Ouistreham had been largely destroyed during the battle, and Port-en-Bessin still had a lot of the old style buildings required for the port (as well as space to erect the casino on the waterfront).



The final stop was the intact battery at Lounges-sur-Mer, which like the Pointe-du-Hoc, was a cliff top battery, but this one was further back from the edge of the cliff, and was not entirely completed by the 6th of June, and this caused it to have no real effect on the battle.



That evening I went to Caen. I actually caught the same train as a lovely couple of Americans (mother-daughter) from the tour, so I had a great day all up.

The next day I caught a bus to the real Ouistreham, where I wandered around a bit, saw a museum built in a German blockhouse, from there I walked along Sword Beach to Lion-sur-Mer, a village about 1/3rd along the beach. It was cold and windy, with snow on the beach (and frozen sand) and I had forgotten to put thermal pants on, so my legs felt like blocks of ice for most of the day. I caught a bus back to Caen in the mid afternoon, and spent the rest of the day planning what I was going to do in Caen on Sunday.



A rather rusted M7 "Priest" self propelled artillery


Sword beach


On Sunday, I walked to the Memorial de Caen (mainly because I couldn't find the bus stop, but it was a nice walk),


I spent a few hours walking around the memorial, which I found to be interesting, especially as some of the displays really needed to update their facts (I left a note in the suggestion box saying exactly what needed to be done first).
Hawker Typhoon in the memorial


From there I caught the bus back to Caen, where I wandered around the Castle in the town before making my way back to the hotel to pack for Paris. The castle was where the British assault on Caen started from.


That brings me to today, on a train for Paris. I'll blog about Paris at the end of my time there.


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