Paris, je t'aime! Part 12: Paying Our Respects

In Part 11 of the "OMG, yes, we still have more France pictures" set of blog posts, we practiced the time honored tradition of stomping around the house of a famous person and eating junk food from another culture.

A statue at the American Cemetery

As I mentioned previously, the trip from Giverny to the Normandy coast took about two hours, and we kept on trucking north, stopping every now and then for bathroom breaks and to buy more snacks.

Chris also found these wonders of the avian community - he initially thought the first seagull had something wrong with it (maybe a hole in his head?  It is a seagull, after all), but upon noticing they all had the markings, he quickly dubbed them "headphone seagulls."

Freaking hipsters

The Normandy coast has tons and tons of D-Day sites; each of the allied powers that landed on the coast (American, British, Canadian, and French) had their own beaches to cover, and all of them are filled with statues, plaques, and other sites that honor the brave men who fought to reclaim Europe from the Axis on that day.  For our part, since we didn't have a full week to spend touring all the sites, we focused on three main spots:  the American Cemetery in Colleville-Sur-Mer, Omaha Beach itself, and Pointe du Hoc.  The weather stayed drizzly and gray during our entire time visiting the sites, and while it meant we were constantly debating whether to pull out our newly acquired Eiffel Tower umbrellas, it lent a solemn air to our visit.

When you arrive at the American Cemetery, you first see the Visitor's Center, which has all sorts of exhibits on the invasion and how the day progressed.  You take a short walk along the coast, and after you round a curve, you see the cemetery itself; while it's a beautiful, peaceful place, the significance of the rows and rows of gravestones really hits you like a punch in the stomach, as Chris phrased it.

The crosses and stars of David really do go on

as far as the eye can see.

There are almost 9400 memorials here - 

25,000 Americans died in the invasion of Normandy,

but family members of most of those killed

chose to move their remains back home.

On the road to Omaha Beach itself, we passed the Omaha Beach Museum; we didn't stop, but we did snap a picture of the Sherman tank and "Czech hedgehog" they have on display.

At the turnoff for Omaha Beach, we skirted past the roundabout and parking lot crammed with tour buses, passing the Les Braves Statue, dedicated to those who played their part in liberating the French coast from Nazi occupation.

Not the greatest shot,

but there's the statue poking up near the bottom of the picture.

You can climb down to the beach here,

and the statue itself is about 10 feet tall.

Instead, we drove down the road a bit more and parked at its end, near one of the German bunkers that held this part of the coast.

In this picture, you can see where some sort of ordinance

came through the bunker entrance, sheared off part of the

metal gun plating, and blew a giant hole in the wall.

I will honestly admit I got a full-blown case

of the willies when I stepped in there.

We followed the clear pathway to the water and found ourselves on Omaha Beach proper.

What now is a peaceful (if windswept) piece of the coast

was home to the most deaths during the D-Day invasion.

On the first day of the invasion, Omaha Beach saw

anywhere between 2500 to 4800 casualties.

In order to repel the invaders, the German army

placed thousands of metal poles and "Czech hedgehogs"

along the coast, as well as miles of metal wire and six million mines.

Since the war, it's been estimated that 150,000 tons of metal

have been removed from the beaches,

but at low tide, you can still find plenty.

While we were on Omaha, the group of teenagers seen in the picture above asked us to get a group shot of them; they were on vacation from another part of France and were quite pleasant, having a good time teasing each other and enjoying the coast, and we were happy to oblige.  While our reason for being on Omaha Beach was quite different from theirs, it was nice to see a tangible reminder that  what our grandparents fought and died for - the ability to be free and live our lives safe from worry and tyranny - was still being enjoyed.

We brushed the sand off our shoes and made our way back to the car, and it was on to our last D-Day site of the visit: Pointe du Hoc.  Pointe du Hoc was a strategically important position for the allies to take during the invasion; the German army had several bunkers atop a steep cliff, and the damage they could do to the waves of soldiers coming ashore was a significant concern.  In the few months leading up to D-Day itself, the allied forces dumped 1500 tons of bombs on this one small spot, so you can imagine what it looks like.  The site has been left as it was during the war, and although the bomb craters are now covered with grass, it's easy to imagine the destruction and loss of life that occurred securing the clifftop.  

Just one of the smaller bomb craters

near the site

The cement hole there is a machine gun nest - 

three guys would have lived in here with their gun

Just look at the way the landscape undulates

due to the complete reshaping of the clifftop

In one of the smaller craters - 

there were some so deep,

I wasn't sure I'd make it out of them

(without getting far muddier than I wished).

The only way to get atop the Pointe was to scale it from the beach,

which a group of US Army Rangers did that day.

Apparently, the Germans, fearful of that exact thing happening,

moved their big guns off the Pointe a few days earlier.

Never fear - the Rangers found them a few miles inland

and blew the hell out of them with thermite grenades.

I would, too, if I'd made it through steady machine gun fire,

avoiding drowning, and scaled an impossibly steep cliff,

just to find my target wasn't there at all.

The remains of the bunkers atop the Pointe

After our visit at Pointe du Hoc, it was time to hop back in the car and head for our final destination of the day, our hotel room on Mont Saint-Michel.  We had another hour and a half to go, and after a quick stop at McDonald's (what?!?!  It was all we could find - it was a Sunday evening in the low tourist season), we were back on the road.  On the next blog, we arrive in MSM and are completely dumbfounded by how freaking cool it is.

Later!

Amy