NORMANDY
Tuesday 10/3/06
This is way too early to be up after our full day yesterday. We are gathering shortly after 5:00 AM, bleary eyed and grumpily quiet, for our day trip to the D-Day battle sites of Northwestern France. Right away we find that our luck remains (SFL). As we enter our little Odeon Metro station we find that the exit gate is broken and open so we can just walk in and ride free across the city. Whoopee!
There is one change at the Les Halles station from our “magenta” line to the purple line that will get us to the St. Lazare station. There are several major railway stations around the city and the St. Lazare station serves the northwestern quadrant of the country. It is also the scene of a pretty cool painting by Toulouse Lautrec but that’s another story. We arrive with plenty of time to spare for our 7:00 AM train to Bayeaux and in fact consider grabbing an earlier train but think better of it and grab a coffee instead.
It is still mostly dark and chilly as we pull out and travel through sprawling suburbs. There are two million people in Paris, but 11 million in the metropolitan area so it is a long haul to reach the countryside. The K’s pull out their cheese and apples and the Z’s counter with bananas and yogurt and we all wake up with some sunlight and breakfast. The land here is gently rolling with small farms and little towns. It would be fun to poke around a bit in the countryside but that will have to wait for another trip.
We reach the Bayeaux station right on schedule at 9:25 where we are met by our smiling guide Roel (pronounced Rule he explains) Klinkhamer. After introductions all around, we load into his van of undetermined make and take off for our first stop in Arromanches. We chat a bit on the ride and he explains that he is a lifetime World War II buff who has lived most of his life in Belgium. He sold his McDonald’s operation (no kidding) a few years back and took advantage of European Union rules to retire in France. He started the tour operation and his wife runs their four room B&B. He tells us that he has guided many veterans who had actually participated in the D-Day invasion and has garnered a lot of first hand accounts to supplement his historical perspective. He also says he doesn’t identify crops in case we were wondering what they grow around here.
Arromanches is a little seaside village that was the home of the Mulberry Harbor used to land thousands of vehicles and hundreds of thousands troops in the months following the invasion. The Allies were unable to capture a port on the coast and were forced to build an artificial harbor by sinking tons of concrete and building miles of floating roads. This was manned by British forces and was known as Port Winston. Standing on a small rise slightly above beach level we can still see the remnants of the concrete breakwater and jetties. What an operation.
We travel 3 miles down the coast now to the German Battery positions at Longues sur mer. The gun bunkers are still in position 215 feet above the beach with a clear view of the entire coast. Before the invasion the allies had been bombing this emplacement for over 6 months with 1500 tons of bombs dropped the week before the invasion. Still the German troops were able to manage a ferocious counterattack on D-Day until finally being silenced by fire from French, British and American ships. The area is still pocked with the results of the constant bombardment.
Our next stop is Omaha Beach. This is a 5-mile long stretch of sand several hundred yards across and edged by a bluff over a hundred feet high. This beach was to be secured to link the Brits on one end to the Americans on Utah Beach. The Germans, commanded by Erwin Rommel had pledged to stop any invasion at the water and a series of mines and obstacles extended hundreds of yards into the ocean. If anyone actually reached the beach they would be pulverized by the German troops on top of the bluff. Thousands of American troops died on this beach on June 6th, 1944. Our friend Bob Uppgaard was a medic on that landing team and he vividly remembers the day and moving inland to the church at Colleville sur Mer. Mary K. scooped up some sand from the beach and we stopped for a picture at the church to take home to Bob.
We move to the U. S. Cemetery at Colleville where Roel gives us a half hour to just wander and soak up the spirituality of the place. This is U.S. soil and is maintained by our government. The cemetery is right on top of the bluff at the water’s edge and is the final resting place of almost 10,000 of our soldiers. It is very peaceful and we all take a while to wander separately.
Our final tour stop is La Pointe du Hoc, a cliff-top location about 4 miles from Omaha Beach. This was the site of another German battery that was silently assaulted by American Rangers who scaled the cliff wall only to find that the battery had been moved inland. Not to worry. They went inland, found the battery (which was concentrated on Utah Beach) and destroyed it anyway. They then held out through several days of counterattacks before finally being relieved.
We had a chatty half-hour drive to Caen as Roel had promised to drop us at the D-Day Memorial there It was a great connection and we really felt like we had become friends during the day. It was already mid-afternoon, way past our scheduled half-day tour, so we grabbed a sandwich, looked at a couple of lobby displays and decided to pass on the rest of the museum. It had started to rain outside but we were able to catch a taxi across the street and he got us across town to the station.
We catch an earlier than scheduled train but it would still be evening by the time we get back to Paris. We are all a little dozy interspersed with a little silly on the train, obviously the result of lack of sleep and a fascinating day. Today’s trip is the only request Dave has for our week-long schedule so we are all grateful that he brought us along.
A couple of train changes and we’re back on our left bank turf to grab a bite of dinner, a glass of wine and sleep like babies.
Tuesday 10/3/06
This is way too early to be up after our full day yesterday. We are gathering shortly after 5:00 AM, bleary eyed and grumpily quiet, for our day trip to the D-Day battle sites of Northwestern France. Right away we find that our luck remains (SFL). As we enter our little Odeon Metro station we find that the exit gate is broken and open so we can just walk in and ride free across the city. Whoopee!
There is one change at the Les Halles station from our “magenta” line to the purple line that will get us to the St. Lazare station. There are several major railway stations around the city and the St. Lazare station serves the northwestern quadrant of the country. It is also the scene of a pretty cool painting by Toulouse Lautrec but that’s another story. We arrive with plenty of time to spare for our 7:00 AM train to Bayeaux and in fact consider grabbing an earlier train but think better of it and grab a coffee instead.
It is still mostly dark and chilly as we pull out and travel through sprawling suburbs. There are two million people in Paris, but 11 million in the metropolitan area so it is a long haul to reach the countryside. The K’s pull out their cheese and apples and the Z’s counter with bananas and yogurt and we all wake up with some sunlight and breakfast. The land here is gently rolling with small farms and little towns. It would be fun to poke around a bit in the countryside but that will have to wait for another trip.
We reach the Bayeaux station right on schedule at 9:25 where we are met by our smiling guide Roel (pronounced Rule he explains) Klinkhamer. After introductions all around, we load into his van of undetermined make and take off for our first stop in Arromanches. We chat a bit on the ride and he explains that he is a lifetime World War II buff who has lived most of his life in Belgium. He sold his McDonald’s operation (no kidding) a few years back and took advantage of European Union rules to retire in France. He started the tour operation and his wife runs their four room B&B. He tells us that he has guided many veterans who had actually participated in the D-Day invasion and has garnered a lot of first hand accounts to supplement his historical perspective. He also says he doesn’t identify crops in case we were wondering what they grow around here.
Arromanches is a little seaside village that was the home of the Mulberry Harbor used to land thousands of vehicles and hundreds of thousands troops in the months following the invasion. The Allies were unable to capture a port on the coast and were forced to build an artificial harbor by sinking tons of concrete and building miles of floating roads. This was manned by British forces and was known as Port Winston. Standing on a small rise slightly above beach level we can still see the remnants of the concrete breakwater and jetties. What an operation.
We travel 3 miles down the coast now to the German Battery positions at Longues sur mer. The gun bunkers are still in position 215 feet above the beach with a clear view of the entire coast. Before the invasion the allies had been bombing this emplacement for over 6 months with 1500 tons of bombs dropped the week before the invasion. Still the German troops were able to manage a ferocious counterattack on D-Day until finally being silenced by fire from French, British and American ships. The area is still pocked with the results of the constant bombardment.
Our next stop is Omaha Beach. This is a 5-mile long stretch of sand several hundred yards across and edged by a bluff over a hundred feet high. This beach was to be secured to link the Brits on one end to the Americans on Utah Beach. The Germans, commanded by Erwin Rommel had pledged to stop any invasion at the water and a series of mines and obstacles extended hundreds of yards into the ocean. If anyone actually reached the beach they would be pulverized by the German troops on top of the bluff. Thousands of American troops died on this beach on June 6th, 1944. Our friend Bob Uppgaard was a medic on that landing team and he vividly remembers the day and moving inland to the church at Colleville sur Mer. Mary K. scooped up some sand from the beach and we stopped for a picture at the church to take home to Bob.
We move to the U. S. Cemetery at Colleville where Roel gives us a half hour to just wander and soak up the spirituality of the place. This is U.S. soil and is maintained by our government. The cemetery is right on top of the bluff at the water’s edge and is the final resting place of almost 10,000 of our soldiers. It is very peaceful and we all take a while to wander separately.
Our final tour stop is La Pointe du Hoc, a cliff-top location about 4 miles from Omaha Beach. This was the site of another German battery that was silently assaulted by American Rangers who scaled the cliff wall only to find that the battery had been moved inland. Not to worry. They went inland, found the battery (which was concentrated on Utah Beach) and destroyed it anyway. They then held out through several days of counterattacks before finally being relieved.
We had a chatty half-hour drive to Caen as Roel had promised to drop us at the D-Day Memorial there It was a great connection and we really felt like we had become friends during the day. It was already mid-afternoon, way past our scheduled half-day tour, so we grabbed a sandwich, looked at a couple of lobby displays and decided to pass on the rest of the museum. It had started to rain outside but we were able to catch a taxi across the street and he got us across town to the station.
We catch an earlier than scheduled train but it would still be evening by the time we get back to Paris. We are all a little dozy interspersed with a little silly on the train, obviously the result of lack of sleep and a fascinating day. Today’s trip is the only request Dave has for our week-long schedule so we are all grateful that he brought us along.
A couple of train changes and we’re back on our left bank turf to grab a bite of dinner, a glass of wine and sleep like babies.
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