ON TO SCOTLAND

 The next morning I headed back to Paris and the airport for a short flight to Edinburg Scotland. At the airport, I picked up my rental car for the 90 minute drive to Lockerbie.

Now, I f you ever wanted an experience, get in a car with right hand drive for the first time and try driving on the left hand side of the road, after dark. I may have hit the curb on the left side of the car a few times. It is a very strange sensation.

So, seven years ago I was asked to help a group of men from Lockerbie with a bike ride from Washington to Syracuse to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Flight 103 disaster. I went to D.C. and followed them in a van at 15 mph for 6 days as they did the ride. It was so much fun and a great experience. I had said that someday I would visit them in Lockerbie and this was my chance.

I stayed in a great old Inn and spent some real quality time with 4 of the guys. Unfortunately the 5th, David "Heavy" Whaley passed away earlier this year. It was well worth the trip.

Somerton House Hotel

Snow on the Highlands

The guys and I

My next stop was the capital of Scotland, Edinburg. This city, which is 900 years old is a wonderful visit. There are numerous churches, museums and attractions. The Main Street is the Royal Mile that runs from Edinburg Castle to Hollywood Castle  and the site of the Scottish Legislature. If you followed all of the pomp after the death of Queen Elizabeth, Her funeral procession went from Hollywood castle to St Giles cathedral, a massive church on the Royal Mile.

St Giles Cathedral

One of the people that I met when the Scots came to the US for the bike ride is Oliver Mundell, a member of the Scottish Parliament. He invited me to sit in the gallery of the Scottish legislature to view one of their sessions. It was very interesting to witness. After the session, he and I shared a meal in the MP's lounge. What a nice experience!

I visited a number of historical sites and some museums over the next couple of days. On my last day, I went to Edinburg Castle. This castle that dates back to the 11th century. It is a combination of a museum to Scottish history and an active military base. It is home to the Royal Jewels, Has a prison and a chapel (at a single room, it is easily the smallest church that I visited). 

Edinburg Castle

Entrance to the castle

The walls are massive note the cannons

Note the doors and the grate

One of the museums within the castle

The 1:00 gun. Set off every day at 1pm

The big gun, circa 15th century

St Margaret's Chapel

So, there you are, the end of a two week adventure. I am so blessed to be able to do this. I hope you enjoyed coming along. 

Normandy-The American Beaches

 I purposely saved the American beaches for my last day as I wanted to have a perspective of the overall invasion, the participation of the other Allied troops and of course, the Nazi army as the faced the magnitude of the D-Day invasion. 

I began the day at Omaha Beach and the Overlord Museum. Of the many museums that I visited along the beaches, this one told the story best I thought. When one considers the massive planning, the secret surveillance missions prior to the landings, the pre invasion operations to clear the mining of the beaches, and the many other aspects leading up to the actual day, it was an unbelievably enormous undertaking. Then if you realize all of the things that went wrong on D-Day, you have to realize the amazing resilience of the troops in successfully carrying out this overall mission.

One of the things that I have always been intrigued with is the hedgerows and the fact that the planners didn't understand the significance of them to the inland operations. In looking at the aerial photos in the museums, it is understandable though as these images don't really depict them as they are at ground level. As you drive along the narrow roads it is easy to see the problems. Hedgerows are filled with such growth that it was impossible to penetrate them on foot and because they are grown on top of small berms, when the tanks drove over and through them, the unarmored belly of the tanks were exposed to the German guns. It provided great cover for German troops to attack the allies as the progressed inland. It wasn't until some ingenious mechanics fabricated "plows" for the tanks made from repurposed beach barriers (the familiar steel X's) that would allow the thanks to get directly through the berms and hedgerows that our troops started to make real progress in getting through through the hedgerows.

The most important stop of the day was the American Cemetery. This cemetery contains the graves of 9389 of our military dead, most of whom died on D-Day or in the following days of the invasion. Many of these soldiers were buried here at the request of their families. At the end of the cemetery is the Wall of The Missing containing the names of 1557 missing soldiers. Over the years, some of those missing were found and identified. Each of this are marked with a flower. The beach here is as peaceful as can be and really doesn't tell the story of what happened here 80 years ago.

I have to admit that I was not prepared for the emotions that I felt at these beaches but particularly at the cemetery. To think that each and every man and woman that gave the ultimate sacrifice here did so not so much for country but to save the world from the sickness of a demented monster.

My next stop was at Pointe du Hoc between Omaha and Utah beaches. This emplacement,  at the top of perhaps the highest cliffs was an essential target as the guns here were trained on both Omaha and Utah beaches. As I walked the path to the site of the gun batteries, I was struck by the fact that the area is marked by dozens if not hundreds of bomb craters, and the ruins of some of the casements that were bombed, a testament to the barrage that was rained on this site by the big guns of the ships. It was made up of an observation bunker and 6 main gun casements well as 4 machine gun placements. After a raging battle, US troops were able to take the site only to find that the big guns were not there. The Germans had moved them to a farm about a 1/2 mile away where they could still be effective. The soldiers found and disabled those guns.

My last stop was at St. Mere Eglise. This town was one of the first to be liberated by the American invaders. It came at a high cost though as many of the Airborne troops were mistakenly dropped on the town which was heavily occupied by Germans. One famous story revolves around two whose parachutes became entangled in the local church steeple. To this day, the people of the town have a parachute hung from the church.

Parachute on Church steeple today

I can't begin to articulate what it meant to me to visit these beaches. To be here, stand on this ground and realize the courage and determination of those that fought here is truly a blessing. 

To wrap this up I am just going to do a photo and video dump. There was so much to see and most of these are self explanatory.

NORMANDY, DAY 2

One of the things that I wanted to do was to see all five designated beaches of D-Day. They are Sword (British) Juno (Canada), Gold (British) and Omaha and Utah (American).

As I said before, as an American, most of our lessons are about the American involvement of D-DAy and I wanted to capture as much of the "big picture" as I could.

I arrived at Sword and Juno early in the morning while the tide was in. The beaches themselves bely little of what happened there, aside from some monuments to the invasion. One of the things that surprised me was that they looked like any of our southern beaches and none of the high cliffs always portrayed in our movies. Because it was so early, none of the local museums were yet open and while I really wanted to see the Canadian museum especially, I needed to move on.

Marker at Sword Beach

My next stop would be Gold beach and in particular, Arromanches. This seaside beach town was heavily inhabited by German forces as it had major radar stations and a high perch with a bunker that allowed for miles of surveillance to the western coastline. It would become a major part of the D-DAy invasion.

Anti Aircraft placement above the town

View of the western beaches from the ridge

Sherman tank that for some reason was placed on top of the bunker

A look inside the bunker with its destroyed guns

View of Omaha Beach

Sherman tank

What happened in Arromanches during the invasion was a feat of brilliant engineering.  Behind the initial invasion forces, the Brits towed a makeshift harbor called "Mulberry B". It consisted of large concrete boxes called phoenix caissons that were sunk along with some of the landing craft to form an artificial breakwater and then prefabricated components of a harbor were added so that ships could offload the vehicles, cargo and equipment required for the continuation of the invasion. This artificial harbor stretched for some 5 miles, took 8 months to construct in Britain and just 7 days to install at Arromanches. After the artificial harbor was complete it was connected to the mainland by a series of artificial floating roadways called "whales".

The harbor was originally slated for 3 months use but stayed operational for over 10 months.

A similar harbor was in the process of being installed at Omaha beach when it was destroyed by a storm.

Concrete Caisson still off shore

A closer look at a caissson

A "whale" artificial road section

Whale

View of Mulberry B from afar

There is quite a nice D-Day museum in Arromanches. Here is just some of what I saw there

Engine used in landing craft

The always famous Jeep

Armaments

One of the things that was interesting to me was that as I drove along the roads to the beaches, there were several roadside monuments. Some were to honor particular troops that fought there and others marked the location of long deserted temporary camps and airfields.

Aircraft engine found buried in a farmers field in the 80's

My next stop was Longues Sur-mer Because this is where some of the German bunkers and guns still exist. I wanted to get the perspective of what they were and how they fit into Hitlers coastal defenses.
This battery, which sits atop the first of the steep (200 foot) cliffs at the beachheads. It consists of 4 casements and a fire control bunker.  Also there were anti aircraft bunkers and machine gun placements to protect the beaches. The fire control bunker was signed near the edge of the cliff so as to be able to scan the coastline and determine the location of targets. The four casements were further back inland. The fire control personnel would site a target and then send the coordinated to the casements for firing. This site  was active early on D-day and trained fire on the invading Allies before it was bombed by the offshore guns and then captured by British ground forces on D-Day+1

It was amazing to see just how intact all of this emplacement was after 80 years. 

It was quite a day that left me with a lot to reflect on.