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.