We started Wednesday morning back in Arromanches at the excellent local museum that does a bang-up job explaining the whole story around the Mulberry harbors.
Lunch followed in a local bistro down the street and then we were off to the American Cemetery at Colleville Sur Mer. I am told Sur Mer means “by the sea”.
The cemetery was most recently featured in the opening and closing scenes of Saving Private Ryan. Standing there among the 10,000 white glistening crosses and Stars of David lined up in all directions in perfect symmetry, with Omaha Beach below and the deep blue English Channel in the distance is a deeply moving experience. The first American troops made it up the bluffs off Omaha beach near the current day entrance to the cemetery.
Over recorded history five great military forces have stood on one side of the Channel with intentions of invading the opposite side. Only three of these have been successful – one every thousand years or so! Julius Caesar was first when he invaded England in 55 BC followed by William The Conqueror in 1066. And of course the Allies successfully invaded France in June of 1944. Napoleon and Hitler failed to pull their invasions off.
This is taken from atop the bluff at the cemetery entrance looking down on Omaha Beach at high tide. The troops landed at low tide and the beach was much wider (and more exposed) to the water’s edge. You can’t tell from the picture but the elevation change from the beach up here is over a hundred feet (although standing there in person it looks three times that). This was all mined and filled with machine guns and mortar emplacements and barbed wire. It was a true killing ground. The few who somehow made it across the sand to the base of the bluff found themselves under murderous mortar fire. There was no way to retreat and they knew they would die if they stayed where they were. Slowly men (of all ranks) started to take charge and move out and the others followed. How the American troops pulled themselves together and got up the bluffs like this one is one of the great stories in valor and leadership of that day.
You cannot visit this cemetery without being deeply moved. There is no way an iPhone camera can capture the impact. The English Channel is in the distance and is beautiful on a clear day like this.
I read 2 large volumes on the invasion prior to the trip. It seems the opening battle scene from Saving Private Ryan is probably a pretty accurate rendition of the horror of that morning. Anything that could go wrong on Omaha beach seemed to do so and the Americans paid a terrible price.
For those in the first waves that morning, their odds of survival weren’t good. The planners made sure those first units had never been in combat and therefore wouldn’t really appreciate what they were in for. They knew experienced troops might be more hesitant. One of those first companies (Company A) was primarily made up of men from Bedford, Virginia. Most of them never made it to dry ground. 200 men came ashore as Company A at 6:30. By 7:30 there were only 8 left that were available for duty.
It turns out Saving Private Ryan should have been called Saving Private Niland instead in that the family’s last name was actually Niland. Brothers Robert and Preston Niland are among the notables buried here. At the time it was feared a third Niland brother had been killed in the Pacific. That turned out later to be false. Also here are two of President Theodore Roosevelt’s sons, General Theodore Roosevelt Jr who died of a heart attack a month after the invasion and his brother Quentin who was killed in World War I. In all there are 33 sets of brothers buried side by side and one father and son.
The Niland brothers tombstones. Preston’s is on the left and not easy to read. I couldn’t get close enough to the Roosevelt brothers to get a legible photo of their’s.
We drove down the bluff to the little resort town that is now Omaha Beach. The beach is full of sunbathers many of which probably have little idea what happened there or the number of wrecks lying buried not far off shore. The ocean floor off the Normandy beaches is still littered with hundreds of sunken ships, tanks, jeeps, half tracks, landing craft. As many men died well off shore as did on land. Normandy was the seaside playground for Parisians both before the war and after. That part hasn’t changed and may be a surprise to visitors who travel from afar.
From there we took the short ride over to Pointe Du Hoc, another German battery site this one training it’s guns partly on Omaha and partly on Utah. This is where the Rangers climbed straight up the cliffs to capture the guns at the top and yes that story is also portrayed in The Longest Day. They landed on the tiny beach below the cliffs and fired rocket propelled grappling hooks and somehow pulled themselves up only to find the guns had been removed when they got there. President Reagan made his famous “Boys of Pointe Du Hoc” speech here on the 40th anniversary in 1984.
Pointe Du Hoc where the Rangers scaled the cliffs. Believe me these were some serious cliffs. Very windy up top – it almost blew me hat off!
The Pointe Du Hoc batteries were carpet bombed prior to the landings and the bomb craters are still there. It looks like a moonscape. You could hide a decent sized house inside many of these craters. Of course, the picture doesn’t really do it justice.
Inside German observation bunker Pointe Du Hoc.
We finished up our touring for the day making the drive over to the Cotentin Peninsula to begin our tour of that part of the invasion area. We began at Utah Beach arriving at the end of the day. The Americans had a much easier time of it here especially compared to Omaha.
Utah Beach. There were no steep bluffs here just a small sand dune. Casualties were much lighter. Omaha beach is way in the distance to the right.
It is here on the Cotentin that some of the most dramatic events of the invasion also took place because this is the area where the American paratroopers from the 82nd and 101st Divisions dropped during the night of June 6.
Before we quit for the day we got a head start on our own custom designed tour of the paratroopers movements those first few days of the invasion. For this part of the tour we kind of got off the grid so to speak since 99% of the tourists don’t make it to the backcountry. I found that if you dig deep enough you could get GPS coordinates where a lot of the paratrooper skirmishes took place.
We started by driving past the fields in which so many of them were dropped. A few of these were planned dropzones but most were not. Again whatever could go wrong did with the paratroop drops as well. Many of the fields are low ground and were flooded by the Germans. Many hundreds of paratroopers were drowned in 2-3 feet of water because they were so loaded down with equipment they couldn’t stand up.
Cloud banks and flak over the Cotentin scattered the planes coming in and paratroopers were scattered all about. But due to their incredible training they got there act together and took charge and made things happen.
This is the church in the hamlet of Angoville Au Plain. Here 2 paratrooper medics treated wounded on both sides for 72 hours straight. As the battle waged right outside the tide would turn back and forth between each side. If the Germans gained ground back they would come in the church and bring their wounded to be treated. The medics only asked the German troops to leave their guns at the door which they did. After the battle was finally over two German snipers came down out of the bell-tower and surrendered to the medics. They had been up there the entire 3 days. Virtually every bell-tower in Normandy had one or more German sharpshooters. There are still bloodstains on the church pews from the wounded who were treated here.
Our last two stops were straight out of “Band of Brothers – Episode 2”. We stopped where a small group from Easy Company ambushed the German wagon delivering breakfast to the troops. Further down was Brecourt Manor where Lt. Winters led the group in destroying the 4 guns that were shelling Utah Beach.
This is the field next to Brecourt Manor where Lt Winter’s group captured the 4 German 105’s firing on Utah Beach. The guns were along the far tree line. Sorry for the picture but this is private property and is close as you can get.