For our final morning in Normandy we drove back over to the Cotentin and picked up where we left off the previous evening.  First stop was the site of the terrible battles that took place near and around a little bridge over the Merderet River.  The LaFiere Causeway was an elevated road that ran between Utah Beach and Ste. Mere-Eglise.  A German garrison was stationed on the other side of St Mere Eglise and they were desperately trying to make their way over to Utah while the paratroopers were tasked with preventing them.  Both sides of the causeway had been flooded and the road was the only way for troops and vehicles to move in that area.  A series of battles took place over the course of several days with the Allies finally prevailing.  Go there today and you only hear the bellow of cows.

The manor and bridge at LaFiere Causeway. The scene of fierce fighting in the days following the invasion.

Lucky paratroopers dropped into dry fields similar to these. Luckier still were the ones who fell into fields with cows since they knew those weren’t mined. Many unlucky ones fell into fields flooded by the Germans and under the weight of their gear drowned in 2-3 feet of water.

Can’t believe this is the only picture we got of Norman hedgerows. They are on the left side of the street and can be taller and even more impenetrable than these.  The D-Day planners made a grave mistake in not respecting these obstacles more.  It took weeks to break out of them following the invasion.  As many or more were killed fighting in the hedgerows as in the invasion itself.  The Norman’s refer to the hedgerows as “Bocage”.

The most remote place we might have visited was way back a one lane road in the hedgerows to a place called Timmes Orchard where 150 paratroopers held out for a couple of days against great odds.  We also stopped somewhat off the beaten path at a German cemetery where over 10,000 are buried.  We visited a cow field that served as one of the first huge temporary cemeteries long before the formal final cemeteries were built.  And another field where the first temporary airfield was built in occupied France.  In my research I had even accidentally come across the location of a World War I dirigible hangar that is huge and still sits out in a Norman field in the middle of nowhere and we checked it out.

Our next to last stop in Normandy was the little town of Ste. Mere-Eglise where there is a large museum dedicated to the Airborne operations.  It was here that a paratrooper’s chute got stuck on the church steeple and so many were shot in their chutes as they floated down into the village center as shown in The Longest Day.  In fact a good bit of the movie was shot here.  It is perhaps the most famous hamlet of the entire invasion area.

The famous church at Ste-Mere Eglise. If you look closely you can see the paratrooper caught on the steeple.

After the war when the blown out stained glass was replaced appreciative villagers made sure the replacement included paratroopers along with the Madonna & Child.

Restored C47 like ones used to ferry paratroopers over Normandy. This one is in the Airborne Museum in Ste-Mere Eglise.

Restored Horsa glider in Airborne Museum. Hundreds of these ferried troops, jeeps, anti-tank guns, etc. into Normandy. Many troops were killed when these crash landed into the Hedgerows.

American Sherman tank

German Panzer tank

Before leaving Normandy we dropped back by Bayeux and toured the famous Bayeux Tapestry. It is a thousand year old tapestry commemorating William The Conqueror’s victory at the Battle of Hastings.  It is a continuous piece of cloth 20 inches tall and 230 feet long and is a wonderful piece of art.  How it survived intact over 9 centuries is amazing.  If you are ever in the area you should see definitely see it.

We left Normandy late afternoon headed back to Paris.  I was glad to get our car safely back to the Paris airport that evening.  We then caught the train into the city finally getting to our hotel around 10PM.

Headed out for dinner at a one of countless sidewalk cafes each brimming with very late night diners.  Walked over to the Seine and then back to the hotel and finally got to bed well after midnight.

Latenight dinner at sidewalk cafe our first night in Paris. Had a great chopped steak, frites, salad & desert.

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.

Tuesday morning a funny thing happened to us on the way to the Caen War Memorial Museum. It would get a lot less funny over the next couple of days.  It so happens we timed our visit in Normandy with a strike the local farmers had scheduled to protest low milk prices or some such thing.

So when farmers strike in rural France what they do is drive their huge tractors and combines and such and block off the major interstate entrance and exit ramps. Of course, we had no clue what was going on and there we are proudly showing off our newly acquired french driving skills when we run into this huge traffic jam.  So we come to a complete stop for a while.  Finally drivers get out and start walking up and down the interstate so I figure I will join in as well.  I get out and approach this older french lady and proudly give her my best parlez-vous anglais.  She looks at me like I’m from another planet but points for me to follow her.

So we back up and turn around go down the wrong way of an entrance ramp.  We get to the bottom planning to turn right and thwart the best efforts of the horrible farmers and what do we see?  They had dumped what appears to be many truckloads of fresh cow manure under the viaduct sealing up our exit.  So we had no choice but to go the other way and program the gps to find a major detour around Caen.  That cost us the rest of our first morning in Normandy.

Finally we did make it to the musuem, had lunch and did the tour.  Following that we went a few miles out towards the beach to the Pegasus Bridge which was the first bridge captured by the allies the night of D-Day.  If you have seen the Longest Day the story of the bridge in portrayed in the movie.

The Pegasus Bridge. This is actually a replica – the original is in a museum behind this spot.

This cafe was also there on the night of the invasion and was owned by a member of the French resistance. He was the one who let the Allies know the Germans had rigged the bridge with explosives and would blow it up in event of capture. We had afternoon snacks there, my first authentic French madeleines – they were wonderful.

Next stop was the German battery at Longues Sur Mer, also in the movie. Installations like this were part of Hitler’s Atlantic wall and still dot the Normandy coastline. This particular one had some of it’s gun’s sited on Gold Beach in one direction and Omaha in the other.  It is very chilling to see these installations and contemplate what happened here.

German battery at Longues Sur Mer.

Our last stop Tuesday evening was the seaside town of Arromanches, the site of Gold Beach. This is one of the two sites where the allies built the artificial Mulberry Harbors to bring in the many tons of supplies needed following the landings.  The remnants of the artificial harbor can still be seen in Arromanches.  The story of how these enormous harbors were conceived, built in England, towed across the channel and assembled under fire is one of the great stories and success factors of the invasion.  Read up on it sometime.

Looking from the German batteries over to Arromanches (Gold Beach). The objects in the water are the remnants of original huge Mulberry artificial harbor built there in the days following the invasion.

I couldn’t get a good angle on the Mulberries up close but here are a couple shown at low tide at Arromanches. Some of these were as big a football field. The engineering undertaken was incredible.  You really should read up on it!

After the war Arromanches returned to a peaceful seaside resort town. On the morning of June 6, 1944 it was anything but.

That night we had dinner at a sidewalk cafe overlooking the beach, with one of the old mulberries not a hundred yards from us.  The Moules & Frites (mussels and fries) were great!

Back in Bayeux we stopped at a local creperie for late night dessert crepes and then took in a light show at the Cathedral.

The light show at the cathedral.

Monday morning started with a very early mad dash to what I thought would be a sleepy Edinburgh airport but actually it looked more like Laguardia during Friday rush hour. However we made our 7AM flight to Paris (and layover in London) with time to spare.

We got to Paris on time just around 1 PM.  It was a strange feeling to be on the taxiway in country where we didn’t speak the language.  So intimidated we were by this that we decided to eat at the McDonald’s in the airport!  We made our way to Hertz, picked up our rental, said a prayer and drove off for Normandy.  Within a hour or so, France was feeling a lot more comfortable and it was smooth sailing from there.

We arrived in Bayeux, Normandy around 5PM and got checked in at the hotel.  We stayed in a neat chateau dating back before the French Revolution.  Bayeux is a beautiful little town not far from the Normandy invasion beaches.  It was the first sizable town liberated after the invasion and would be our base of operations for the next 3 days.

Back yard of our hotel in Bayeux. Our room was right over the door.

Hotel from street. You drove up through the courtyard through an archway into the back.

The hotel at dusk

St Patrice street in Bayeux. They roll-up the sidewalks in Bayeux long before dark.

This mill was down the street from the Creperie where we had dinner.

We spent that first evening getting our bearings around town and practicing our bonjour’s, parlez-vous anglais, etc.  Dinner was at a local creperie and was very good.  Afterwards we made our way over to Bayeux Cathedral which is quite impressive itself.  It dates back a thousand years or so and is quite large I’m guessing for that size town.  The reason might be that the bishop who built is was brother to William The Conqueror who we understand made it to the dedication.

The square that Bayeux Cathedral opens up on. Front door of Cathedral is on right.

The other side of the square looking out cathedral’s front door.

Interior of cathedral

Monday was our halfway point of the trip and I arrived in France with virtually no clean clothes. I figured getting laundry done would not be too big a deal – WRONG!  Just let me say from what I can tell it’s not easy getting laundry done anywhere in France.  I spent the remainder of the trip washing a day’s worth at a time in the hotel sinks.  I noticed Smith keeping his distance more and more as the week progressed!

Sunday we were back on the train to St Andrews.  The weather was calling for off and on rain but at least it was looking like they would get the third round in.  We got to the course and walked all the way down to where the holes turn back to the clubhouse.  As soon as we got there the rain started up.  But luckily we were prepared and our rain gear served us well.  The Scots take the weather in stride and we quickly learned to as well.  If it starts to rain up pop the umbrellas and for the most part play continues.

Another family proud to be at The Open.

For the morning we sat in the stands down at the end of the course. You could see play on 4 or 5 holes from this one place.

We had a nice afternoon watching round 3.  You can believe everything you have ever heard about Scottish weather.  You may experience torrential rain, gale force winds, heat, cold – all in the span of an hour or two.

Watching from the stands as the players come down 18 you can hear bagpipes faintly in town. Behind the surf crashes on the beach where they filmed Chariots of Fire.  And of course everywhere are storied pieces of the history of the game. The Roadhole, Swilcan Bridge and the marvelous old buildings of St Andrews topped by the crown jewel itself, the Royal and Ancient Clubhouse.

One of the Old Course’s traps.  If you look closely the walls are actually tiny terraces of sod and earth. Really cool how they do that!

In the afternoon we found seats in the stands across from 18 fairway and watched the groups come in. It’s like watching a golf tournament in a football stadium but somehow it works.

The beach where the opening scene from Chariots of Fire was filmed.  I took this from our seats.

Smith at Swilcan bridge

I must say the folks who put of the tournament do a great job of it.  And the Old Course itself serves as an especially grand stage for a tournament.  Combine the two and a British Open at the Old Course is quite the spectacle.

By the end of the trip of all the places we would see each of us voted our number one place to return would be to an Open at St Andrews.