To prepare for our visit to Normandy, Phillip and I watched “Band of Brothers,” especially the episodes surrounding the landings of D-Day. The shows actually gave us a great idea of which areas to research. We started with the nearby Longues-sur-Mer battery, where several German bunkers will still well preserved – excepting the one that received an unexploded ordinance during the war. These batteries were constructed by the Germans in an attempt to create an Atlantic sea wall against the possibility of invasion from the coast of England during WWII.
At Longues-sur-Mer, you can also walk closer to the ocean to see the observation bunker, which was used by troops to report back to the artillery as to where to shoot. These guns reportedly had a range of about 12 miles.
Next, we checked out the Arromanches at Gold Beach, an artificial port created for the war. Allied forces intentionally sank materials to create a safe harbor.
A great view of the Arromanches is from a site called “Arromanches 360” which allows you to get a bot of a panoramic view. The site is staggering, especially once hearing how over 300,000 people were brought in through this port for the war effort.
At low tide, some of the sunken barriers are clearly visible:
While in Arromanches-sur-Bain, the village for the port, we grabbed some crepes and ice cream.
Next, we were a bit touristy and looked up the machine gun nest in Carantans, from the Caratans episode of Band of Brothers, however, the cafe wasn’t open:
From there, we went on to the museum at Utah Beach, which was touted as the best D-Day museum. My favorite part were the then and now pictures, which showed WWII pictures compared to the same buildings in there current settings:
After seeing the pictures of the nearby city Sainte Marie du Mont, we decided to swing by, which we were glad to do as the city had many more anecdotal stories, such as how two German soldiers hid in the confessional of the church overnight.
Despite the long day already, we kept going. Next up, Point du Hoc, which was considered an important military position to capture during the D-Day invasion, due to the assumed presence of six French artillery guns that had been captured by the French. However, as the name implies (in the Hoc part), one of the guns had been damaged in the pre-D-Day bombings by the Allies, so the Germans moved and hid the guns ahead of the invasion. So when the rangers climbed the shear cliffs, they found the position empty, though they later found and secured the guns.
The landscape was also a grim reminder of the horrors of the war, which the holes of all the shells that were dropped by Allied forces on the Germans.
We ended the night with a picturesque landscape in Grandcamp-Massey, after walking around the entire town trying to find a place that was open and serving dinner to those without reservations….
