Potters Bar & Barnet Local RSPB Group
D-Day Landings in Normandy
28th September - 1st October 2007
By David Attrill
Two of these days, the first and the last, involved some considerable travelling especially by coach. The channel crossing was from Dover to Calais and there is then a 5 hour coach journey to the outskirts of Caen. We stayed at the Clarine Hotel, basic but comfortable and with very good food. Unfortunately the weather during the crossing was unfavourable to a sea watch.
Day 2. On the second day after breakfast we made our way to the Normandy Battle Fields and our first stop was at the area where the British 6th (Airborne) division landed on D Day. We visited Pegasus Bridge, there is a new one now, the same style, but the original is close by. The Gundre Café – the first house in France to be liberated during the last hours of the 5th June by men of the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.
We had coffee here and were served by the daughter of the owner on D Day, a café full of history, photographs and memorabilia of all descriptions, a museum as much as a café. The official museum here housed a glider, the original bridge, a fine statue of a Commando with a bust of Major John Howard DSO, who took the bridge. The street is named in his honour.
Then to the British beaches, Sword, Juno and Gold, then to Arromanches and its museum, dedicated to the planning of Port Winston, the Mulberry Harbour and Ranville War Cemetery where many of the paratroopers are buried. Then to the German Gun Battery at Laugues sur Mer, which was featured in the film The Longest Day and was swiftly put out of action by Allied warships. Here inside the Battery we witnessed a short film of events and experienced a simulated bombardment of the battery – not only the shells landing but feeling the earth move, all the more realistic from the sound and smoke. Finally a visit to the Bayeux War Cemetery, the resting place of many soldiers.
This was a very busy day, continually on the move with a lot to see and do and a lot of information to take in from landing behind the German lines to take objectives successfully for the most part, but also to see the type of beach the troops had to overcome and we would find this very different from that which the Americans had to face.
Day 3 was an optional morning to the Merville Battery, a large German gun site captured by the British. It was designed to fire straight on to the Sword Beach and was taken by the 9th Battalion Parachute Regiment commanded by Lt. Col. Terence Otway DSO in the early hours of 6 June. A fascinating but frightening complex with some of the large guns still in position.
The afternoon saw us at the US Sector, Omaha and Utah beaches and the large American Cemetery at Omaha beach. We visited St Mere Eglise where the paratroopers landed in a burning town, falling directly into houses on fire. The Museum here is designed to represent open parachutes. The main exhibition is an American “waco” troop carrying glider and in the second building a Douglas Dakota paratroops transporter – both hugely interesting.
Omaha beach used as a backdrop for the opening of the film “Saving Private Ryan” made one realise the terribly difficult terrain the US troops had to overcome and the enormity of their task. This was another hectic day.
Over 6,800 vessels landed 156,205 forces on D Day with 24,900 being parachuted in or dropped by glider, incredible statistics.
Our two days really did not give sufficient time to cover everything or indeed take in everything we saw and heard but what it did do was to confront us with the enormity of the task, the heroism of those involved and the sacrifice paid by many. Like the 1st World War Battlefields, this was another sobering experience.
Day 4 saw the return journey.
