Day 3 - D-Day

Today was an incredible day.  Eight years ago, when we were here in Normandy with Jeff, Laura, and Rebecca, Mark worked up his own tour of the D-Day sites for us and he is very knowledgeable about World War 2 information.  But this time he decided to sign us up for a guided tour by an Englishman who has spent his life, really, immersed in the history of D-Day.

 La Ducrie

 David with a friend at La Ducrie

We began our day by having breakfast in the sunroom at La Ducrie.  Ducks and black swans waited outside the glassed-in porch for their breakfast.  We then hopped in the car and drove to Ste. Mere Eglise where we met our guide, Elwood. Elwood lives in a house that faces the church and town square.  He took us in and gave us about an hour lesson on the historical events leading up to the invasion as well as information about the landing, the things that went wrong, and the things that miraculously went right.

Paratroopers were dropped over the inland areas of Normandy in the night before the invasion on June 6, 1944.  Pilots miscalculated where they were and many paratroopers were dropped in the wrong place.  Ste. Mere Elgise is the site of a famous miscalculation.  Germans occupied the town and when they saw the paratroopers dropping (and heard the planes overhead) a battle broke out.  One paratrooper was caught by his parachute on the spire of the church and hung there for two hours as bullets flew around him, pretending to be dead.  They have a parachute and fake paratrooper on the church now.  Only three men survived that drop.

We visited a museum with lots of weapons, uniforms, an airplane, a glider, a tank, etc. from the battle over Ste. Mere Eglise.  Along with Mark, David, and I, we had three others in our group.  One couple were both in the Navy and each had been a commander of a ship, so they were very knowledgeable.  After our museum visit, Elwood showed us his own collection in an upper room of his house.  He had rows and rows of military helmets of both Germans and Allies.  He also had different types of guns, uniforms, and other equipment.  Very often during his ongoing lectures he would ask questions to test how much we knew, and as he held up one of his guns, he asked if anyone knew what kind it was.  David answered correctly.  Apparently playing Call of Duty has its advantages!

After a lunch break, we piled into Ellwood’s van and headed for the beaches.  Our first stop was Utah Beach.  This was a fairly successful landing.  We had been told about how the Allies wanted to land at mid-tide so as to reduce the distance from the landing crafts to the embankments, however, it turned out that it was low tide when they landed and because of artillery fire, most of the boats didn’t go in far enough which meant that many men drowned before they even got to the beach and then there was about 200 yards of beach to cross (and to be shot at).

The Germans had fortified the beaches by dropping “Hedgehogs” along the beaches from Brittany to Belgium – 10 million of them.  These were placed down at low tide, preventing boats from coming in at high tide (damage the bottoms) or mid-tide (block their path).

Our next stop was Pont du Hoc.  This is between Utah Beach and Omaha Beach.  It was a natural stronghold and believed to be impossible to assault. 

There were many cement emplacements (widerstandnest – German, meaning “stand against) and very big guns that could hit either beach.  The assignment to scale the cliffs were given to the Army rangers, but thought to be an impossible task.  They were successful.  They were helped by British bombers who dropped 2,000 lb. bombs creating huge holes that create an undulating terrain and two destroyers who came down from Utah Beach after that assault was successful.

We next visited Omaha Beach, which was the site depicted in the movie “Saving Private Ryan.”  It is a HUGE beach and stretches for a couple of miles.  More than 2,000 men died on the beach at Omaha and survivors have said that the sand was red with the blood of those men.

Our last stop on our tour was the American Cemetery.  It is reserved for those who died in combat or wounds from combat sustained during June through August of 1944.  It is moving to walk through and see those crosses and Jewish stars all lined up and realize that each of those represents a mother who had to be told that her son would not be returning home.

At the American Cemetery there is a wall with names of the MIAs from this assault:

 When we returned to Ste. Mere Eglise, we described to Elwood the problem we had been having with our rental car GPS and he confirmed what we suspected – that it was probably the cigarette lighter fuse that needed to be replaced. (Yes, we had already called Hertz customer service who suggested that we return the car to Paris for a new one.  Um, that would be about a 3 hour drive….) We asked Elwood if there was a place in the small town of Ste. Mere Eglise where we could go for help.  He recommended Olivier at the local Renault place, so with a hand-drawn map in hand, off we went.  Olivier was most helpful, found the fuse box, replaced the fuse and charged us 1 Euro!  Within 10 minutes we were on our way with a working GPS.

Upon returning to La Ducrie, we quickly changed clothes and joined the other 8 guests and our hosts for gourmet night.  Viv is an excellent cook, and we were served “nibbles” to start in the sunroom and were introduced to the 4 couples that were also staying at La Ducrie.  Apparently they all worked together at one time in New Jersey, about half of them were British, and some had returned to Britain.

They rest of the food was delicious as well.  My salad was beautiful. 

We had a sorbet to cleanse the palate, then a lovely beef, potato, and asparagus dish,  a cheese course, and some yummy desserts.  David was quite a hit with them all.  He tried out his British accent on them (remember that Joe and Viv are also British) and they thought he was quite entertaining.  There was much laughter (it helped that they had a fair amount of alcohol as well) and they all decided that David should go into the theatre.

We began the hors d’oeuvres about 7:30 pm and finished dinner just before midnight!