Memorial Day

We stayed the night near Omaha St. Laurent. After a wonderful breakfast of bread, bread, baguette, and butter, and croissant we were ready to go. We eat a lot of bread.


First stop was a Vierville, the western edge of Omaha. The morning was cool and Foggy, which added to the emotion of the morning. Here we were, on Memorial Day, looking over the section of the beach where some of the most intense fighting took place. Behind us was exit D-1, a heavily defended road off the beach that the Americans wanted. The Germans sat protected in their cement bunkers and hidden places, while our boys ran exposed up 300 yards of beach through machine gun fire, mortars, and artillery. This morning it was quiet and peaceful.


A monument to the national guard troops who fought that morning. The 29th division was made up of national guard troops. Company A, in the first wave, had 60% of its men from one town, Bedford Virginia. They suffered an 85% casualty rate in the first ten minutes. The monument is built on a German bunker.


The main monument on Omaha, near St. Laurent, honoring all the allied troops who participated on D-day.


It really was a world wide effort.





This is the "sculpture" or monument on the beach. I think it was titled "wings of freedom".


Someone has scratched "liberte" and "freedom" into the sand.


Our next very emotional stop was the American Cemetery at Coleville. I'm not sure words are necessary here.








The garden of the missing. About 1300 names are inscribed on the walls, those whose bodies were never found. "The earth is your sepulcher..."


Long lists of names of the missing.




The statue at the center of the monument. It is encircled with the words "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord".


Looking out over the reflecting pool from the monument. According to personal accounts, some of the first men who successfully made it up the bluff stopped near here to rest and regroup.





What a perfect place. Sobering.





These crosses mark the unidentified bodies.











We stopped at a great pizza cafe in Bressin. We picked up dessert to eat on the way to our stop. Jenn's was a "stick to your teeth" kind of yummy treat. Holley and Jenn have way too much fun in the back seat together.


We next visited the gun battery at Longues sur Mer. This is a battery of 4 large guns, 3 of them still in place. It is about 1/4 inland overlooking the British Sector.


The guns were silenced by Navy guns from the bay.


Gary and I as conquering heroes.


Holley and Jenn in a forward artillery observation post and machine gun nest.


Notice the shell marks in the reinforced concrete. The shells didn't do much damage to 6 foot thick concrete.


What a treat. Out in the distant bay we saw the remnants of the artificial harbor, the mulberries. We sunk old ships and dropped huge blocks of cement into the bay to form a break (kind of like a reef), then set up a dock system. We unloaded thousands of vehicles and 100's of thousands of men here and at Omaha.


We thought this view of the bay across a wheat field was spectacular.









While Gary did wash Holley, Jenn, and I went to the Bayeux tapestry. This is a 70 yard long tapestry, only about a 1000 years old, which tells the story of William the Conquerer (a Norman) and his triumph over the Saxons in England to become king. They sailed across the channel in boats such as these. It was actually very cool. Sorry, no pictures allowed.