The Sobering Reality of Omaha Beach

Today was our day to explore Omaha Beach, the second of the American D-Day invasion areas. Now that I understand how the guide works, and Barney highlighted the key places he wants to go, we should have a smoother day (and not so late). We head out for St Come du Mont, the start of this itinerary, and go to Carentan, one of the major areas of fighting in the Battle of Normandy, what happened after D-Day. Our next stop is Isigny-sur-Mer, which was a bustling town and had a market in the square. The open air grill is irresistible, and we get a homemade sausage and some fries to go, which were delicious. We then walked by the church, which had been party destroyed in the war. The stained glass windows had been replaced by single-color faceted glass, so the light shone through to the Gothic columns and made each one look a different color.

We continue on to la Cambe,a small village which houses the German cemetery. It is an interesting contracts to the British cemetery we saw yesterday which was calm and orderly in crisp, British sort of way. The German cemetery is all dark: dark reddish-brown headstones (2-4 people to a headstone), massed around a series of black stone crosses, dotted by huge dark led oak trees, and with a dark statue of a couple mourning their lost son at the top of the mound where the unknown soldiers are buried. The German cemetery says "remorse"while the British one says "we will carry on."

On to Omaha Beach at its easternmost end. We first go to the Musée Omaha Beach, filled with actual. Items used by both sides during the war, and with German defensive boxes, American weapons and a Mulberry (temporary) roadway section nearby. We walk down to the beach, which is huge in its breadth, and at low tide, very similar to the way it was on D-Day. The expanse between the waterline and the cliff seems enormous ... it must have been terrifying to leave the transports, throw yourself into the water, and walk into a hail of machine gun fire.  Back on the shore, there is a National Guard monument built over a German bunker, these huge constructions with tons of concrete and steel in them.

Nearby at Ruquet, we climb up a small hill to another bunker, and it is easy to see how the German gunners had a wide view of the beach and the men below. It is a miracle that any of them made it through. The bombers missed their targets, the Hugh seas swamped the tanks and their equipment, men weighted down by equipment could barely get to shore .... so many things went wrong it is hard to believe that they actually won this.

On to the Omaha Beach Memorial Museum, which has some excellent exhibits on events of the days before and during and after D-Day. It is surprising how much materials has survived intact, and we learn that even today occasionally things wash up on shore. The film at this museum about the D-Day campaign is very informative and moving ... the actual footage of the day shows some of the devastating impacts on the early forces ashore. They also had some great exhibits on the engineers who helped clear the beaches, and how they quickly turned it into a massive port for bringing in millions of tons of materials and thousands more men, with the Mulberry temporary bridges and ports, truly an engineering feat. It was sobering to see the photos of the day with the beach littered with bodies that they had not yet been able to clear. So many lives lost at all the beaches, but this one was the worst ... the small town of Bedford, Virginia lost 23 men in the D-Day campaign, of the 35 who had enlisted, a whole generation of young men lost.

Finally, we go to the American Cemetery in Saint Laurent. It is huge, planted with trees and shrubs imported from the US, an enormous expanse of crosses. We arrive just as they are taking down the flag for the day, and they play taps. It is an emotional moment, and everyone there stops in their tracks and listens. In contrast to the German and the British cemeteries, the American cemetery says power, that "we have lost precious people but we are triumphant." The huge expanse overlooks the beach and the ocean, a lovely setting for the sadness of these graves.

Back to Bayeux for our appointment with Jerome and Sebastien. As tonight is the night before Ascension, which is a French holiday, Sebastien will be ringing the bells at 7:00pm, and they have invite us to watch. We enter the Cathedral as they are closing up for the night, and climb a few hundred stone stairs in a spiral staircase, to what feels like a rickety wooden structure and then we see the bells.  There are four medium size heels in the south tower where we are, and two large ones in the north tower where Sebastien is. He operates them by motors which power the swinging of the bells. And the sound is deafening. Jerome warns us to cover our ears and he is right. After the thrilling ringing of the bells, he takes us out on the roof of the side nave, where we can see up close the gargoyle and other decorative elements of the cathedral, some which have Ben recently restored. We carefully wind our way down the steps, and I ask if I can sing for them. I do the Fauré "Pie Jesu" but this time singing full out, and it feels so good to sing out, like my voice is back!

We offer to takeout Jerome and Sebastien for dinner o thank them for the tour, they demur, but finally agree, and we have a lovely Franglish dinner. At the end, we walk back to the Cathedral, and they let us in to the cathedral library, which dates for the time of Louise XIV, bit someone how not destroyed in the revolution. It is filled top to bottom hit prices books, all temperature and humidity controlled, wood-panels with Latin inscriptions of the sections of books on the wall. My recent experience at Bancroft Library taught me a little about special collections like this, so we touch nothing but only look at some amazing pieces. Our eyes filled with the wonders we'e seen and our ears with the sound of the bells, we go off happily to rest and get ready to travel to MOnt St-Michel tomorrow.