Normandy - Part I

It's been long overdue, but at last I have sorted through my photos of the battlefield tour that Al and I went on in May this year. 2014 is the 70th anniversary of D-Day, so we spent a weekend courtesy of Leger Tours on a whistlestop trip around the D-Day beaches. I've been before a few times, but it was great to be shown around with the help of an excellent guide, even if it did seem a bit rushed at times.

What follows is a small selection of the photos I took, with a brief narrative, as best I can remember, from the time. There's still quite a lot to show so I've split it into two separate articles, one for each day of the tour - which means effectively one article for the British, French and Canadian forces and another one for the Americans. As it happens this means that it's also (roughly) organised from east to west as you look at a map of Normandy, which is a convenient reference.

Day 1: The British, French and Canadians

Pegasus Bridge

We start at the westernmost extent of the D-Day landings, with the first action of 6 June 1944 - the coup de main airborne assault of the bridges over the Orne and the Caen Canal by C Company, Ox & Bucks Light Infantry, British 6th Airborne Division. Of the two bridges seized and held, the Caen Canal bridge (named Pegasus Bridge after the emblem of the Airborne; the nearby bridge across the River Orne was named Horsa Bridge) is the most celebrated and gives its name to the museum that was our first point of visit.

The original Pegasus Bridge

The bridge that was actually assaulted has since been replaced by a more modern structure and is now in the garden of the museum, less than a hundred meters from its original site. Also there, amongst other relics are a replica of a Horsa glider (the remains of the fuselage of an original one is in a shed) and a 17pdr gun

Replica Horsa glider

17pdr anti-tank gun

The focus of the museum is (obviously) the airborne landings but the museum also celebrates the Special Service Brigade commando force led by Lord Lovat that arrived from the landings on Sword beach to relieve them later that day. A particularly nice item in the museum are Bill Millin's bagpipes.

"It takes an Irishman to play the pipes", as Sean Connery would say

After a walk around the museum and the site of the landings themselves Al and I made a point of visiting the Gondree cafe. This was the first building to be liberated on D-Day.

New bridge on the right, old cafe on the left

Al takes coffee at the Gondree Cafe

As with many of the Normandy sites, a large amount of the concrete defences set up by the Germans have never been removed and in some cases even the guns have been left behind. This is the case with the anti-tank gun emplacement beside the bridge, shown below.

Concrete anti-tank gun emplacement beside the bridge

Sword Beach

The furthest east of the invasion beaches is Sword beach where the British and Free French landings took place, by the 3rd Infantry Division and including Lovat's commandos who moved from there to relieve 6th Airborne at Pegasus Bridge.

Sword Beach

Sword beach is generally low lying with a road running along the top of the beach and housing set immediately behind. At its easternmost end this is the edge of the town of Ouistreham.

Former 75mm gun casemate (now a private dwelling!)

Centaur light tank (near the Ranville Cemetery)

Churchill AVRE (at the side of a road junction)

Juno Beach

Juno beach

Juno lies immediately west of Sword Beach and is continuous with it. It's much the same topography, with a coastal road and housing forming the seafront, or dunes where the coast road moves a little inland. Juno, where the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division landed, almost immediately north of Caen, though strongly defended was the most successfully assaulted of all the landing beaches on D-Day. A very new Canadian museum has recently been opened and we were one of the first of Leger's tour groups to have visited. In my opinion a good museum, well laid out and a fitting memorial, though to my mind a little lacking on detail and therefore not a museum I would rush to visit again any time soon.

Juno is almost always identifiable from old photographs of the Normandy Beaches because of one particular house, which is now the only house of its age still standing in the area, which seemed to end up in all the old photographs.

The house, now, which makes it instantly recognizable as Juno Beach

The house in the distance, then. See?

And just in case you were in doubt, there is a huge Juno Beach war memorial next to the house now

Outside the museum various relics have been retained including selected beach obstacles and an observation bunker which, if you have the time, as a museum visitor you can be shown around by a guide.

 Juno Beach museum with an observation bunker in the foreground

Tetrahedral concrete beach obstacles

Gold Beach

Gold Beach

The other British landing beach, assaulted by 50th Division, lies immediately west of Juno. Again, it is a low rise from the beach to housing and open country. Along the main draw of this beach (King Red Sector, near the village of Mont Fleury) is a memorial to Stan Hollis, who won a Victoria Cross for his bravery on D-Day.

The Stan Hollis memorial information board

The Stan Hollis memorial bus shelter

Yes, the memorial is a bus shelter - but in 1944 it was an outside toilet. Apparently on 6 June, Stan Hollis approached this structure and thinking it to be some sort of enemy strongpoint, assaulted it with grenades. It is safe to say that if there were any Germans there, they probably were caught with their pants down...

View inland from King Red Sector, Gold Beach

Arrowmanches

Immediately west of Gold Beach is the town of Arrowmanches. This was turned into an operational port by the allied forces as soon as it had been captured by the use of Mulberry Harbours. These concrete structures were floated into place and used as breakwaters and harbour structures in combination with several scuttled ships so as to enable supplies to be rapidly moved to the beachheads. Remains of the Mulberry Harbours are still present in the sea near Arrowmanches, best observed from the top of the cliff. At its height the port made here was larger than Dover!

View from the clifftop towards Arrowmanches, showing the war memorial (left) and Mulberry Harbour sections in the sea

Day 1 over and back to the hotel. Tomorrow we would visit the American beaches.