24 June 2014

at the museum

Well, John was grumpy as heck when he woke up.  I had in ear plugs, so the noise hadn’t disturbed me.  I guess it was just enough to keep John awake even with the windows closed.  I drove so he could nap in between places we visited.  It helped a little…..The other thing that helped was that the car park we parked in only cost us 3.50E for the overnight.  We thought it would be 12E!  And…John found a 2E coin.  Score, hahaha!

We drove from Caen to Arromanches.  This was the start of the Omaha Beach DDay American tour for us.  If we’d have gone north, we’d have hit the British and Canadian beaches, but only had time to drive south and even then we didn’t get to see everything.  There is a 360* movie shown that gives an overview of DDay and after.  It was well done.  We looked over the bluffs and could not imagine how our boys managed to land and climb up the endlessly tall bluffs!  Met a nice British couple driving an old Triumph.  He said it was very zippy!

Our adorable little car!

We needed gas and found a gas station.  American credit cards are worthless without the chip.  ARGH!!  How utterly annoying!!  It is impossible to use automatic credit card portals at all.  Cannot use them at the gas station or the train station or in a store.  They need to get on this!!  What use is having a credit card that doesn’t charge international fees if you can’t use the damn thing?!  ARGH!  Found another station a few kilometers ahead where we could pay in person.

Crosses at the American Cemetery

From there, John (who was an absolutely amazing tour guide) got us to the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach.  There was a beautiful museum before you could go outside.  It told a lot of stories of people who lived and died and what they did and how they died.  There are about 9,300 soldiers buried there and I think 4 civilians.  There were also some movies that showed different things about the campaign.  Overall, it was superbly done.  Although, you couldn’t have told that there had been a 70^th anniversary there recently, which I thought was interesting.  I still expected some of the pomp to be around.

Cuteness of stop
lights at eye level
in France

John wanted to know how they got all the grave markers to line up so well.  It was very interesting how from every angle things were just right.  All mathematical, which isn’t quite as bad as chemistry…but almost :o)  We looked for our ancestor’s names and found none…..our names range from Karl (my maiden name), Lingenfelter (father’s mother), Hart (father’s grandmother), Harvey (my mother) and Williams (my mother’s mother) to Wright (John), Brush (John’s mother), and Turner (his father’s mother’s name).  

While we did find a Turner from NY state, at first, we were like, “Well…no one fought in the war, how sad!”  Then, John remarked later that we were looking at it the wrong way.  We should have looked at it like, “Wow!  No one from our families is on the wall…we come from a line of amazing soldiers!”  hahaha!  It’s all perspective :o)

I’m sure that there was a way to find out the names of everyone buried there, but we didn’t look hard.  Neither of our paternal grandfathers or his maternal grandfather fought in the war and my maternal grandfather and uncle were British and both survived the war.  The names that we looked at were random and on the walls.  Perhaps out of 9,300 people there might be an ancestor or two.  Or we’re both just Viking warriors from centuries back.  I like that better!!

One of the crosses

It surely is a beautiful and pristine setting!  It overlooks the beach where they lost their lives and today was absolutely gorgeous weather.  If I had to choose a place to have as my final resting place that would have been a good choice…with the exception of the reason I would have wound up there.

DDay offensive
at Omaha Beach

From there we drove to the beach and found a little café.  The food was adequate….John’s sandwich was homemade, my leek quiche was microwaved.  We shared a waffle with caramel and whipped cream and I learned that John is a chocolate purist.  He doesn’t really like chocolate syrup things for dessert.  He likes chocolate alone. Luckily I’d bought him some in Belgium.

We walked on the beach and marveled at the struggle the soldiers had when they landed.  The Germans must have wondered what the heck we were thinking!  Shooting fish in a barrel comes to mind.  I wondered how many soldiers were lost to the sea whose bodies were never recovered.  A final, watery grave in a foreign land with no grave for relatives to visit.  That’s sad.

John exploring a
bunker

Touched my toes in the water and wrote Katie and Eric’s names in the sand so I could send them a postcard via Touchnote.  If I haven’t already babbled about it, it’s a smartphone app.  You should look it up!  Then we hopped in our cute little car and went to our next stop on the DDay tour.  John borrowed Rick Steves’ France book from a friend and it was invaluable!  It gave tips and hints and stories about the different places we visited.

Pointe du Hoc

Our next stop was Pointe du Hoc.  This was a heavily fortified German area.  It was the coolest place we visited today because we were able to walk amongst the bombed out and non-bombed out gun batteries.  There were still bomb craters that showed how much the Allied forces bombed and how relatively ineffective they were.  Well, maybe they were effective, but there were a lot of missed bunkers with a lot of craters nearby and not so many destroyed.  Probably worried a lot of German soldiers when it was happening though!!  

bombed out German
bunker

The bomb craters were absolutely huge!  I cannot imagine the noise and the chaos, the smoke and the fires.  The bunkers that were hit had chunks of concrete blocks thrown up to 15 feet away!  So, when we did get a direct hit, it must have been quite impressive. The bunkers themselves were several meters thick.  As John noted, it would have taken more than one bomb to destroy one. 

Where the guns were at

The bunkers comprised a little village of sorts.  There was a hospital bunker, a sleeping bunker, and must have been a mess hall somewhere. The coolest thing was that we not only got to walk around this area, but we got to walk IN the bunkers!  It was a living museum!  They were completely cleaned out and it wasn’t grand and there weren’t any signs showing what things might have looked like (except for a brief commentary at the beginning of the walk), but you imagined what it was like:  dreary, depressing, boring (except for the fighting), and scary.  

bombed out bunker

The spot was chosen as a genius offensive advantage.  You could see up and down the coasts to both Omaha and Utah beaches.  If anything happened, they would know it.  This is where the Airborne Rangers lost almost 2/3 of their soldiers trying to take the Pointe.  They did take it, but with only 90 survivors, you know the cost was extremely high.  I also wondered if we would have the support for our soldiers now if something like this came up and how many men and women would answer the call.  But…that is not for a vacation blog posting…it is a deep reflection for another time :o)

So…..we were able to look down the side of the bluffs where the Rangers blasted up bomb-propelled grapples so their ladders would hold in the sheer rock.  Again, the Germans cut the ladders and just shot our boys, but the Rangers kept coming!  And, the US soldiers had to think about the incoming tide….if they didn’t make it up the wall, they’d drown!!

German cemetery

One of the Karl
soldiers

This was, for me and I think John too, the most impressive site all day.  For me, it was the most moving because you actually got to see what was there.  At Omaha Beach, you have the film footage and the cemetery and photos, but when you look out over the beach, it is calm, peaceful, and quite beautiful.  There are no lingering effects of the war in sight.  Take away the knowledge it’s a war site and you have a lovely place to take your kids for an afternoon in the sea.

From there, John found our way to the German cemetery.  Rick Steves’ book said it was somber (or something like that), but we found it to be a beautiful place!  It isn’t crowded and it’s very subdued.  There is nothing discussing the war or the Nazis or anything.  No swastikas, no flags.  It’s a peaceful place where the dead were laid to rest in the early 1960s.

at the church that was
used as a hospital

Very cool…..we managed to find eight soldiers whose last names were Karl (my maiden name).  So…it seems that my ancestors weren’t quite so lucky :o)  I am going to write to my uncle, who has kept up with our genealogy to see if they might be distant cousins.  I don’t know how else to check….maybe to go back to some online records in Bavaria (where our Karl’s originally came from) to see if any of them are cousins.  We were able to find the gravesites of 6 of the 8, so John & I were happy.

American & French
flags at Utah Beach

From there, John used Rick Steves to take us to a church that was uses as a hospital in Angoville au Plain.  Two American doctors treated German and American soldiers for 72 hours after the start of DDay.  Rick Steves said you could see blood on the pews, but I wasn’t sure, so I didn’t take any pix. I don’t know how the doctors died or when.  The book said that the doctors demanded that the German soldiers left their weapons outside of the church and they complied.  I think it helped that they treated the soldiers from both sides equally.

Hanging paratrooper

Our next stop was the church in St. Mere Eglise where American paratroopers landed behind enemy lines in support the American landing at Utah Beach.  Paratroopers sailed down from the sky into the town.  Unfortunately for some, they got caught on the spire or on roof of the church, making easy shooting for the Germans.  Some of the Americans were able to shoot from the spires too.  In honor of the liberators, there is a dummy paratrooper hanging from the spire representing those who were caught and/or lost in the event,

a medieval house
in Bayeaux

Lastly, to Utah Beach.  We didn’t stay long there as we were out of time.  We looked over the bluffs, but did not go down to the beach.  Rick Steves says the best museum of DDay is there, but it was closed by the time we got there. 

Navy statue at
Utah Beach

We drove to Bayeaux and ate dinner.  The food was decent, but nothing to write home about, haha!  Crowded little restaurant with good service.   From there, back to Caen.  We were exhausted!  The noise outside was pretty loud, but it died down after a little while.  I, once again, slept like a baby whereas John was up for a couple hours.  His poor body clock is all messed up!!