Today is the 68th anniversary of the Normandy invasion. Most of the men who did it are gone now. Only a few are still here to celebrate the life that so many never had. Art Burns is a family member who was in the 101st airborne, I believe. He still lives in Long Beach, Michigan and comes into Chicago every once in a while.
I have previously posted a few photos on our trip to Normandy with the girls.
Here are a few more.
This is Omaha Beach. The cliffs are forbidding. The few breaks in them were blocked with huge concrete roadblocks but the troops got through them.
This is Omaha from above with Cindy in the foreground
This German fort is located at Omaha. Fortunately for the troops, the guns were zeroed at the high tide line and they landed at low tide. The guns could not bear on the landing craft as they came in.
Here are the girls in the American cemetery above Omaha Beach. We spent several hours there and it is very moving. Annie is the farthest from the camera.
Our British allies landed the same day and here is the site where the 6th Airborne division landed the morning of D-Day at the Pegasus Bridge. That is the memorial to Major Howard, the commander of the landing brigade. He was played in the movie, “The Longest Day” by Richard Todd, who was actually in the 6th airborne and landed with them that day although farther inland. The British only had one Airborne division but did not want the Germans to know that, hence the name.
Here is Pegasus Bridge although this bridge is a replica. The original bridge is preserved in a field across the Caen Canal near the museum.
Here is the original bridge set in a field in front of the museum.
On the morning of the landing at the bridge, the owner of the cafe located next to it was awakened by gunfire. He came out and learned of the British landing. He immediately converted his cafe into a first aid station. He even went into his garden, where he had buried a supply of wine, dug it up and served it to wounded British troops as they waited to be evacuated later in the day.
His daughter, a small child, was also awakened and watched all the excitement. She survives, at least until we were there in 2006, and she prepared our lunch. The cafe is filled with British mementoes of the landing.
If anyone remembers the movie, it shows Lord Lovat, who commanded the British commandoes on D-Day, marching them inland from the beach to relieve the airborne troops. As they marched, a bagpipe played.
Here are those bagpipes.
Finally, I took lots of photos of Ponte du Hoc where the US Rangers scaled the cliffs to silence some big guns that enfiladed the beaches on either side. The guns had been moved inland but the mission went on. In 1984, the commander of those Rangers, at the 40th anniversary of the landing, looked at the cliffs and said he could not imagine how they did it.
I can see why.
Loved the photos of Normandy, Mike. I wish my parents had taken me to foreign countries when I was young.
By the way, my two uncles (brothers, they) enlisted in the Marines on December 6th, 1941. True story. The older uncle jokes that the next day the Japanese retaliated.
Thanks. I have a raft of photos from the trip. My daughter is majoring in French and wants to live there.
Good for her. If I had it to do over again, I would study French as well. I learned Chinese, but I would never want to live in China. France, on the other hand…
My other daughter, of three, has been to China a couple of times but the pollution in Shanghai is awful. She has also lived in Spain for a year and speaks Spanish and Portuguese. She was a vegan when she went to Spain but came back a meat eater. She said a vegan would starve to death in Spain. I took her to Madrid for a week in 2010. We had great fun.