D-Day Tour

D-Day tour today with Overlord Tours. This meant a 6:30pm departure from Rouen to get to Bayeux, around a 60min drive. Jules was our guide for the tour and we arrived spot on at 8:30am (we got a teeny bit lost and had to get some breaky on the way).

First stop was a German casemate – basically a massively thick building half buried into the hills to house and protects the massive artillery guns that defended the coast and could hit a ship 12-13 miles away! Unfortunately for the crew of one of the guns a Brittish Ship managed to directly hit the casemate and gun basically causing the vaporisation of the people inside. The casemates were actually built by the French and apparently in order to sabotage the construction the French would urinate in the concrete mixture which would mean that they would never be 100% set and as such were easier to blow up.

Impression of shell from the artillary gun which pressed into the softened concrete

 Next stop was Omaha Beach – D-Day Landing site of American troops. Jules gave us an amazing history/millatary tactical lesson complete with beach diagrams explaining that basically the operation was a complete balls-up with the aerial bombing and marine barrage occurring too far inland, the landing crafts and tanks drifting significantly off course with the current and the consequent rectification causing the loss of 68 of the 70 tanks before they even hit the beach due to becoming inundated with water.

After Omaha we visted the American war cemetery- rows upon rows of white crosses (and some starts for Jewish soldiers) in absolutely perfect rows. The cemetery was created to avoid dampening morale of the soldiers who were marching past the graves of all of the soldiers gone before them – not exactly what you would want to see when you were already shitting yourself. The cemetery was the final resting point of all of the American soldiers from WWII whose families chose the option of allowing their loved one to be buried in Europe among the rest of their friends.

Bec and "Nick" demonstrating the troops being trapped on the wall between the
beach and the surrounding cliffs under attack by the German machine guns
whenever they lifted their heads.

We toured on further to the Western end of Omaha beach to the “posh” end which unfortunately again for the allied troops had a wall built along the beach before the dunes make attacking the beach near impossible. It took the effort of one smart thinking guy to actually start making some ground and help take some of the machine gun nests (WV’s - cant remember the German word for this - Wolfennestern or something along those lines) and ultimate make the whole operation successful.

One final site before lunch was the cliffs between Omaha and Utah beaches named Pont Du Hoc. This small area of land was so pock marked with shell craters it was unbelievable! This was where the Rangers landed as a surprise landing a couple of hours prior to the D-Day landings to scale 50m cliffs in 14mins under machine gun and grenade fire to take the area that housed the guns that were able to fire onto troups and ships landing at Omaha and Utah Beaches. They did an amazing job when you see what they were up against.

Dave standing in a massive crater made by the allies when they exploded an ammunition store

Surevying the pockmarked landscape of Point du Hoc



Kebabs - very French...



By this stage we had covered a lot of ground and fought our way through a lot of battles so obiously the next stop was lunch at the village of St Mare Eglise – made famous by the landing of the American Paratroopers particularly the 101^st Airborne Division and made even more famous by the story from Band of Brothers. Again Jules provided A-LOT of valuable information comparing real life with what happened in the TV series. We ventured around a whole bunch of the important sites around the village on our way to Utah Beach our next stop.

Manequins of the American Paratoopers readying up on the glider planes. Notice the mohawks and indian warpaint.

Parachute from one of the paratroopers who landed on the church cathedral.

By the time we arrived at Utah it was low tide as it would have been on the morning of the D-Day invasion. Here was a location where things went a lot better for the allied troops, mainly due to the efforts of the paratroopers who were responsible for cutting of German reinforcements and the efforts of the Rangers at Pont Du Hoc. The Beach was taken with less than 20deaths on the allied side.

All in all it was an amazing day and the tour went well past 6pm. We finished with dinner in Bayeux and red wine back in Tom and Bec’s room. Now this room was a little interesting as the shower was literally in the bedroom so we took turns in having a shower with the rest of us facing in the opposite direction. Trust me showering in a room with 3 other people is very weird!

Shower IN THE ROOM! :)