Normandy

We drove to the grocery store not far from our hotel and bought a breakfast of yogurt, pastries (Garth is obsessed with them) and juice. We had quite the discussion on the juice and Preston finally won and Garth bought double the type of juice Preston had chosen. Well, the juice was terrible and Preston would only drink one swallow and we ended up with lots of nasty juice and Garth complaining that Preston owed him some euros but at least the pastries were great.

We started our day at the Museum of Peace. It was a huge museum recounting the events that lead up to WWII, the battles of WWII and the cold war. It was very well done and they had great original footage from WWII and the French Resistance. There were lots of artifacts, guns and machinery and even a Soviet Mig. More of an international perspective was given on the war and the cold war and it was good have. We spent four hours there and then headed to the D-Day beaches.

The beaches are so beautiful and serene; it is just so hard to imagine what they were like on June 6, 1944. This is Omaha Beach, it is very lush and the vegetation is thick and the cliff is steep and the soldiers had to get through that as well as all the German defenses. When they came ashore, it was low tide and so they had to go that much further to the Germans but the plan was to drop the soldiers out where there weren't as many booby traps and mines. Doesn't make much sense to me because they still had to go through them but I'm not a military analysis.
A map of the landing beaches.
The beaches are now used by tourists and beach lovers again and Preston was pretty shocked to see a topless bather. She was only about 12 or 13, so there was nothing to see but he still couldn't believe it.
Here Garth, Preston and Jip are playing at coming ashore. Garth is the leader so he sent infantry out in front of him to protect him. We decided Garth was no Tom Hanks!
After we hiked down and back up from Omaha Beach, and it is a hike, we went to the war cemetery. It is the largest US military cemetery outside of the United States, over 10,000 men and women are remembered there.

We met a People to People tour (the tour I had gone on 30 years before) and I talked to a few of the girls. I explained that the friend I was with was from my home stay 30 before. They were pretty amazed and said that their home stay had been the best part of their trip also. I encouraged them to stay in contact with the families because you just never know what might happen.
There are over 9,000 graves and over 1,000 names of men and women missing in action. It really is quite moving to be there and even though there are a lot of people everyone is quiet and respectful.
We spent a lot of time looking at the head stones and where all the soldiers were from and the day that they had died. Most of them did not die on D-Day. The ones that were really sad were the soldiers that died after the war was over or just days before it ended.
It is a huge cemetery and maybe you can get the perspective from these shots.
We finally made our way to the visitors center and the museum they had there. It was just devoted to D-Day and more of what Garth was looking for. Unfortunately, we aren't very good at the realizing how late it is here because the sun stays up so much longer and we only had about 20 minutes in the museum before it closed. We were sad we hadn't realized that before because we easily could have gone down to the beach after the museum closed.

From there we drove to Pointe du Hac were the Army Rangers used the grappling hooks and ladders to scale the cliffs to take that strategic point. They started with 225 men and ended up with 90. This is the only place where the bunkers and gun emplacements built by the Germans are still in place and you can see the craters left by the shelling of our ships and planes. Here Preston is throwing a grenade from one of the gun emplacements.

You can see how big the craters are even after 60 years of erosion.
Preston was "killed" in this crater. It must have been so scary to have the Germans and had all these shells coming at you or to have been the Americans coming up over the top of the cliff to face the Germans in these thick cement bunkers.
Preston is pretending to be enduring the shelling. You could walk around underground in some of the rooms that still survive.
These two don't look two scared. Anita and I commented numerous times how scary it would have been to have your son in that WWII and fighting there, and that if we had been Germans, both our boys would have been in army at 16 years old or younger. This is looking down on to Utah Beach.

You can see all the craters in the background. Garth said that today we wouldn't have missed that many times, just a couple of bombs and the whole thing would have been over.

One more look at Utah Beach. It is after 7:00 and look how high the sun still is in the sky.
We ended the day at the beach with Preston wishing he could shoot off this big gun.
From here we had a two hour drive to our next stop so we could visit Giverny and Versailles the next day. We had a hard time finding the hotel and by the time we did all the restaurants were closed (most close earlier than in the US). The hotel manager told us of a McDonald's and a Buffalo Grill that was open until 11:00 so we quickly drove over there; we had two "starving" boys. The McDonald's wouldn't serve us because we were too late but Buffalo Grill let us in and the employees ended up staying an extra hour. They never rush you at a restaurant here and will let you sit as long as you like, never bringing the bill and pushing you out. Preston was so excited to have ribs but he soon realized it is better to have American food in America and eat like the Europeans do in Europe.