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Randville:
| Saturday started early with a full agenda.
Our first stop was the British cemetery at Ranville and we were allowed about 20 minutes.
That didn't seem like a long time but after the first hundred tombstones they all begin to look alike so I wasn't sorry to head back to the bus.
And that's a shame, because each one of the untold number of markers represented a young man or woman whose life was cut short.
But the magnitude of it is too overwhelming to comprehend, especially on such a fine and sunny morning.
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British Cemetery at Ranville
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Pegasus Bridge:
We left the dead and continued on to Pegasus Bridge, one of the finest and first manoeuvres of D-Day.
Just after midnight on 6 June 1944, gliders carrying British commandos landed near the strategic bridge and the soldiers successfully surprised the Germans and captured the bridge, holding off a German counterattack until their troops broke through.
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This is a replica of the gliders used by the British Commandos;
none of the originals survive. Of the 300 British glider
pilots taking part in D-Day, 100 were killed or wounded. |
This is the new Pegasus Bridge; an
exact duplicate of the original. The original is in the
museum right next to the bridge. It looks exactly the same
and you have to pay to see it but I still went in to have a
look. I mean, it's the actual bridge!
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Sword, Arromanches and
the Mulberry Harbor:
After that, we saw Sword Beach, one of the British landing sites, and
stopped on a ridge overlooking Mulberry Harbor.
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Sword Beach. The Nazis were
sitting on some fine real estate here; that alone was reason
enough to push them back over the Rhine.
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Arromanches and Mulberry Harbor
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| The
Mulberry Harbors (there were two of them) were artificial harbors made out of concrete and towed across the channel. This allowed the allies to rapidly land more men, munitions and heavy equipment to keep the momentum going.
One of the harbors was destroyed in a storm after a few
weeks. The second was supposed to last a few months longer
but, sixty years later, it is still here. |
Mulberry Harbor at Arromanches
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Arromanches, where you can visit the D-Day Museum, walk the
beaches and view Mulberry Harbor up close and, of course, buy
cheese. |
The surviving harbor was set by the town of Arromanches and we stopped there for sightseeing and a cheese sandwich.
The D-Day Museum is there as well as the harbor, which required a
bit of a walk to get to. We were allowed more than ample time
to visit the museum, the harbor and the village, which cut short our stay in Bayeux, where the famous Tapestry resides.
This was one of the highlights of the trip, as far as we were concerned, and it didn't look like we were going to be allowed much time to enjoy it.
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Bayuex:
We arrived at Bayuex and were told to be back at the bus by 5 PM.
That left us only 25 minutes to find the museum, get in, see the tapestry and return.
Most others weren't interested but we were keen to see it and set off at a trot.
Helpful signs pointed the way. We bought tickets, ignored the peripheral exhibits and the offer of a short film on the tapestry, hurrying instead to the tapestry itself.
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The Bayuex tapestry, at 70
metres long (about 200 feet) and nearly 1000 years old, is one of the
most valuable historic relics in existence. And we had 10 minutes
to see it--a rate of 7 metres a minute.
We had been issued headsets that told the story of the tapestry, foot by
foot, but the narrative was still on panel 6 while we were scanning
panels in the mid-50's.
We turned our still-talking headsets in at the desk and ran back to the
bus, arriving just at 5:00. No one was there.
We waited. At 3 minutes after, we figured everyone was just
a little late. By 5 after, were thought that maybe an extension
had been given and we began to get angry that no one had told us.
By seven after we were furious. Then, at 10 after, upon checking
our watches for the umpteenth time, my wife noticed that it was not 10
after 5, but 10 after 4, so, basically, we had paid €15 to do a
70-metre dash for no reason.
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The Bayuex Tapestry. It only costs €0.10 per foot to
view it--quite a bargain. Just make sure you give yourself
more than ten minutes.
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After kicking ourselves for a minute or two and then feeling foolish for a few more we decided against going back to the tapestry and toured the town instead.
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Bayeux. Luckily, the town, and thereby the Tapestry, was
spared during the D-Day assault.
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Some really old buildings here might have been destroyed if the
fighting had come this way.
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It turned out all right in the end. The town was lovely and had a grand cathedral so the time was not wasted and, let's face it, in the ten minutes I was there, I got the idea that the tapestry was big and old; another 40 minutes wasn't going to make it seem any grander, larger or older.
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Church. Exterior.
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Church. Interior.
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