May 06 – D-Day and Utah Beach

Today we headed up to Utah Beach.  It was a bit of a drive.  Some photos of the countryside.

The country lanes were particularly pretty.

Mowing 

We stopped for gas.  In the station was this life size “soldier” keeping an eye on things. 

Then we made it to Utah beach and the Utah Beach Museum.  When we got there we saw some of the memorials…

and then headed down to the beach itself.  The beach is massive and stretches for what seemed to be miles. 

And, on the beach were a number of harness racing rigs out going through their paces on the beach.

There was also a landing craft out front with statues of disembarking soldiers in front of it. 

Higgens Boat Monument

And more statues and memorials. 

The Lone Sailor in Normandy

Then it was to the museum itself.

German Gunnery Sargeant

This little contraption was accompanied by a video that showed it in action.  It looked like a mini-tank without a turret.  It would move through and area until it hit a mine and then it would be blown to bits.  The ultimate sacrifice but a great way to clear a mine field.

In one of the exhibits there was a mention of the USS Quincy.  My uncle, Lewis Hobart, was on the Quincy when it fired on Utah Beach.  An emotional mention for me. 

A map showing the five beaches and the movement of ships to the beaches.

One thing we don’t hear enough about is the enormous amount of supplies needed to support the armies and the incredible logistics that went into making sure the supplies were there when needed.

The museum has a display of some of the obstacles that the Germans had placed on many beaches. 

The nearby café, Le Roosevelt, where we had lunch.

From the Utah Beach Museum we headed to Longues sur Mer where we visited some of the old German bunkers.  A map of the bunker placements. 

There was no museum, just the bunkers.

Some of the bunkers had old, rusting guns still in place. 

The trail took us down to the top of the cliffs where we saw another bunker…

and some parasailers.

In the distance we could see the artificial harbors at Arromances.  We have visited Arromances a couple years ago when we had a shore excursion off the Queen Mary on one of our return cruises from Europe.

In this place where so many men lost their lives the flowers were thriving.  They were everywhere. 

We were able to get close to some rape plants (we have seen bright yellow fields of them everywhere).  

Some had gone puffy...

and these look like the seed pods...long and skinny.

We were back in Bayeux by the end of day and found some dinner.  Then we packed as it is time to move on to our next location. Packing was a bit of an enterprise as we had to rearrange everything.  We don’t want to take the big pieces with us for the next two nights in Mont Saint Michel as it is all cobblestone and stairs.  We only need overnight bags for our two-night Mont Saint Michel so rearranging it is.