You wont be disapppointed by the
rugged terrain and windswept sans of Omaha Beach, 16 km northwest
of Bayeux. Here you'll find the Monument du Débarquement
(Monument to the Normandy Landings) and nearby, in Vierville-sur-Mer,
the U.S. National Guard Monument who fought in both world wars. In
Colleville-sur-Mer is the hilltop American Cemetery and Memorial,
designed by the landscape architect Markley Stevenson. It is a moving
tribute to the fallen, with its Wall of missing (in the form of a
semicircular colonnade), drumlike chapel, and avenues of holly oaks
trimmed to resemble open parachutes. The crisply mowed lawns are
studded with 9386 marble tombstones. This is where Steven Spielberg's
fictional hero Captain John Miller was supposed to have been buried in
Saving Private Ryan. You can look out to sea across the landing beach
from a platform on the north side of the cemetery.
The most spectacular scenery along the coast is at the Pointe du Hoc,,
13km west of St-Laurent. Wildly undulating grassland leads past ruined
blockhouses to a clifftop observatory and a German machine-gun post
whose intimidating mass of reinforced concrete merits chilly
exploration. Despite Spielberg's cinematic genius, it remains hard to
imagine just how Colonel Rudder and his 225 men, only 90 survived,
managed to scale the jagged cliffs with rope ladders and capture the
german defenses in one of the most heroic and dramatic episodes of the
war.
Head west around the coast on N13, pause in the town
of Carentan to admire its modern marina and the mighty octagonal spire
of the Eglise Notre-Dame, and continue northwest to
Sainte-Mère-Eglise. At 2h30 AM on june 6, 1944, the 82nd
airborne division was dropped over Ste-Mère, heralding the start
of D-Day operations. Famously, one parachutist got stuck on the
church tower (memorably recreated in the 1960 film the Longest Day), a
dummy is strung up each summer to recall the event, and a stained-glass
window inside the church honors American paratroopers. After securing
their position at Ste-Mère, U.S. forces pushed north, then west,
cutting off the Cotentin Peninsula on june 18 and taking Cherbourg on
june 26. German defense proved fiercer farther south, and St-Lo
was not liberated until July 19. Ste-Mère's symbolic importance
as the first French town to be liberated from the Nazis is commemorated
by the Borne 0 (Zero), outside the town hall - a large, domed milestone
marking the start of the Voie de la Liberté (Freedom Way),
charting the Allies' progress across France.
The Musée des Troupes
Aéroportées (Airborne Troops Museum), built behind the
church in 1964 in the form of an open parachute, houses documents,
maps, mementos, and one of the Waco CG4A gliders used to drop troops.
Place du 6 juin 1944.
Head east on D 67 from Ste-Mère to Utah
Beach, which being sheltered from the Atlantic winds by the Cotentin
Peninsula and surveyed by lowly sand dunes rather than rocky cliffs,
proved easier to attack than Omaha. In la Madeleine inspect the modern
museum devoted to the battle of Utah Beach. Continue north to the Dunes
de Varreville, set with a monument to French hero General Leclerc, who
landed here. Offshore you can see the fortified Iles St-Marcouf.
Continue to Quinéville, at the far end of Utah Beach, with its
museum evoking life during the german occupation.
