Caen, Bayeux, and the D-Day beaches

Sorry for not posting yesterday. We were both exhausted and faced the daunting prospect of a 4:30 a.m. wakeup, so I deigned not to blog.

One of the battlements of William the Conqueror's castle

Yesterday was spent in the town of Caen, one of the biggest cities in Normandy, and the favorite town of William the Conqueror, who's influence was everywhere. We had no troubles getting to the city, but finding our hotel was a nightmare. The city was laid out very strangely and none of the maps listed the name of the side-street our hotel was on. On top of that, since it was Sunday, both sides of the main street through the city were occupied by a morning market. Wading our way through the crowds with our bags was a chore. Eventually, after stopping at the tourism office to get a map, we found our way to the hotel. The late train departure time combined with our walk around the wrong side of the city kind of robbed us of our time in Caen. By the time we hit the streets to see the sights, it was already 3 p.m. After taking another little train tour (like what we did a few days ago in Rouen, albeit much less interesting/helpful), we made our way into the Abbaye aux Hommes, one of three major Gothic churches in the city. As always, the chapel was beautiful and we enjoyed walking around and enjoying the stained glass and such. The highlight of our day was to be found in William the Conqueror's castle, however. We began by walking around the outer-ramparts, discussing various forms of medieval fortification and siege tactics, which was really fun and took a while. We tried to pretend we were an attacking force, and laid out our plans for attack. We felt rather nerdy, to be sure. We then walked up into the castle proper and onto the upper battlements to see a better view of the city. While there were a lot of interesting buildings and churches to see, we were both a little sad to see how many buildings had been reconstructed post 1944, in much less interesting architecture. The castle had a really interesting museum on Norman history, which we visited. It traced the arrival of the first humanoids in Normandy in the Neolithic period, through the Bronze age (detailing the creation of various tools, jewelery, pottery, etc.), the influence of the Gauls and the Romans, the arrival of Rollo the Viking, etc. It also had a good display of Norman life, which has always been, and still is today, primarily based around agriculture. Sadly, we did not have time to visit Caen's WWII "Peace Museum" which was supposed to be really good. Our train was to leave the next morning very early, so as I mentioned earlier, we decided to call it an early night after a dinner in one of the only open restaurants in the town. Such is the downside to being a tourist in France on a Sunday. Nothing is open.

Inside a Nazi bunker

The cliffs of Point du Hoc, scaled by American troops

So then this morning we took a train to the city of Bayeux, which is known for being the first town liberated from Nazi oppression after D-Day. As you might be able to guess, this town's focus is primarily based on WWII stories. A few months ago, we booked a tour with a company called Viator to tour Les Plages du Débarquement (the French term for the D-Day invasion). Although we were both wary of taking a nine hour guided tour, it is really the only way we could have seen anything of the beaches, as they are not accessible by train and we are too young to rent a car. As it turned out, we were both extremely impressed with the tour today. We got picked up at our hotel by our guide, Julian, and proceeded to pick up the other 3 people who were on our tour. I am not going to attempt to put into this post everything that we talked about today, as I would have to be writing for hours. Julian was extremely knowledgeable. I was shocked by the sheer amount of detailed information that he had on everything related to the invasion. He began the tour by saying that he was going to explain the invasion as if the tour were the invasion itself, and explained much of the logisitics of the war, battle plans, what went wrong, and stories of individuals in each place we visited. There were no questions that he did not have an answer for. The best part was that the tour was not just a glorification of American intervention. There was no "AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!" attitude at any point. We examined the success and failures of various parts of the invasion. For example, we stopped at Utah beach, where American forces salvaged a terrible botched landing and strategical failure and turned it into a total success, while evaluating the utter failure of American forces on the dreaded landing on Omaha beach. It was really rather humbling to see how daunting of a task was put before these young men, most of whom were younger than I am now. Our favorite part of the trip was a visit to a place called Point du Hoc. This was a place where U.S troops were tasked with taking out 6 long distance artillery guns and AA guns. Over the course of a month, over 2000 bombs were dropped on the site, all of which missed the targets (waste of tax dollars, eh?). As the site posed a huge threat to the invasion on Utah beach, a small corps of soldiers were dispatched to take them out in a secret invasion. Of 150 total, only a handful remained alive, although victorious. We saw the remains of a building that the Americans had destroyed in the fighting. It had been a warehouse, storing 88 mm explosives for the artillery. Our soldiers light a match, tossed it in, and ran. The explosion was so violent, it blew a 30 ton chunk of roof about 40 feet away. It was at this site that we got a chance to explore the German bunkers, check out their massive guns, and see the sight of one of the most heroic ventures in military history. Truly incredible. There are tons of other bits of information that we got today that I might make another post soon to discuss, as it was simply astounding. Please feel free to leave any questions in the comments below and I can give you more details.

Oh one thing I forgot to mention above. Our last stop was the American Cemetery near Omaha beach. I cannot begin to describe to you what this stop was like for me. There were 9200+ graves in this site alone. All guys between 18-22. Guys like me. It struck a chord. We walked through the neat rows of white crosses for a while. At one point, I came across something that hit me really hard. I don't know why it did, but I was overcome. It was a cross just like all the others, but instead of a name, rank, and date of death, it read:

HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY
A COMRADE IN ARMS

KNOWN BUT TO GOD

I stopped and stared at it for a long time. After everything that I had heard today, and everything that I knew about the events of D-Day, and my own reflections, it just really hit me. I can't really explain it very well, and I'm sure that from your perspective reading this it would be easy to say "Yeah, that happened all the time. It's part of war and it's sad." That is probably what I would have said. But I stood there until Hayley came over to me, gave me a hug, and made me go on.  

The tour was the big part of today. Afterwards, we simply got dinner and came back to the hotel. We were both tired and decided to save our Bayeux sightseeing for tomorrow morning. We leave in the early afternoon towards our last destination, Le Mont Saint-Michel. This is the destination that I have been most looking forward to, so I am very excited to get out there. I don't think I will be writing a post for tomorrow, as most of our day will be spent with just small things (visiting the Bayeux Tapestry) and travel. Thanks for keeping up with us!