Day 15: D-Day Remembrance

Our day began in Bayeux. Our goal for the day was to travel all around the region and visit the sites related to D-Day and the Battle of Normandy in World War II.

Just for a bit of local color: This rusty, enameled lady of really a swiveling shutter holder.

And this is the upper-level window of a private home in Bayeux --- displaying the flags of France, Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Holland, and Poland. They truly appreciate the Allied forces that liberated Normandy.

Our guide for the day was Patrick, a lovely Frenchman with a thick accent and loads of information about Normandy:

We left Bayeux in a bus and traveled to Sainte Mère L'Église, a town that was of critical importance in controlling the Normandy peninsula. In the move "The Longest Day", the events in this town are featured, including a paratrooper whose parachute got stuck on the church spire. That paratrooper's name was John Steele and he lived to tell his story. To illustrate his story, the town still has a parachute and a dummy stuck on the top of the spire:

The church itself is very old and dates back to the 6th century.  Here are pictures from inside the church:

This sign inside the church, for the benefit of the church's parishioners and its visitors, was quite moving: "What do you think when you hear the word PEACE?" written in many languages:

We then wandered around Sainte Mère L'Église and got a feel for the World War II memorabilia. There are Normandy Invasion re-enactors, just as we have Civil War re-enactors back in the US, who can be found all over Normandy this time of year. Here is a Jeep we found, authentic to the 1944 invasion:

And on a sign nearby, here is a picture of the E-Company soldiers made famous in "Band of Brothers". Notice Major Winters on the front row closest to the camera. They are like giants in Normandy.

There are also monuments for local heroes and important figures. Here is a monument in the shape of Normandy. It honors Alexandre Renaud, who was mayor in this town at the time of the Liberation and who became a noted historian of the D-Day landings and the Battle of Normandy.

Our next place to visit was La Pointe du Hoc (Hoc Point). It is a cliff that juts out from Normandy into the English Channel. The craters on it were made bu bombs dropped during the D-Day invasion. Germans were holed up in bunkers here and Allied soldiers had to win control of this very strategic point. Students wandered the Pointe du Hoc freely. They entered into the actual German bunkers and all agreed this would be the best paint balling site ever!

Our next stop --- the most poignant one --- was the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-mer. This is the cemetery that appears in "Saving Private Ryan". Here the students are gathered in front of one of the great maps at the memorial monument illustrating the D-Day invasion and involvement of all the Allied armies:

Valeria was quite moved and proud when she found her family's hometown in Italy on the map. It's the town if Udine in northern Italy:

Here the students are gathered in front of the very beautiful and moving statue named The Spirit of American Youth Rising from the Waves. This statue is the central feature of the memorial:

We then went in a lower garden behind the statue to walk and see all the names of soldiers lost at sea or whose bodies were never recovered in the Battle of Normandy. One of them was a woman, Guadalupe Hernandez from New Mexico:

It was cloudy and cool, but good weather for visiting graves. Here is a view of the infinity pool at the base of the memorial:

Students were then given time to freely roam the cemetery. They each had a red rose so they could lay it on a grave in the cemetery. Here is a beautiful view of one of the lanes leading to the graves:

Madame Worster in the cemetery:

Here is the grave of Johnnie M. Rivas, the first member of the Comanche tribe to die wearing the uniform of the United States Army. Madame Robillard has been visiting his grave for ten years now, praying for him, honoring his service and sacrifice, and representing his family and all Oklahomans who will never forget that he shall be forever 22 years old and he paid the ultimate price for our freedom:

A panoramic view of the cemetery:

The view from the cemetery onto the ocean and Omaha Beach is breathtaking:

Katie found her grave to adopt. Her soldier is Rufus N. Schuster from Oklahoma:

We then made our way to the train station in Bayeux, got our luggage onto the train and made our way to Paris. Normandy was great, but the anticipation of several days in Paris was very exciting. We had to haul our luggage through the Paris metro to our hotel. Kiel make the point well in this photo that this was a major DRAG!