day 5

Day 5 (and our last full day in France ) was pretty incredible. See, when we were planning this trip, I kept asking Lance what he wanted to do in Paris and in Rome… and the ONLY thing he had his heart set on in Paris was making the trip up to the Normandy coastline to see the D-Day beaches in northern France. We booked a D-Day beaches tour through Fat Tire Bike Tours (mostly because it was all-inclusive, so I didn’t have to arrange a hotel to stay in or a taxi to get us to the beach or whatever). We got up Sunday morning with our picnic lunch packed and boarded the train for Bayeaux , France. Now, I have thank the Lord at this point—I hadn’t really looked at the time on our ticket, and I thought our train left at around 9:30, so I thought we had plenty of time. Well, we pulled into the big station to get on the big train from our little commuter train at like 9:04, and I pulled out our tickets just to check… turns out our train was leaving at 9:10!!! So we were power walking through the station, trying to read the signs in French… Anyway, we made it on our train just fine, and I just kept saying, “Oh, thank you, Lord!” over and over. I have NO idea what we would have done if we’d missed our train! Okay, so we took the train into Bayeaux , France , which has to be one of the – if not THE – most picturesque towns in history. They have a chapel in the center of town (also called Notre Dame, actually) that was built 100 years before the Notre Dame in Paris . Oh, it was beautiful there. I felt like we’d stepped back in time. We ate our picnic lunch there, walked around a bit, and then met our tour group. Our tour guide (her name was Rose) was born and raised in Bayeaux. She was wonderful.

First, we went to Pont du Hoc. Obviously, the full history of this place is pretty long… but the VERY condensed version is that the Germans had set up fortifications atop this cliff overlooking the sea. There were big machine guns and bunkers and such. Well, the American planes bombed the shnikey out of Pont du Hoc… and then a very brave group of American Rangers scaled the cliff and overtook the German soldiers who were still there. (As it turned out, the German guns had been moved a mile away. They were found later.) Anyway, the pictures of the “after” of this place are incredible – it looks like Swiss cheese. For whatever reason, the craters were never filled in, so it’s now just this huge Swiss-cheese-looking field atop a cliff.

Then we went to Omaha Beach itself. Honestly, I don’t even think I’d ever seen pictures of Omaha Beach other than during the D-Day invasions. During those days, it was foggy and rainy… and men were dying and guns were firing… and there was pain and fear and sadness and anger… and in my head, the entire day is gray. The men are gray, the ground is gray, the sky is gray. In real life, though, Omaha Beach is simply beautiful. The colors are so vivid that it looks like they were photoshopped… but they are really just that color. It is so sad to think of how many men gave their lives on that beach… and it seems almost impossible that that gray, gray day happened here.

After that, we went to the American Cemetery . I’m almost at a loss for words in describing it. It’s immaculately manicured, and there is an unparalleled degree of uniformity and perfection… and it’s also much more emotional than I’d thought it would be. The way the cemetery sits at the top of the cliff, overlooking the very beaches where some of those men gave their lives… It’s humbling and sobering and somewhere between ironic and noble. I was blown away by the number of crosses that read “Here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms, known but to God.” Our guide told us that only 40% of the American soldiers that gave their lives in the D-Day invasions and related operations. For the other 60%, their families elected to have them brought back home and buried here. There is also a huge wall of names of people that were never found after the wars.

We went from there to some German armaments where the guns are still in place (although obviously not functioning). We also drove through a town that was pretty damaged during the war. They’ve since rebuilt, but there were before/after pictures. I kind of wish I could have/would have videoed everything she said. I hate that there are already some things I can’t remember. I need to watch Saving Private Ryan and The Longest Day and some of those kinds of movies now… because, strangely enough, I’ve actually visited those places in real life.