Today’s featured photo shows the Les Braves D-Day memorial sculpture at Omaha Beach in Vierville-sur-Mer. The metal sculpture was created by the French artist Anilore Banon in 2004 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings. The sculpture was only intended to be temporary but it has remained here ever since. Nowhere else during D-Day did the Allied forces suffer as many casualties than as happened here on Omaha Beach. In the first 3 hours of the landing, there were an estimated 3,000 injured and dead American soldiers lying scattered all over this beach and by the end of the day, over 4,000 American troops had been killed or injured. Some units lost over 90% of their men and such was the German resistance, that it would take a whole week to fully secure the area around the beach. It must have been difficult for Anilore Banon to capture the horror of what happened to the American troops here on Omaha Beach on June 6th 1944. This stainless steel sculpture with its sharp edges and chaotic layout certainly hints at the terror that unfolded that day. There are a lot of memorials in Normandy to D-Day but this sculpture is by far the most poignant.
Total cycled today – 120 km Total cycled so far – 1895 km. I originally only planned to cycle 60 km today as far as Vierville-sur-Mer before going to Quineville on Wednesday and Cherbourg on Thursday. But I had tried to book a Stena Line ferry from Cherbourg to Rosslare in Ireland for Friday, only to discover that the sailing was booked up. Stena Line had spaces available on the Wednesday sailing so I decided to try and get to Cherbourg on Wednesday morning and get the sailing at 21.00 that evening. But this meant I had to cycle an extra 60 km on Tuesday, which was double what I had originally planned. However, my change of plan meant I would end up visiting all 5 D-Day beaches in one day which gave me an incredible insight into the sheer scale of the Allied operation on that historic day, over 70 years ago.
The beach at Collevillette was part of Sword Beach during the D-Day Landings and the town was one of the first liberated in France during World War 2. Almost 30.000 men were landed on Sword Beach on June the 6th and the British forces suffered roughly 700 casualties. The main objective for the troops landing on Sword Beach on June 6th was to capture Caen, 15 km away but the British forces only managed to advance about 3 km during the first week of Operation Overlord. It would be another 6 weeks before Caen was finally captured.
The British and Canadian beaches were named after fish. Gold was short for Goldfish and Sword for Swordfish. Juno Beach was originally called Jelly Beach after Jellyfish but Churchill changed the name to Juno as he didn’t want British troops to die on Jelly Beach. Mystery has always surrounded the code names for the American beaches but they may have been named after 2 carpenters who worked for General Omar Bradley. One of the carpenters, Gayle Eyler was from Omaha, Nebraska and his mate “Sam” was from Provo, Utah. The 2 carpenters were working on the US Army headquarters in London when one morning in March 1944 they had coffee with General Bradley, Eisenhower and some other American officers planning the D-Day invasion. General Bradley asked the carpenters where they were from and may then have used the men’s hometowns of Omaha and Utah as code-names for the beaches. The story only came to light when Eyler died in 2003 and because General Bradley had died in 1981, it could not be corroborated. But most US Army historians accept Eyler’s story as plausible as code names were often chosen at random and as there are no beaches in either Omaha or Utah, the names were ideal for confusing the Germans if they intercepted any messages referring to the Normandy invasion. The code names Omaha and Utah were first referred to in a memo issued by General Bradley on March 3rd 1944 so it is quite possible that Bradley’s innocuous chat with his 2 carpenters resulted in their hometown’s being used to name the beaches.
They are big into sailing in France and here at Luc-sur-Mer, you can sign up for sailing lessons at the local yacht club. Light tractors and trailers are used to transport boats and they are a common sight in this part of Normandy. This beach was part of the Sword Beach during D-Day and as it was only lightly defended, the British forces who landed here suffered relatively few casualties. The tide was mostly out when I took this photo so the beach looked like it would have on the morning of D-Day but as the day went on, the tide came in more and more so by the time I got to Omaha Beach, it was more or less high tide and you could only see a small part of the beach.
The beach here at Saint Ambin-sur-Mer was officially part of Sword Beach and the town was supposed to be captured by British forces. But most of the British forces landed much further east near Hermanville and the town of Saint Aubin was actually captured by Canadian troops who had landed at the nearby Juno Beach.
Compared to some other beaches, the 8 km long stretch of coastline known as Juno Beach was captured by Canadian, British and Free French forces with relatively few casualties. The main target for the troops on Juno Beach was Carpiquet airfield, near Caen , which was 18 km inland. However, the Allied forces only managed to advance about 3 km inland on D-Day before being pushed back by a German counter-attack.
This Churchill Mk IV AVRE (Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers) tank was a obstacle-clearance tank, which landed on the morning of D-Day on Juno Beach. It sank into a 4 m deep bomb crater and four members of its 6 man crew were killed by German gun fire as they tried to escape. The other two were seriously injured and had to be evacuated later in the day. It remained buried for 32 years but in 1976, a team of British Army soldiers extracted the Churchill AVRE tank from its wartime grave. The two surviving members of the tank crew were present when it was lifted back onto the beach and once it had been restored, it was erected on a concrete plinth. It is situated only a few yards from the flooded bomb crater where it had been buried for 32 years.
The plaque says ” On this spot, a 900m long floating harbour was built and it was used to land 220,000 men and 40,000 vehicles in 4 months following D-Day.” The floating harbours were known as Mulberry harbours and were mostly constructed in a huge dry dock in Southampton from pre-cast concrete. Each section of the Mulberry harbour was brought across the Channel on the days after D-Day and the harbour here at Arromanches was operational by mid-June. Another Mulberry harbour was constructed at Omaha Beach by American forces but a severe storm on 19 June destroyed the Omaha harbour. The Mulberry harbour at Arromanches was also damaged by the same storm but was repaired soon afterwards.
The Mulberry harbour in Arromanches was christened Port Winston and remained in use for the next ten months, with a maximum capacity of 7,000 tons of supplies per day. Of the British supplies landed in Normandy by the end of August, 35% arrived via the Mulberry harbour at Arromanches. Most shipments were actually brought in over the beaches until the port of Cherbourg was cleared of mines and obstructions on 16 July. After Antwerp harbour in Belgium was captured in late 1944, most supplies to the British Army came through there and the Mulberry harbour in Arromanches was abandoned in April 1945.
The Arromanches 360 museum is a circular cinema which shows footage from the D-Day landings on 9 huge screens. Unlike a normal cinema, the 9 screens form a circle around you as you stand in the middle of the auditorium. The effect gives you a panoramic view of the battlefield but visitors have commented that it can be difficult to know where to look as the action unfolds all around you. Outside the cinema, there is a viewing platform which was crowded with tourists when I passed by.
The morning of June 6th 1944 was dull and overcast a bit like the weather today in Normandy. While the town of Arromanches itself was thronged with people, the beaches were mostly deserted. Debarquement is the French word for “landing” and there is a huge museum called the Musee du Debarquement dedicated to the D-Day landings in the town. The museum opened in 1954 and averages 300,000 visitors a year. It was the first D-Day museum to open in Normandy after World War 2 and it remains one of the most popular museums in the region to this day.
This is the Notre-Dame de l’Assomption de Colleville church, which dates from the 13th Century. The church was badly destroyed during the D-Day landings and there is a huge poster outside the church showing how it looked during World War 2.
The church was probably targeted by Allied bombers in case it would be used by German troops as a lookout post. But like many damaged structures, it was rebuilt after the war though if you look closely you can make out that on some sections of the church, the stone is not as weathered as in other places.
This cemetery has over 9,000 graves and was the first American cemetery created in Europe in World War 2. Two sons of former American president, Teddy Roosevelt are buried here as are the 2 Niland brothers, whose story was adapted by Steven Ambrose for his book “Saving Private Ryan”. This cemetery featured in the Steven Spielberg movie of the same name at the start and end of the film. However, most of that movie was filmed in Ireland and the UK and the only scenes shot in France were here at the American cemetery in Colleville sur Mer. Interestingly, this grave has only 300 unknown soldiers. A similar sized cemetery in the Somme from World War 1 would have maybe as many as 6,000 unknown soldiers.
There were numerous anti-tank obstacles on the beach and these are clearly shown in the above screenshot from Steven Spielberg’s movie. There were 4 different types of anti-tank obstacles on Omaha Beach butt the most common were called Czech hedgehogs. A Czech hedgehog was an anti-tank obstacle made of three pieces of iron, with notches for barbed wire. Typically, they weighed about 200 kg, but lighter makeshift hedgehogs were made out of anything that could withstand a head-on collision with a tank. However, their main purpose wasn’t to block tanks – it was to get stuck underneath them, preventing the tank from moving anywhere at all. They were also designed to ensnare landing craft but as the D-Day landings coincided with low tide , no landing craft were damaged by the Czech hedgehogs during the initial assault.
Casualties on Omaha Beach among the infantry troops during the first landing averaged 25% though one American unit suffered 92% casualties. The worst casualties were on a section of Omaha Beach known as Dog Green which was overlooked by a number of what the Germans called Widerstandnetz. Widerstand is the German word for resistance and a Widerstandnetz (WN) was a reinforced concrete bunker with gun emplacements or casemates. There were 15 German Widerstandnetz (No’s 60 -74) along Omaha Beach which were built as part of the Atlantic Wall. The Widerstandnetz closest to the beach in the Dog Green section had 2 German casemates and was code-named WN-72.
You can clearly see the two German casemates at each end of this concrete bunker, which was dubbed WN-72, in the above photo. Most of the Widerstandnetz here were located in the hills overlooking Omaha Beach and WN-72 was the only one built on the beach. The WN-72 casemate on the left has been topped by a National Monument but the one on the right is more or less as it was in 1944. The tide in this photo is in whereas on D-Day the same view would have been off a sandy beach with very little cover from the German troops in the casemates and in the hills behind them. At least 16 tanks were landed on this section of beach but nearly all were knocked out by the anti-tank guns in both these casements and elsewhere. The photo above also shows the main road to Vierville-sur-Mer behind WN-72. On D-Day, this road was known as Dog One exit and it was the main target for the first wave of troops landing on Dog Green.
This photo from behind WN-72 gives you a good idea of the German perspective on D-Day. The German soldiers in this Widerstandnetz must have been terrified as they watched as thousands of American landing craft slowly make their way towards them on the morning of D-Day. The tide is in in this photo whereas on the morning of D-Day the sea would have been at least 100 m and maybe 200 m from the casemate. Some years after the war was over, a National Guard monument was placed on top of the eastern casemate and there is a statue of an American soldier dragging his comrade off the beach beside it. A plaque beside the statue states “In commemoration of the determined efforts by the soldiers of the 29th Division’s 116th Infantry Regimental Combat Team who landed the morning of June 6, 1944 on this section of Omaha Beach, known as Exit D-1, to open the Vierville road behind you to begin the liberation of Europe.”
Half an hour after the first landing, the second and larger wave of landings started at 07:00 only to face the same difficulties as the earlier assault. Failure to clear enough paths through the beach obstacles meant that in places, the fresh landing troops suffered casualty rates as high as those of the first wave. In addition, the incoming tide was beginning to hide the remaining obstacles, causing high attrition among the landing craft before they had reached the shore. The situation was so critical that around 08:30, Allied commanders suspended all such landings and this caused a jam of landing craft out at sea. General Bradley, on the destroyer USS Augusta in the middle of the English Channel, considered abandoning Omaha Beach and transferring all his remaining troops to Utah. However, around mid-day the battle on Omaha Beach began to turn the Allies way as some of the troops managed to make their way off the beaches and they were then able to attack the German defenses from the rear.
An accurate figure for casualties incurred by American troops at Omaha on 6 June is not known; sources vary between 2,000 and 4,700 killed, wounded, and missing. The German defenders suffered 1,200 killed, wounded and missing; about 20% of their strength. I still don’t understand why a landing on Omaha Beach wasn’t attempted an hour earlier when it would have been dark. Also why no paratroopers were landed near to the beach to attack the Germans from behind. Thousands of paratroopers were landed that night elsewhere in Normandy to attack targets further inland. Why no paratroopers were dispatched to attack the beaches after the naval bombardment, I have no idea.
You can see from the above map that a lot less territory was captured at Omaha Beach on D-Day than at the other beaches. Despite landing over a hundred thousand men on D-Day, the Allies controlled only a small sliver of the coastline by midnight on the first day of Operation Overlord. It would be almost another 2 months before the Allied troops conquered all the territory in northern Normandy shown in the above map. But once Allied forces broke out from Normandy, within another 2 months, they would make it all the way across France to the German border.
The idea for a route to mark the liberation of French towns by the US Third Army was first proposed in 1946 by Guy de la Vaisselle, who had been General Patton’s French liason officer. The Liberty Road route was officially inaugurated in September 1947 and passes through the small town of Saint Symphorien near Chartres where Guy had been elected mayor. The route originally started in Sainte Mere Eglise and ended in Bastogne in Belgium but over the years other towns and landmarks such as Utah Beach have been added to it.
This museum overlooks the main road to Carentan as well as 2 other roads to the north and was heavily reinforced by German troops after D-Day. The first American tank to approach this house was destroyed by a direct hit. The body of the tank commander, Lt Anderson, remained sitting in the tank’s turret for a number of hours afterwards and the sight of his dead body gave rise to the nickname “Dead Man’s Corner”. The house was eventually captured on June 7th after German troops suffered heavy losses from aerial bombardment. Over 100 Germans were killed at this strategic location before the German paratrooper battalion defending it surrendered to the Americans. After the war, the house was re-built and turned into a museum with German memorabilia on the first floor and American memorabilia on the 2nd floor. Recently, a bigger museum has been constructed beside the original Dead Man’s Corner museum and there were a lot of tourists about as I cycled past.
The “Voie de la Liberte” goes all the way from here to Bastogne in Belgium for a total distance of 1,145 km. Officially, the “Voie de la Liberte” starts 10 km away in the town of Sainte Mere Eglise where American paratroopers landed around midnight on D-Day. However, a spur has been added to the Liberty Road which starts here at Utah Beach. Between Carentan and Utah Beach, I had passed one of these milestone markers called “Borne” every kilometer eventhough this stretch is not on the official route. This borne is officially Borne 00 whereas the Borne in Sainte Mere Eglise is officially Borne 0. Where Jason Borne is located, I have no idea and I don’t think the CIA know either.
This memorial is located about 2 km from the main American memorial for Utah Beach. Despite the American flag, this is predominately a French memorial and commemorates the French 2nd Division who were transferred from Africa to Normandy a month after D-Day and who landed here on the 1st August 1944. This division commanded by General Leclerc would go onto liberate Paris on August the 25th. I think this memorial was installed in time for the 70th anniversary of the French 2nd Division landing in 2014, which was attended by hundreds of veterans from WW2.
Tour de Travoy 