Paris

Well, what does one do in Paris when you have just one afternoon?  The plan had been for more time but the trains from Cherbourg were delayed so it was after lunch by the time everything was settled in the hotel.
As one might expect having looked at history, specifically military history for two weeks, it was time to make a beeline for Les Invalides.  Everyone was out in the amazing Parisian weather and there was quite a crowd on the Champs de Elysse.  There was time to walk past the Arc de Triomphe but I thought Les Invalides would be a bit less crowded and would avoid the worst of the tourists including the American college kids who stopped to ask what direction they should go in to find "that Arch thing on the Champs de Elysse - where you go shopping.".

I was last in Les Invalides about 25 years ago but this time after the previous two weeks, I thoroughly enjoyed the rooms of medieval armor, the French description of Agincourt (which don't quite match those I learned in my history class), and their display on the two world wars.  Curiously, they start the clock in 1871 with the Bismarck invasion of Paris.
Finishing up with the stop at Napoleon's tomb, I kept thinking, "they know he lost, right?" The grandeur and total over the top of all that marble never ceases to amaze me for a defeated leader.
The walk to Le Tour Eiffle from the tomb is not bad, again crowded with Parisians as well as tourists because of the nice weather.  Then it was time to return to the hotel for the final packing and back to the states where I cannot wait to add pictures to this amazing trip.  Thanks for reading!

Au revoir Normandie

Not quite ready to leave this lovely region.  Watched a final sunset from the Ducal castle where monuments to honor the 900th anniversary sit next to those honoring the Canadian liberators.  As the sun went down the EU flag was flying over the castle.  It's own testament to peace and one of the phrases in the Canadian garden at the Caen museum came to mind, "Nulla Dies Umquam Memori, vos Eximet Aevo" - No day will ever erase you from the memory of time.

de Memoriale du Caen

Caen is a new city and I don't mean in a good way.  That is what happens when a war takes place all around you and something like 75% of your city is utterly completely leveled.  The Caen Memoriale is at the other end of the city from the hotel so the walk through the city gave plenty of time to look at architecture, all of which lends itself to a utilitarian look - the sort of thing you would build when your people need shelter.  In some places bricks from the rubble were used to rebuild to add some character and you can see where extra cement was used to even out the bricks but that is what passes for creative design in this town - a stark reminder of war's destruction.
There are a couple of pretty parks in the city and you cross one, going up and over a highway to get to the Memoriale.  

This museum calls itself a museum for peace and was funded by all the major and many of the minor participants in the war - including the Russians and the Germans.  They tell you to plan on spending 3-4 hours there but you could easily spend double that as they take the visitor through all the major events leading up to WWII and then the war itself.  The story is told with no emotion, just the facts, leaving the visitor to judge as it covers events like the bombing of London and the bombing of Dresden equally.
The second part of the museum is devoted to the battle of Normandy and one learns that Eisenhower expected the battle for the beaches to be tougher than it was (Omaha being the exception) but that he then planned for a relatively easy fight in from the coast.   Of course the opposite happened and it took 100 days to loosen the German grip on this part of France.
The museum also touches on the Cold War and how close the world came to WWIII and makes a plea for peace.
Finally, the museum was built over the German HQ bunker in Caen.  You have to cross a man made military bridge to get to the bunker and when you tour that are you  see the maps and radio gear that made it so hard to move the Germans from this city.

Outside the museum, the US, Canada, Brits and French have built gardens - the British is the prettiest - honoring the many different military branches and part of Great Britain who fought.  The American garden is interesting because the various states donated stones to the monument.

After a visit to the Allied gardens outside the museum, it was time to walk down to the City Hall near the Abbey des Hommes to get see the local exhibit on the "Ete du 1944", the summer of 1944 where the battle of Normandy is told from the civilian point of view, living with the bombing and deprivation waiting for the Allies and finally seeing the Canadians enter the city.

Best military museum-ever

This morning, St. Mere Eglise was number one on the to do list.  I have wanted to see the town and the church since I heard the stories when Reagan visited here for the 40th anniversary.  For those of you not familiar with D-Day geography, Omaha, Gold, Sword and Juno are relatively near each other.  You could start at Pont du Hoc and walk east crossing all of them, if the tide was with you.  It would be a long walk but in distance just under a marathon. The maps supplied in the Caen tourist office when you ask to tour the beaches basically stop at Pont Du Hoc.
Utah is much further west on the Cotentin peninsula.  This spot was chosen - late in the D-Day planning to widen operations from 25 miles to 50 miles and to allow for a quicker capture of Cherbourg - a natural port.  As you recall from the entries on Arromanches, the Allies built their own ports along this part of the French coast - they wanted access to Cherbourg's port.   The morning drive was  highway past the sites visited yesterday and then on for another +30 kilometers.  The stupid GPS did not register the town or the museum but thankfully as it is one of the most visited by American's touring the beaches, the French government has added many signs once you get on the Cotentin.
Despite the early hour, the parking lot was crowded and as the museum was not yet open, everyone was crowded around the church, looking up.  The church at SME is known for the parachute and the dummy hanging from it's steeple.  While in other places this might be campy, here it is homage to John Steele who got tangled in the steeple in the early hours of June 6th and played dead for a couple hours before being imprisoned by the Germans.  Despite being injured, after a few hours in German custody, he managed to escape and return to Allied lines.
As mentioned, SME is situated near the highway, the N13, control of which was important on D-Day. The highway would be the main resupply route for the Germans and the Allies wanted to prevent that from happening.  13,000 US and British paratroopers blanketed the area.  Unfortunately there was a fire in SME that night so the sky was illuminated and the attack was not a complete surprise.  Once the paratroopers landed, they were in the dark and used a little metal clicker that sounds like a Cricket to find each other in the dark.  Inside the church are a couple of stained class windows honoring the paratroopers, one their returning to visit after the war and the second honoring those who perished.

The town also has a paratrooper museum where they have preserved the gliders, planes and tanks from the battles around their town as well as memorabilia from the days when the American stayed their to continue the fight.  There are even baseball uniforms from a military team and a wedding dress made out of a parachute.

The really amazing part of the exhibit is a simulator where the visitor starts in an airplane, much noisier than flying commercial now, and then "jumps" to a glass floor where you see what the paratroopers would have seen, the town far below, lights flashing showing other parachutes and listening still to the loud plans, then you land and they take you through the darkness where there is the noise of the cricket clicker that was used to distinguish friend from foe.  You come out into the daylight and a military hospital set up and finish up in a room where they pay homage to those who did not make it.  They also have the handmade packets that the French women made to collect the dirt at a burial site.   The dead were originally buried where they fell - they were later either moved to Colesville or returned to the US for burial there.   If the body stayed in France, the French made a little packet with the dirt from the burial site to be sent back to the family in the states.

They also have a moving film about how the French lived under the occupation and were made to flood some open fields near marshes and put spikes in others as a way of making an invasion more difficult and more costly.  Then you finish up in a room that has photos of those who lost their lives. After the noise of the previous rooms, it has quiet music an makes you realize the cost.
The paratroopers held out until June 7th when they were relieved by those moving in from Utah.

Utah is a bit of a drive from SME and along the way there are many markers honoring individual soldiers who were killed in the area.  There also are monuments honoring the Belgian forces and the 800 Danish troops who saw action at the beach.

Unfortunately the tide at Utah beach was pretty high so it was hard to get a feeling for the
great naval battle that took place.  The Utah memorials were overwhelmingly dedicated to the naval forces.  As the battle is proclaimed as a great naval invasion - naval bombardment followed by four waves of amphibious landings.  On June 6th the tide actually drifted the first landing craft east but when General Theodore Roosevelt (son of President Teddy Roosevelt and cousin of FDR)  realized it, he famously said,  "we will start the war from here."  So they did and less than a year letter Germany would surrender.

The rest of the day was spent driving the British and Canadian beaches; Gold, Sword and Juno.  These areas have been reclaimed by the civil population and now are neat beach communities.  Looking carefully though in between the sunbathers and pleasure boats you find some unique memorials, honoring the first house reclaimed for the liberation by the Canadians, the beach vists by Churchill, DeGaulle and George VI and still the remains of more German bunkers.  There also is a memorial to bicycles as you can see in photos from the time that the Army invaded ready to use bikes as a means of transportation through the region.  All of these memorials are a reminder that the freedoms of those who walk the beach today were not free.