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.
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.
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