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A little catching up from our first week in France.
After dropping the car in Ashford, the stop for the high speed Eurostar, we dove under the Channel in the “Chunnel” through Northern France to Paris, Gare du Nord. There we picked up another car, this time from Europcar and headed back out of town to cover the beaches and towns from Dieppe all the way to Mount St. Michel.
Sharon got us through the Paris part with her schoolgirl French and the good people of Paris loved her for it. Then she did an excellent job of navigating us through the Paris traffic to the open roads outside. The drive through the countryside was interesting, mostly agricultural with huge stone farmhouses. Really pretty scenery.
Our first night was in a hotel in Dieppe, we were surprised first of all to find a room, a nice clean one with all the things one needs in a hotel and at an excellent price. They were having a regatta in the harbour a sailboat race from port to port along the coast and the town was packed with sailors, support crews and spectators, all having fun. Plenty of tents along the harbour selling all kinds of sailing gear and clothing.
Dining out at a harbour café and sitting outside was the beginning of our French experience, Then dinner itself was another surprise. Sharon ordered a crepe!!!! And I thought I’d ordered a sandwich. Turned out Sharon had a toasted cheese sandwich while I receive a huge pan of freshly steamed mussels in a curry broth with a basket of bread and a salad and french fries. We had to laugh and the waitress realized what we’d done as well and came over to laugh with us and brought us a carafe of excellent white wine. Dinner wasn’t what we thought we were going to get but it really was excellent.
Canadian forces landed here in an ill-conceived attack on the town in 1942. Why? It was premature, not well planned and it seemed, no exit strategy. We lost a lot of good men seemingly for naught.
D-DAY 6th OF JUNE 1944
Next day took us to the North of Caen to the Eastern end of the Normandy D-Day invasion area. Over the years I’ve read, watched and listened to the stories of D-Day. A lot of my instructors from the Paras were there. I know who landed on which beach and I especially knew where the airborne landings took place so I was prepared for the experience of ‘being there.’ I hadn’t realized how it would get to me emotionally though.
WE KIDS KNEW!I don’t know why Hitler and his underlings didn’t know it was coming but we did. I was a streetwise Liverpool kid of 6 when we got the official news of the invasion. It was a family thing to all get together in the evening for the BBC News, Mainly for the shipping forecast, I had a lot of relatives in the merchant navy and BBC read the names of the ships that had been torpedoed. That’s when we heard official news of the landings but as I said, our gang already knew and it was common knowledge in school, why?
The Tanks!
Just down our road is the Aintree Race Course, it’s where they run the biggest steeplechase, the Grand National. The racing had been put on hold of course so we could concentrate on things like the war. Over the previous months the infield had been getting filled with lines upon lines of Sherman tanks on trailers, hundreds, possibly thousands of them. Then around the last of May and beginning of June we started noticing that they were going, lines of them each night. We’d already heard from family and friends that no civilian transport was allowed on the roads at night and that trains were reserved strictly for military use. Everything was being transported down to staging areas near the ports on the South. The logistics must have been staggering.
RANVILLE
Ranville and Pegasus Bridge where our destinations of the day and Sharon’s trusty map brought us into the town of Ranville to the crossroads. We looked around to see which way to go and I noticed the name of the street opposite “Rue des Airbornes”. Now there’s a definite clue!
Ranville to me is the epicenter of the landings, so many of my instructors and friends landed in that area and Ranville was the name of my barracks when I joined the Parachute Regiment. The two of the main battalions who landed there where the 12th (Yorkshire boys) and the 13th (Lancashire) with a huge contingent of Liverpool lads in the 13th , my old outfit.
The phone box was from Lancaster, England.
At the top of the Avenue is the church and immaculate cemetery with memorials to all who fell there, some from the first night and some in the month following prior to the ‘breakout’. It saw some of the heaviest fighting in Normandy, the German’s realizing how important that part of the battlefield was, the Eastern anchor on which the advance pivoted. Ranville was the first town in France freed from Nazi occupation.
I opened the cemetery gates under the archway and walked on in to see the markers, when reading some of the stones and seeing how old these boys were I became a little emotional. The average age would be 19 or 20, some even younger. When I was walking out to the gate, a man who was working on the grounds arrived there before me and asked if I’d like to see and add to the journals that where there, They were enclosed in a cubby hole with a brass door incorporated in the gate archway. Then left me alone with them. Some people had spent time writing some wonderful words, some poetry and some just signed the book. Reading that made more than a little emotional. I added my words, put the books away and walked out to thank the Frenchman. He said, “No, we thank you!”
PEGASUS BRIDGEAlso in that area are the bridges over the River Orne and Caen Canal
that were vital to the attack and had to be captured. It’s been well documented in books and in the movie “The Longest Day” where a force of airborne glider troops, men of the Ox and Bucks regiment, lead by Major Howard landed almost on the bridge and made a start the war in Europe there, they captured it and held it until a force of British Commandoes lead by Lord Lovat fought their way in from the beaches with bagpipes playing, to relieve them.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,852030,00.html
The bridge
Horsa glider.
CAFE GONDREEAnother interesting side story came from here, the first house by the bridge in the village of Benoueville was taken by the airborne forces at that time and a young lady, perhaps my age, Arlette Gondree, became possibly the first Free French Citizen that night. That house is now a café owned and operated by that same young lady and her family. The Café Gondree.
Over the years the Café has become a place of pilgrimage for members of the airborne and their families to meet. There’s an excellent museum across the road next to the bridge that tells the whole story with movies and an excellent lecture over a diorama. A lot of the original equipment, including a Horsa glider and weapons used by both sides are on display. The café is as much a museum in it’s own rite, seems almost everyone who visits leaves a memento there and in June they come by the busload, some as part of a unit returning to see the area they fought over and visit friends who didn‘t return home.
They do serve a nice lunch and beer.
We stopped a nice break here, had a sandwich and a glass of beer at the café, Sharon even bought me the Pegasus tee-shirt. I really enjoyed a chat with Madame Arlette Gondree, she makes it her part in life to greet everybody who visits. She knows every unit, where they came from and where they where deployed. I said I was with the 13th and she looked at me skeptically until I said “Much later.”
The Cafe Gondree and Madame Arlette Gondree.
Lovely, classy, lady.
ARROMANCHESWe drove father West along the invasion beaches, Gold, Juno and Sword. Where the British, Canadian and French troops landed. Saw the ‘Casino” where the French Commandos had a small but intense firefight and passed a surprising number of museums, every little place along the invasion route had their museum and proud of it.
In front of the museum at Arromanches.
We stopped at the small town of Arromanches, perhaps the most important town of the invasion. It was here that they built Port Churchill and two Mulberries Piers. They were actually built in Southern England one by the Brits and one by the Yanks and towed across the channel as soon as the beaches were secured. It was a massive undertaking for a massive operation, There wouldn’t be another place or way to land men and the tons of equipment (and those tanks!) needed to take the war to Germany until we captured the port at Antwerp. The two long prefabricated piers stretching out into the channel ready to dock ships and land their cargos.
There are remains left on the beaches today. The years and the storms have divided them back into sections. Just up from the beach is another, very well done museum.
The beaches today with holidaymakers and the remains of the harbour in the foreground and on the horizon.
My interest there is of a more personal nature. My favorite uncle and friend, John Kelly, landed there, driving off his (LCT) ship on D+4. He went from there the River Elbe in Germany and to VE Day. I was the only one he ever told any of his “war stories” to. Spending a year with the 23rd Hussars, a tank regiment, driving ‘Gerry’ back home. Getting into fierce tank battles and being involved in The Battle of the Bulge, wasn’t all fun and games. He did come home to marry my mum’s sister, my favorite Aunt, Margie. She was an anti-aircraft gunner and had her own stories.
Margie and John and their kids, my cousins - we’re the ones who drove down to Spain together with us. (See “Finding Yvette”).
That night we found a farmhouse that did B&B, there were 3 couples staying that night, two from Germany and us. I guess it’s part of their history too. We described that stay in the 17th century farmhouse in an earlier chapter.
Next day we looked at the American beaches of Utah and of course Omaha. Enough has been said about Omaha over the years by better writers than me. Suffice to say, it didn’t look like a place that I’d want to land, especially when you stand at those gun emplacements and look down at the beach below. The walk out onto Point Du Hoc was an eye opener, how those US troops got up there and took it is just amazing. The whole area is a mass of overlapping bomb craters and broken concrete but the big gun emplacements are still there.
The early hours of June 6 brought in US special forces troops who had trained for this attack. The Rangers had to fire grappling hooks up with ropes attached to scale the steep cliffs all the while under constant fire from Gerry. Their job was to capture and disable the big guns there before they could train on the fleet of ships and the invading troops going ashore. What was left of the men did their job well, they took the area and the gun emplacements.
It was a crying crying shame though, when they found that there where no guns in place in June 1944.
Gun emplacement Point du Hoc.
With mixed emotions we turned southwest and onto the road to Mount St Michel.
PS. We were wandering a flea market in Perpignan in the south of France when Sharon found the bottle stoppers that she'd been looking for from a vendor with a Yorkshire accent. We chatted for a while and he commented on my Pegasus tee-shirt and said his father and 4 companions are on record as being the first to land in Normandy on June 5th as pathfinders for the airborne troops following. There's a poster up in one of the museums with their photos on.
The world gets smaller.
Me, much later in Cyprus.
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