Friday, July 4: France, Ouisterchamp to Omaha Beach

Jack thinks it would be appropriate to be at Omaha Beach for the 4^th of July. We drove west along the coast through lots of little villages, many homes and businesses have all the Allied Flags displayed.

Typical road through a small village

One of the remnants in the harbor used to make a temporary marina

 We stopped at the bluff overlooking Gold Beach (British invasion) and the town of Arromanches where Port Winston was built. Port Winston was one of two artificial marinas that were built (the other at Omaha Beach, but was destroyed in a storm shortly after D-Day) to move men and materiel after the initial invasion. The concrete pilings are still there that they used to build bridges upon to bring everything into shore. The two harbors handled 2.5 million men, 44 million tons of equipment and 500,000 vehicles. Hard to fathom the sheer magnitude and volume that the logistics folks had to manage.

We stopped to view a film in the round that used photos and film clips from the invasion.

We continued along the coast to Omaha Beach – a wide sandy beach with quite a few folks enjoying the surf and sun along with a few large homes facing the sea.

While driving to Omaha Beach, we came across these folks, apparently a D-Day tour.

 

Omaha Beach

We stayed at a private campground overlooking the western part of Omaha Beach. Clouds and rain moved in overnight.

Happy 4^th – very poignant to be here today where so many lives were lost defending our freedom.