Saturday, July 5: France, Omaha Beach and the American Cemetery

We drove the few miles from our campground overlooking Omaha Beach to the American Cemetery high on a bluff. The visitor center was a great museum of the D-Day Invasion. The logistics of moving that many men and materiel over the English Channel is staggering. Omaha Beach was the bloodiest battle of the invasion with over 3,000 Americans killed that day.

 We watched a few film clips, including a really interesting one interviewing Eisenhower worrying about the weather and giving the final go-ahead to Operation Overlord. We were surprised to learn of the extent to which the Allies worked to get the Germans to believe the invasion would be at Calais, the shortest distance across the Chanel. They parachuted fake men made of burlap and sand, parachuted aluminum streamers to make the Germans believe there was a massive air attack and used blow-up balloons that looked like tanks tricking the Germans into thinking there was a whole army readying for the Calais invasion. The original plan called for 3 Army division for D-Day – it ended up being 47 divisions!

The Cemetery overlooks Omaha Beach

Saving Private Ryan (starts with the American Cemetery) and Ken Burns Band of Brothers are two of the best films about D-Day. We will have to watch those again.

The cemetery is large and quite moving to see all those crosses and stars. The dreary skies and threatening rain seemed appropriate. 

Memorial at the American Cemetery

After lunch we drove about 20 minutes south to Bayeux. We wanted to stay at an Aire right in the center of town and of course, the GPS took us down the narrowest streets it could find. Jack almost knocked out a gendarme standing on the sidewalk with our mirrors as we passed. Luckily, the guy he was talking to pulled him away from the curb. After all the stress of traveling through clogged narrow streets, the Aire was completely full. It turns out this weekend is their medieval festival – think Renaissance Festival held throughout a genuine medieval town.

So, on to the municipal campground about 5 minutes away. It began raining and rained steadily all evening, so we did not get into town at all, but decided to stay dry and read tonight.