Saturday, July 4
Today is a “free day.” That is, we had no planned group activities. We’d have the whole day to explore Honfleur. Genae and I had very few ideas of how to spend the time. So far, the only thing we’d come up with was to take a boat tour that would get us a good look at the Pont du Normandie. That would take us an hour.
As it turned out, though, we weren’t the only couple who felt rushed or short-changed on our visit to the invasion beaches on Tuesday. Someone requested a car and driver to take them back there on our free day. Word spread, and in the end thirteen of us split the cost of a small bus with a driver for a return trip there. The plan was to mount our own invasion of Utah Beach with a return to Omaha to visit the museum there.
The weather was fine, scattered clouds in blue skies. We arrived at Utah fairly quickly, using the highway that runs a few miles inland rather than the narrow roads and streets right adjacent to the beach, as we did earlier at Juno, Sword, and Gold beaches.
I don’t know for sure that it was low tide, but the water was a few hundred yards out from the dry sands. I walked as far out as I could without getting into the puddles about halfway between the sea and the dry sand. Here we encountered some harness racers. That is, trotting horses pulling 2-wheeled carts called “sulkies”. Most of them were running over the damp sand, but one was out in the water almost to the horse’s belly.
The museum here concentrates, as one might guess, on Utah Beach. There are a couple of landing craft on display, and one of only six surviving B-26 Marauders (the only one outside of America, on loan from the Bourget Air & Space Museum). There’s an exhibit dedicated to Easy Company’s attack on the German artillery position at Brecourt Manor, depicted in the second episode of Band of Brothers.
Done at Utah Beach, it was getting on lunchtime. Rather than trying to find a restaurant that could seat and feed us in a reasonable time, we stopped at a boulangerie, and Rainer bought their supply of ready-made sandwiches. We had a choice of four different kinds, each made of a baguette with meat and cheese. I had the camembert with ham. The bread was delicious. And each sandwich was less than 4€, a bargain. We munched lunch on the bus on the way to Omaha.
Our tour coordinator, Rainer, who accompanied us on our “free day” trip and speaks six languages, for some reason struggles to say “Omaha”. It comes out “ohama”. After three or four attempts, he gets it. It is a source of amusement, not ridicule. A few folks kept saying, “Peyton Manning!” C’mon, people. Why would Europeans know who Peyton Manning is, or why he says “Omaha” so much?
At Omaha Beach, we visited the memorial on the beach before going to the Omaha Museum. “The Brave” was dedicated on June 6, 2004. People like to stand right next to it for photos, even though there’s a sign there saying to stay 3 meters away. I didn’t get any closer than that, but I can understand that most folks didn’t see the sign. I didn’t until Genae pointed it out to me.
Onward: up the beach exit road to the Omaha Beach Memorial Museum. I can hear you asking, “C’mon, Dave, another museum? How many D-Day museums are necessary?” That’s a fair question. The museums in the area are focused on events that happened in the immediate area, rather than covering the whole conflict. Aside from the historical differences at the beaches, each museum has a unique way of presenting things. The Omaha museum has a number of large dioramas demonstrating the equipment used by both sides. In addition, Omaha has a vast quantity of artifacts found in the area, both excavated from the land and found in the sea.
Every town in the area seems to have a Sherman tank parked in the town square or in the center of a traffic circle. There’s one in the parking lot of the Omaha museum. Both of today’s museums also had examples of German side arms, rifles, machine guns, and light artillery. No German tanks, though – no doubt they were all destroyed in combat. The Shermans are everywhere, though. We made nearly 50,000 of that single tank model, which is about the same as all German tank models combined.
Our second day at the beaches made up for the disappointment of Tuesday. We enjoyed our visit to the chateau and the apple farm and the rest, but our prime reason for going on this trip was to see the invasion beaches. This second day there made up for the shortfall. It was a good day.
We finished the day with the whole group over drinks, then our last group meal. Rainer was thoughtful enough to ask the restaurant if Genae could have a chicken dinner instead of the salmon. After dinner, Genae and I went in search of ice cream. We found some. My doctor won’t be happy with my next A1C results, I’m guessing.
