Because of its location close to both the rivers of the region and the English channel, Caen has been an important city for many years. The city houses the remains of Guillaume le Conquérant, known in English as William the Conqueror. Many historical buildings were built during the period including one of the largest examples of a medieval castle in the world.
Caen was also the sight of a large battle during the initial days of the Normandy invasions. It was a large city, situated at a crossroads and between two rivers, the Orne and the Caen canal. In addition, its open fields surrounding the city proved an excellent site for airfields when contrasted with the hedgerow country that made up much of the rest of the province. The city was fought over in a bloody ordeal lasting several weeks from the initial invasion and destroying the city almost entirely. After an extensive reconstruction period lasting into the sixties, Caen now has the look of a modern French city but a keen observer would notice that nearly none of the structures currently standing were built before the Second World War.
We toured around Caen for much of the morning including stopping by several of the museums in town depicting life in the Normandy region through the years. In the early afternoon we made use of the BusVert system of regional transport busses to make our way out of the city and towards our lodging for the night.
On our way towards the coast from Caen we made a stop in a small town called Bénouville which was home to one of the first battles of the Normandy Invasion. Bénouville is located on a long but narrow strip of land flanked by the Orne river and the Caen canal on each side. Just as in the time of the invasion, the town is home to only one of two crossings of the rivers between Caen and the coast. The rivers divided the entire invasion force from the eastern part of the coast including the Haute-Normandie province with its major troop and armor concentrations guarding the northern France section of the Atlantic Wall.
At midnight before the morning of the invasions British troops landed silently in Horsa gliders in the fields near the bridge. Taking the guarding forces almost completely by surprise, they captured the two river crossings within minutes. Over the coming days, they would have to defend against ground and aerial attacks but did not lose the bridges. The large bridge was nicknamed Pegasus after the emblem of the British airborne. The importance of this objective is hard to understate. In addition to stopping any armor attacks on the Allies’ right flank, the bridge formed the hinge at which the whole invasion force would sweep downward and eastward to reach the Seine and Paris within only a few months.
Today the river is crossed by a modern hydraulic bridge but the actual structure that was fought over in 1944 is in place at a museum just a few hundred yards away. On the banks of the canal is the Café Gondrée, the first building in France to be liberated. The proprietor of the shop was just a young girl when it happened. The museum itself is an extremely well done exposition about the history of the war in France. I was amazed of the scale of the planning that went in to the invasion. Even such a small piece of the battle as the Pegasus Bridge operation was extensively organized for months beforehand.
I was also interested to learn of the entire operation that was meant to deceive the German army that the invasion of France would be to the north at Calais, the port town home to the Chunnel and the shortest distance to England across the channel. Inflatable tanks, dummy troops, plywood bunkers and barracks were all built just across the channel. Double agents were used to send false information and the Ultra code-breaking team gauged how well the information was received by the Axis command. Planes dropped silver tinsel at precisely timed intervals that would trick the primitive radar at the time to appear as an approaching fleet of ships. The British Air Ministry issued a directive that for every radar station and outpost that was bombed in the invasion zone, two were to be destroyed outside of it. Lastly, General Patton was stationed with the fake units and frequently photographed. The operation so thoroughly convinced the commanders that the real invasion would take place several months later in Calais that reserve troops and supplies were kept there even as the Allies were gaining a significant foothold in France.
Getting back to the bus station we saw that we had misread the bus schedule and the next stop would not be for several hours. We decided to walk to our destination instead. We walked north along the Caen canal to the town of Ouistreham. We walked through the town and arrived to see out first glimpse of the historic Normandy beaches. We were at the extreme eastern end of the invasion force at the codenamed Sword Beach taken by British and Free French forces. The flat approach to the beach offered little in terms of natural resistance which was likely a factor in the ability of the forces to push back to Pegasus bridge in a matter of hours. However, anyone who was actually there would likely not proclaim it to be such a walk in the park.
Every so often along the beach were monuments placed by either the small commune governments along the coast or by British units in the spots where they fought for. The beach had a boardwalk along it that went for miles which we followed. Our hotel was a bit further west along the coast at Hermanville-sur-Mer an extremely small town just a few miles behind the beach. We followed a main road to an intersection and found our hotel just across the way. Unfortunately, we did not find anyone who worked there, the place looked rather deserted. We found the number of an on-call phone and talked to a gentleman who told us that we were at their secondary location. We realized that the actual lodging was just a few hundred feet down the road and that we had walked past it in our haste. Feeling slightly dumb we settled in and grabbed huge calzones for diner from a nearby pizza truck that made its rounds around the beaches each week.
We had great incentive to wake up early the next day. Not only did we want to continue exploring Normandy, but there were only two buses that stopped in Hermanville that day and we would rather catch the one at 9 than wait until the late afternoon. Having services greatly reduced on Sunday is common throughout France. Most transportation is cut down to a fraction of the routes it usually makes, nearly all stores and businesses are closed along with most restaurants. The only people who work on Sundays are essential personnel and those who work in the museums and beaches that are a popular destination for those with the day off. Of course, the rule doesn’t apply to touristy areas so much.
The limitation of public transportation that day leaned us towards using bikes as our transportation method. Going back to Caen we took the TER train to Bayeux, a large town close to the beaches to the west. We were able to rent two bikes and get an adequate map of the region. From there we headed north and slightly west to Port-en-Bessin-Huppain, a small town which marks the border between Gold and Omaha beaches. The small port of the town was active with the smells of seafood cooking and small sailing boats cruising in an out of the harbor.
We went to a pier where we could look to the west over the whole of Omaha beach to the curve in the shoreline that branched out to the Cherbourg peninsula where the Utah beach landings took place. We hopped down onto the beach and surveyed the coast. The size of the stretch of Omaha beach was enormous. At one point this line of fortifications was one of the most impenetrable in the world. Now it was quite a different story with the cool sea breeze floating in through an open sandy beach and a quiet port town. The only sign one could see of the previous state of the beach were bunkers and machine gun nests tucked away amidst the bluffs that arose just past the beach, slowly decaying.
The main road between the towns was set back just a mile or so from the beach and connected the main small beach towns of the region. The terrain was interesting consisting of small plots of farm field or grassland fenced in by large hedges and trees. Between these and the rolling hills of the inland countryside one could not see more than a few hundred feet in an one direction except for a few small glimpses of cleared land directly down to the beach. We arrived in the first small town of Colleville-sur-Mer, though town might be hyperbole for what was essentially gray brick homes and farms huddled along a main road. The buildings were just the same as one might see on a WWII movie. On our way out of town we passed Notre-Dame de l'Assomption de Colleville, a church from the 8th century. It had next to it a billboard with a photo of the church in 1944 after the invasion and a sign that read Merci à Nos Libérateurs, “Thank You to our Liberators” with a photo of American soldiers. The difference between the photo and the restored and operational church was astounding. It was amazing to think that many of the quiet towns and cities in the region were reduced to little more than piles of broken stone and glass during the war.
Just past Colleville, our next stop was the Normandy American Cemetery, the resting place of thousands of American soldiers killed in France between 1941 and 1944, many on D-Day or they days following it. The cemetery is a beautify landscaped site located on a bluff overlooking a stretch of Omaha beach. Originally established just two days after D-Day, the cemetery was improved upon several times. It is a legal concession of land from France to the United States for no charge, meaning the US government administers the cemetery and its grounds. As such upon our arrival we were greeted with an unfamiliar sight, the American flag.
Walking into the grounds was a surreal experience. All of the signs were written in English first with a French translation below. Most of the other visitors were speaking in an American accent. Whenever something was printed in multiple languages, the American flag was used to denote the one in English rather than the UK flag as is the norm in France and the rest of Europe. We walked onto the grounds as a daily moment of remembrance was beginning consisting of taps and the Star Spangled Banner. It was almost as if we were not in a foreign country or thousands of miles across the ocean. We walked among the white Latin Crosses and Stars of David arranged in straight lines overlooking the beaches many of the men fought and died for. In a garden to the side was a wall with the inscriptions of names of men who were killed in Normandy but could not be located or identified.
Next we headed further down the coast to Pointe du Hoc, a clifftop fortification jutting out into the English Channel that during World War II that marked the gap between Utah and Omaha. During the Normandy Invasions, the point housed six 155mm guns capable of firing on either beach. Scaling up the cliffs with ropes under cover from the Navy, the Army Rangers took the point, destroyed the guns, and held the ground until the forces from Omaha could move west the next day. A force of over 700 were supposed to take the point, but 500 men were diverted to help secure the western flank of Omaha beach. Historians say the extra concentration likely saved Omaha from a flanking attack but with high cost for the weakened Point du Hoc assault force. Of 225 men, less than 90 could use a weapon when they were relieved the next day.
The battlefield of Pointe du Hoc is left largely intact as a memorial. There are bunkers, gun casemates, and trenches for the visitor to walk through. The most striking thing is the landscape, pockmarked with huge craters from the pre-invasion bombing of the point most of which are between ten and twenty feet deep. A memorial to the rangers sits on the point from which you can see all of Omaha beach.
From Pointe du Hoc we traveled away from the coast and into the Normandy countryside. Following small roads we again weaved in and out of small towns but the route was largely through farmland with an occasional farmhouse or barn as the only visible structure. We had entered the bocage or hedgerow region which separated the terrain into small plots of land walled off by thick hedges. The hedges formed as unsurpassable of an object as nature could make. One could not see through to the other side, let along hope to crawl through. The road wound through these small plots of land. We could see why this country was such an obstacle to the Allied breakout. On the other side of the hedgerow could be a group of tanks or a gun emplacement and one would be none the wiser.
We were on the approach to Carentan. For us it was where we would catch our train back to Bayeux, for the Allied it was the town which linked Omaha and Utah beaches. Situated at a crossroads of four major highways and two rivers, the town’s capture was critical in linking together the two US forces and creating a continuous beachhead. With the town unsecured the German forces could drive a wedge between the troops isolating Utah beach and pushing the Americans off their tenuous hold on Omaha beach. The job was that of the US Airborne forces who landed across the Cherbourg peninsula to first take objectives critical to help the landing forces, such as gun and armor emplacements, and then assault the town. The landings were plagued by poor accuracy due to anti-aircraft fire and bad weather. However, many of the D-Day objectives were met on time and the city was taken four days later and held against counter-attacks.
The sun was shining brightly as we rode along the highway heading towards Carentan. It was amazing to be in such a quiet and beautiful country knowing its history. In this part of the countryside there was not an acre that wasn’t viciously fought over. We got into town just in time for our train. The TER is extremely cyclist-friendly and provides racks for hanging bikes during the journey in each car. Taking my seat I could already feel my legs tightening up. We had ridden almost forty miles that day on bikes that were not meant for long distance cycling.
After heading back to Bayeux and returning our bikes we grabbed something to eat and I had the chance to try some white cider which the Normandy region is famous for. We took the last TGV out of Bayeux all the way back to Paris just in time to go to bed and be ready for class in the morning.
