The D-Day Beaches

Posted by Andy on Jul 23, 2010

It’s now nearly 65 years since D-Day, and the Normandy coast is peaceful with lovely seaside towns and picturesque beaches. Behind the coast is an old-fashioned farming landscape of grain fields, cattle and pastures, hedges and farmhouses. But the memories of war and D-Day are engrained in the landscape. Along the invasion coast are the remains of German gun emplacements and bunkers, while war memorials and monuments mark where the allied forces landed on the beaches. Inland, there are monuments in almost every village and at every bend in the road, for there is barely a square yard that wasn’t fought over. Beautiful cemeteries overlook the sea and countryside and are essential stops along the way to understand and reflect on the human cost of the war. I’ve tried to get some pictures that show then and now

At Bernieres-sur-Mer, a attractive seaside town, La Maison Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada commemorate the men of this regiment. The house just behind the sea wall is one of the most famous houses from the d-day archives, as it appeared in many news reels and official photos of the day. Memorials to the Queen’s Own Rifles, Le Regiment de la Chaudière and Fort Garry Horse are located by a German bunker at La Place du Canada. You get an excellent view of the beach from the bunker, and you can imagine what it must have been like when the Canadian soldier stormed ashore during the D-Day assault.

Arromanches-les-Bains – Mulberry

Arromanches included one of the Mulberries, the a temporary concrete harbour constructed at Gold Beach; when fully operational, it had the capacity to move 7,000 tons of vehicles and supplies per day from ship-to-shore. These unloading facilities were essential as previous experience at Dieppe in 1942 showed that the Allies could not successfully attack and secure a port from the sea and therefore had to bring all their necessary facilities to unload with them. Each Mulberry harbour consisted of roughly 6 miles of flexible steel roadways that floated on steel or concrete pontoons. The roadways terminated at great pier heads that were jacked up and down on legs which rested on the seafloor.

These structures were to be sheltered from the sea by lines of massive sunken caissons, and scuttled ships. It was estimated that construction of the caissons alone required 252,000 cubic metres of concrete, 31,000 tons of steel, and 1.4 million metres of steel shuttering. Today, you can see the remains of the Arromanches Mulberry structures. You can only guess at the enormity of the original structures when it was complete, as its breathtaking now.

We also found an old WWII Sherman Tank here . . . . . I climbed on it. . . . . I fell off it . . . . . it hurt.