We took the Euro Tunnel crossing into France.  It is an underground train that cars can board that takes commuters across the English Channel.  It only took about 20 minutes and it departed from Folkestone to Calais.

The drive into Normany is quite nice too. We were a bit sad that the car’s (Volkswagen Golf TDI) top speed was only 180 km/h though (we tested that).

Our hotel was in Caen, and in the next morning we drove to Bayeux to meet the tour group. Our tour guide was a native from Normandy who used to serve in the French military. He knew quite a lot of the history behind the Battle of Normandy, so he was a really great guide.

When I got out of the car, I could immediately feel my allergies acting up.  Within a few minutes, my nose was extremely plugged and my eyes were itchy.  Worst of all, I left my medicine at the hotel.  My allergies stayed with me for the entire day.  It was the worst allergic reaction I’ve had in recent memory.

Longues-sur-Mer Battery

The first stop were the gun batteries at Longues-sur-Mer. It was part of Germany’s Atlantic Wall coastal fortifications.

The line of batteries were just situated on a large grass field.  There wasn’t really anything else in the area other than other bunkers that were part of the fortification.

Omaha Beach

I was surprised to see that the bunkers at Omaha Beach had all been taken away. Apparently the locals disposed of them since they didn’t want to keep such structures from their foes to stay.

The guide explained that the attack on D-Day began while the beach was at high tide, which meant the soldiers had to wade through more water than they would have during low tide. This meant the soldiers were slower and had a greater danger of drowning. Because of this, the American forces that invaded took heavy casualties. The guide also mentioned that a huge factor that caused the Germans to lose the battle was that they were running out of ammunition after killing so many attackers.  The water ran red for days.

Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial

Many soldiers who died during the Battle of Normandy are buried here. The fallen soldiers’ next of kin were given a choice as to whether the burial would take place in the US, or overseas.

The site was quite large. It probably took about 10-15 minutes to walk from one side to the other.

Pointe du Hoc

During the battle, the soldiers had to scale these cliffs just to get to the enemy and they did this while getting shot at.

I remember playing Call of Duty 2 a long time ago and there was a mission about this very battle. The bunker here was modeled pretty much the same too.

Before the battle began, the air force and navy heavily bombarded this area and so there are many craters here. After so many years, grass has grown over them.

The Hedgerows

The guide explained that while the Allies were gathering intelligence for their invasion planning, local French people had told the Allies that there’d be lots of hedgerows to watch out for. It never occurred to the Allies that the hedgerows in France were significantly taller than the hedgerows that they were used to and so they thought the soldiers could see over them. Nope, they’re way taller than a standing person.

When the paratroopers landed in the night, a lot of them couldn’t find each other. The Germans used this to their advantage and set many traps in and around the hedgerows.

To Be Continued…

Since this post is already getting quite long, I’ll be continuing the rest of the Normandy trip in a second post.

Links to photo albums:

• Normandy
• Normandy (Edward’s Photos)

This post is dedicated to how we almost got stranded in Normandy and “misdropped” just like the American paratroopers on D-Day Minus 1 back in 1944. We were right where we were supposed to be, but nothing else was.

Getting to Normandy

Having researched this part before leaving for France, I knew that trains ran from Paris to Caen from Paris Saint Lazare Station. And with our EURail Pass, we could just board any of these trains freely and go at whatever time we wanted. I had booked a hotel in Saint Lo, and the plan was to visit Caen, and then get to Saint Lo in the evening.

Caen

Caen was a city with a rich history, but I only knew it from the Battle of Caen during the larger Battle of Normandy in 1944. While here, I saw a lot of war memorials and architecture leftover from the days of William the Conqueror.

The city itself was very beautiful and really had a French vibe. Unlike Paris, this place isn’t as frequented by tourists. And also the French people here are a lot less snobby and more nice to foreigners. People in Normandy also seem to have immense respect for Americans and the British.

I also got to see the horse statue that always appears in World War II games that feature Caen in it (e.g. The Caen map in Day of Defeat). I’m not sure if it’s the same horse statue, but this one sure reminded me of it.

After staying for a bit in Caen, we decided to go to Saint Lo. In order to do that we had to make a stop in Bayeux and make a transfer.

Bayeux

This is where the shit started to hit the fan. We arrived in Bayeux just to find out that all the buses were closed and there were no more trains going to Saint Lo until 11 at night. By the time we arrived in Bayeux it was around 9:30. We weren’t even sure if that train at 11 was even going to come. The only solution to get to Saint Lo was with a taxi. We looked around the station and saw a bunch of advertisements for D-Day beach tours until we finally found a number for a taxi. When the taxi driver came, he told us that it would cost a lot of money to get to Saint Lo from where we were. So then we tried to look for a place to stay in this city, but since D-Day is a high season for tourism in Normandy, it proved impossible to find a hotel/hostel with room for us. In the end we had to take the taxi anyway. When we called for a taxi the second time, the same taxi driver came back to pick us up too. It was kind of strange. Before actually picking us up, the taxi driver told me he’d come back in five minutes and then ten minutes later he was still not back. I called out in frustration, “five minutes my ass!”, and then a minute later, the taxi driver came back.

While looking for a place to stay, we wandered around time wondering what we were going to do. But even in our crisis, I somehow still kept a really chill attitude on the outside, although I was quite frustrated on the inside. I was still in the mood to take lots of photos though. While walking around, one of my friends broke out in song and started singing a song about how we were “lost in the middle of nowhere.”

Saint Lo

As the taxi entered Saint Lo and started driving to the outskirts of the city, we realized that the hotel we booked was in the middle of nowhere. Even though it was 7 km from the city center, the town only had a population of about 20000 people. The man at the hotel greeted us and checked us in. Inside the hotel we found pamphlets for the city bus that we would use to go to the city center the next day. And from there, we’d take a train/bus to a nearby town and go to the D-Day beaches. Looking further into the pamphlets, I discovered that the bus wouldn’t run on Sunday. It just so happened that we arrived on Saturday night. That sucked a lot.

The next morning, I asked the man at the hotel how to get to the city center and to the D-Day beaches and using his heavy French accent (it was kind of cool to hear), he told us that the only way to do it was using a taxi. That was definitely not the answer I wanted to hear. Before coming to France, I was under the misconception that the trains here would be well connected and that transportation to the D-Day beaches would not be a problem so I did not plan my transportation in Normandy in such detail. It was more of a “figure it out when we get there” sort of thing.

Rather than taking a taxi, we tried to walk to the city center and about 15 minutes into our walk, we all kind of got tired of walking and didn’t feel like walking 7 km, so we went back to the hotel to call a taxi. Luckily, the man at the hostel was very helpful (probably the nicest French guy I’ve come across), and he gave us the phone number for the taxi in the city. When we arrived at the Saint Lo train station via taxi, we found that there were no trains running to where we wanted to go. That is when we figured, “okay, maybe it’s time to get outta here.” We looked at the train departures again, and the next train to Caen wasn’t until 3 PM, and it was only 10 AM or so when we arrived at the Saint Lo station. We decided that the best plan of action now was to just cancel our second night at the hotel and go back to Stuttgart.

Instead of taking a taxi back to the hotel, we walked back to the hotel, cancelled our second night’s stay and walked back to the train station. Luckily the nice Frenchman at the hotel did not penalize us for cancelling our second night. I’m sure he realized that we were all having a hard time trying to arrange transportation to the beaches.

Using the time we had before our train, we walked around Saint Lo. The weather that day matched pretty much exactly what the weather was in ’44 and for me it felt kind of cool to see that the weather had stayed so constant over the years. The morning was cold and foggy, just like back then. For most our time in Saint Lo, we walked around with umbrellas. While walking around town, there was literally no one on the street except us. I guess everyone goes to church on Sundays and then goes home in Normandy.

Even though our plans didn’t work out, we did see a few cool things in Normandy like many of the war memorials and war damage that the city chose to leave behind and not repair. A good example is of the Notre-Dame here that kept some of the damage like the missing church tower to show others of the damage that the church suffered. Apparently over 90% of homes in Saint Lo were destroyed during the war.

If our plans had worked out, we would have been able to visit Carentan, and see the live paradrop in the nearby town of Sainte-Mère-Église. Then afterward, we planned to make our way to Omaha Beach, Pointe du Hoc to be exact. If our plans in Normandy had worked out, we would have even gone to Brussels afterward. Instead, I never got the chance to see any of the beaches and came home a day early. If I ever come back here, I’ll be sure to take a car.

Photos:

• Caen
• Bayeux
• Saint Lo