Dutch Letters: WWI Beaches....Finally

We return to our trip to France, picking up in the region of the WWII D-Day landings. We started in Caen at the Memorial Museum which provided a comprehensive overview of the European Theater of WWII. From there we drove to the beaches.

We stayed at the Hotel Casino on Omaha Beach. It was an interesting name for a hotel considering that there was no casino in or anywhere near the property. Other things that this hotel didn't have were heat in the rooms, other customers (Grant & I were the only customers for two nights) and English speaking staff members. But what it did have was a fantastic location -- right on Omaha Beach. Grant and I were on the third floor and we probably had a better view of the beach from our room than the Nazi's did in June 1944.

Casino Hotel. Note the lack of cars.

Over the next day and a half we toured beaches, cemeteries and German gun batteries. Grant & I had watched Saving Private Ryan and read Band of Brothers recently so it helped us begin to imagine what happened there 66 years ago. Pointe du Hoc was interesting -- the craters caused by bombs, etc. have been left as they were. Your immediate impression is that there are a lot of craters and they're all pretty big. The gun batteries and the hills behind the beaches give you an idea of how formidable the German position must have seemed.

Pt du Hoc. Battlefield left as it was.

The hills behind Omaha Beach

The view of Omaha Beach from the top of the hills. This picture was at low tide, so the Allies probably didn't have this much unprotected beach to cross...but it probably still seemed like miles to them.

German Gun Battery

Like we did in Ypres, we also visited cemeteries. The German cemetery was similar to the WWI sites, subdued, brown simple buildings, no raised headstones and a beautiful design. Although I recognize that I am biased by my heritage, the American cemetery was beautifully done. I don't know if it was the beauty of the site or the recognition of the sacrifices made by those buried there, but it was an emotional visit. We walked through the crosses and with our Band of Brothers background we started to write down names of men from the 101st Airborne so that we could look them up in the book or DVD later. It didn't take much time to get a long list of names just walking through one section of the cemetery. It was interesting to see the diversity of where the men were from...almost all areas of the States. It was telling to see their dates of death....almost all within June 6 to June 12 for that group. Although there have been complaints (primarily from other bloggers living in Antwerp) about the amount of numbers I use in my postings, I will share one interesting, albeit sad, fact. The American cemetery has 41 sets of brothers buried there. How devastating for the parents.

One final comment on the American Cemetery. While the English Cemetery in Ypres is supposed to have the greenest grass in Europe, the American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer has the best kept grass. It was immaculate. There were two or three men using push mowers that day (John Deere, of course). If there is such a thing as mowing with reverence, they were doing it. Heads bowed, solemn expressions as they went back and forth across the lawn, no iPod in their ears. In addition, they must use special mufflers to keep the noise levels down. It sent a high benchmark for Pleasant Point to try and match.

Visiting these sites was the primary reason for the trip and we weren't disappointed.