| Dublin | Holyhead | Iona | Portree | Orkney |
Caen and the Beaches of Normandy, June 3, 2005
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The first morning was a little uncoordinated. We were required to
have photo ID cards, and they carefully took pictures as we got on
board. But the camera didn't always work so they tried to take
the photos as we got off. They quickly gave that up for a bad idea
and logged people off by hand. We got in a fleet of 5 busses and
shortly (well, not really short) were on the Normandy beaches. Our first stop was Point du hoc. This is the area the Rangers had to scale in order to put the German Guns out of order. Only, the bombing had been serious enough that most of the guns and troops had been moved to an orchard, so much confusion. |
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Here's a photo of one of the areas. Those holes are original - 1944 bomb craters. You can see in the background one of the remaining fortifications that wasn't damaged. |
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Our next stop was Omaha beach. The bad news is 10% of those who landed here were killed in the first day. But that also means that the good news is that 90% of them weren't, and for this serious a fire fight, I think that's relatively good news. The pictures are from the same place, just right and left along the beach. I was impressed how big an area this was - no wonder it took nearly 100,000 soldiers to land here. |
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| For the celebration of the invasion last year, they commissioned a sculpture called "Les Braves". Here it is. Well, this is slightly modified. There were people standing in front of it, and I removed them electronically. |
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Our next stop was the cemetery. This land has been donated by the French people to the US, so technically I needed my passport to get back in again. The cemetery contains 9387 graves; not all of these people died during the invasion, but they all crossed this beach before they died. |
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As we got ready to leave Caen, we had to travel through a canal in order to exit. Guess what, at the end of the canal we found a lighthouse! In actual fact, we found several lighthouses on the rest of the trip. This one is located at Ouistreham. |
| Dublin | Holyhead | Iona | Portree | Orkney |
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