Batteries, Beaches and Bad Museums

Saturday, September 25th

I walked down to the “Musee de Debarquement” (Debarkation Museum) which was located just a few hundred meters from where I was camping. This exhibit focussed on the Mulberry Harbours and had some fantastic models of these fantastic feats of engineering. To put it in perspective, it took 7 years to build the port of Dover and these guys had a functioning port in days for the light equipment and a few weeks for the big items (granted they had spent close to a year prefabricating a lot of it). Without the Mulberries, the Allies would likely have been kicked back out into the sea by the Germans.

A sunny but windy day in Arromanches:

The Allies dropped hundreds of these dummy parachutes to throw the Germans off:


Next I headed to the Maisy Gun Battery, situated about 30 kilometres to the west. At first I wasn’t sure if I was at the right place. It was hardly signposted on the road and when I turned into the empty parking lot, apart from one car, all I saw was a rusted anti-aircraft gun, a decrepit wooden landing boat and a portable trailer partly covered in a camouflage net. Hmm...not what I expected. Oh well, let’s check it out.

Hmm...is this the Maisy Battery?

There was a lonely middle aged woman sitting in the office (lonely in the sense of “bored”...). I paid my entrance fee, was given a sad looking map in a laminate cover and sent on my way. It looked like I was just walking out into a field but that in fact made sense. The Germans had tried to blend this artillery battery into the local surroundings to avoid being bombed. It was a network of trenches, bunkers, gun pads, living quarters and a command post. It was situated a couple of kilometres back from the coastline so it was connected by radio lines to an observation post by the ocean. I seemed to have the place to myself and I have to say it was a bit eerie at times to think of the German soldiers that would have occupied the bunkers that I entered and run up and down the steps that I now tread on. I was slightly startled by a strange sounding white and brown cat. It’s not often you hang out with a cat and a howitzer but here was my chance...

A howitzer:

One of a few bunkers to house soldiers:

I left the battery and headed to the Museum of the Rangers, the American Rangers. They stormed a high cliff point called Pointe du Hoc to silence some guns that could fire down on both the Utah and Omaha (the two American) beachheads. Sadly the museum was closed down so I moved on to the point instead. Arriving there I noticed three Gendarmerie cars and a few motorbikes and a very obvious special agent kinda guy (suit, dark sunglasses and the coiled earpiece). I never did find out who the VIP was but did see the large entourage pass by me as I walked out to the point.

The point has been largely left untouched from that fateful day on June 6, 1944. The shell holes created a moonlike landscape and some of the concrete bunkers where in pieces while others remained intact. There was a large group of young men in green jackets and jeans. I noticed on the badges on their left arms that they were Royal Marines. I hung out, as inconspicuously as possible, near them as their leader had some very interesting facts and insights to the events some 66 years ago. It’s incredible to think of these rangers chucking their anchored ropes up and climbing the equivalent of 6-7 storeys into a hotbed of enemy activity...hats off to you guys!

Pointe Du Hoc - notice the cratered ground:

To finish off the afternoon I stopped at a museum about Omaha Beach. This is the American beachhead that is depicted in Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” movie. It is in fact the beach, of the five attacked on D-Day, that suffered the most casualties (luckily all of the others incurred fewer casualties than the generals had anticipated). Well this museum was crap...and that’s my official review. It was a big steel barn with a lot of artifacts, but most of them were just bundled together in a non-contiguous set and it was just too much noise with very little explanation.

The crappy Omaha Museum:

I had read in a brochure that one of the Enigma machines was in this museum. The Enigma was a super high tech (for the day) data encoding machine that the Germans used to send encrypted messages. As a kid I remember hearing stories from my grandmother about the Enigma as the English had broke the code and were able to decode the German transmissions. However, Churchill was faced with a difficult decision at one point. He knew that Coventry, an industrial area in England, which happened to be where my grandparents with their newborn, my mother, lived, was going to be bombed by the Luffwaffe. He could have ordered the RAF to prevent the bombing but then the Germans would have realized that their transmissions were being deciphered so he held his cards close to his chest and had the difficult decision to let many innocent people die.

The Enigma machine:

I moved on to the beach itself. It’s a gorgeous sandy expanse stretching at least 4-5 kilometers. There are a few memorials dedicated to the battle that was fought there mixed amongst houses and closed restaurants and beach shops. The wind was blowing in steadily off the water and this allowed me a chance to see one of the popular activities that are now occurring on the beach...land sailing. It seemed as though there was a race going on and these dudes were flying up and down the beach...it looked pretty cool, I will have to try that some day.

Omaha Beach (note Betty on the right!):

Looking south towards Pointe Du Hoc:

On a pier at Omaha Beach:

On my way back to Arromanches, I was surprised to see a paraglider in the air, flying above a promontory. I drove down some narrow lanes and located the launch area. The wind was too strong for solo pilots but a few tandem guys were taking up excited passengers. It was time for dinner anyways after a long day of D-Daying...with more on tap for tomorrow!