Conceding to my traveling partner (my brother who's a big WWII history buff), from Paris we headed north to Bayeux, the jumping off point for a majority of day tours of the Normandy beaches. We only had one full day in Bayeux, the morning of which we spent exploring the town, then we took what turned out to be a private tour of Gold Beach (British), Omaha Beach (American) and the American cemetery.
We were surprised to discover that Bayuex actually has a textile attraction for me as well as the attraction of the Normandy invasion beaches. A tapestry, 200 ft long and just 70 years shy of being 1000 years old is housed in its own little museum in the town. The tapestry details the Norman invasion of England in 1066 by William the Conqueror, and was absolutely incredible. The room they had it stored in was curved, so you could only see half the tapestry from the entrance. I was impressed by its sheer size when I walked in, then to find that it was actually twice as long! It was amazing how well the tapestry has been preserved; all of the colors were still there, and still vibrant, if not quite as vibrant as they were 930 years ago when the tapestry was made. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures, because of course they don't trust tourists not to use the flash when looking at the tapestry (to be honest, I wouldn't either).
We also made a trip to the cathedral in Bayeux, which was amazing and cool, though not on the same scale as the York Minster or the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. I got a few good pictures out of it, and a few good ideas for different blocks for this part of our trip.
That afternoon, we finally met up with our tour guide to discover that although the staff at the hotel were very skeptical that we would be able to get on a tour on such short notice, we were in fact the only ones signed up for the afternoon tour. Thus, Nicholas, Josephine (the tour guide) and I set off in our minibus built for ten for an afternoon exploring the beaches.
Our first stop was Gold Beach, one of the two British landing beaches. The British invasion apparently went swimmingly, and they made it to Bayeux (the largest town in the area, and about 5-7 miles inland) by the night of the invasion. This photo was taken from the shore of the tiny little town we stopped in, which is also where the Allied forces built the harbor they needed to get supplies in following the initial invasion.
I'm pretty sure that the concrete bits you can see just below the cliff are remnant pieces of the harbor. They built the pieces in top secret labs in Britain, and sunk the pieces in the Thames so that German reconnaissance planes wouldn't be able to figure out what they were up to. Cool, huh? I thought so.
After that we went to see some German gun emplacements, then to the American cemetery, situated on the cliffs above Omaha beach, one of the two American landing beaches. Visiting the cemetery was a really moving experience. It was incredible how well maintained everything was. The entire thing looked brand new.
The picture here is the compass rose on a map of the major battles of WWII following the D-Day invasion., which features prominently in a memorial to the soldiers never found. This will probably end up being my block for Bayeux, simply because I was so impressed by the cemetery, but I'm also contemplating doing something with this
the railing around the memorial.
Our last stop on the tour was to a German gun emplacement on the top of a really big cliff I can't remember the name of. Point something. It was there that one hundred or so US Army Rangers scaled the cliff under heavy enemy fire using their knives to stabilize themselves in the face of the wind coming off the cliffs and, oh, I don't know, enemy bullets. So they scaled the cliff, went immediately into what amounted to a knife fight with the German soldiers at the top of the cliff, and somehow still managed to win. Oh, and did I mention that the additional five hundred men they were supposed to have with them never came, because bad weather pushed them off course? Yeah, that's right, they did it with one sixth of the men they were supposed to have! Needless to say, I was impressed by the history of this place.
Also, I was impressed and touched by the scars that this war left around here. I'm probably dating myself here, but WWII is the latest war that still seems like a historical war. There's no one I really know or knew that fought in WWII, whereas I feel more of a connection to later wars. The fact of the matter is that WWII seems like it happened a really long time ago, but it seems so recent here. The gun emplacements are still here, though they've been dismantled, the cemetery looks like it's only been there long enough for there to be uniform grass and not mounds of dirt on the ground, and the craters in the land from the bombing of the cliff mentioned above in preparation for the assault by the Rangers are still there and are still huge:
Suddenly this war seems so much closer, and so much more real. If anything, going to the cemetery makes me hurt for all of the young lives that were lost. None of the tombstones have birth dates on them, only death dates, because so many of the men killed were between 18 and 22, much too young to die. Even so, you know looking out over the field of graves that disappears over the horizon, and that only represents a third of the soldiers lost in that battle, that there was an infinite amount of promise lost in only a few short years.
Well, I've waxed philosophical about WWII for quite long enough. That just about covers the visit to Bayeux, so next we're headed back to Paris. Ciao!
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