In the Midst of WWII

Omaha beaches
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In the morning we started our D-Day Beaches tour.

We started with Omaha and I’m so glad that we did. It was the one that I was the least looking forward to seeing and it was the one that I was the most impressed by. We began by exploring the beaches and all of the bunkers that are hidden in the hills. Once satisfied, we made our way to the interpretive centre to see the cemetery. The centre was really impressive and a guide walked us to the cemetery and told us the stories. Omaha was possibly the toughest of the beaches. It was defended by about 800 Germans and thousands of U.S. men died here. Here is what happened. The ships left England on June 4. There was a delay in starting the raids as the weather was horrible. Finally, they could wait no longer and had to go ahead. June 6, at 6:30 am, is when it began. The bombers were to do their jobs to give the 1^st to land a head start. But as the skies were clouded, they were afraid they would hit their own men and went too far, doing basically nothing and giving the Germans warning on what was coming. This meant that the 1^st to land were completely wiped out. The tide was to be out when this attack occurred so that all the obstacles could be seen and avoided, but the delay meant that they were all under water, causing more problems. The engineers were the next to land and were to clear all the obstacles for the rest. But, as the first group had been wiped out, they had to pick up their guns and fight as if infantry. This then meant that the obstacles were not cleared for the next batches. The ships that were far enough out so to be out of reach of the Germans but eventually had to move in and support the men.

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The tour guide then took us through the cemetery and told us the story of a few of the men that lay there. One story was of Billie (see picture). He was a bomber that was shot down. The locals buried him, but there was no way to identify him. His wife at home inquired over and over about him and there was no answer to give her. Finally, the locals were able to give the body to the U.S. who identified him 2 months after he died. The message was sent to his wife, but she had moved. She never got the message until 2003, when someone went to her to ask her if she had ever visited his grave and her response was “What grave?” Finally, in 2005, she came to visit him and could have closure. The people who work here provide a service for the Americans wanting to visit the graves but cannot make the trip overseas. They place the flowers at their grave and fill the letters with sand so they can take a clear picture of it to send to the family. They had done so when we were there. I was most definitely choked up when he finished telling us this story.

Bunker
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We now had to move on to our next destination: Arromanches. This is a town with a very important history. Not only is it on Gold beach, one of the British landings, but was where the Allies built a harbour so that the troops could be adequately supplied as they moved inwards. This Port Winston was the idea of Churchill. It was built in England and assembled in Arromanches in a very short time. The concrete remains are still there and you can walk out to them when the tide is out. There is a really good museum there about it and also the efforts that were given by each nationality in the D-Day landings. It was great to read about all the others, like Norway and Belgium that contributed. One thing we found interesting was that there was a board for the 4 landings, Gold, Sword, Omaha and Utah. But what about Juno? We asked a lady who worked there where it was and she took us to the general Canadian board (as there was for all countries that were not the main armies). In everything else, it shows 5 beach landings, one of which is Canadian, yet there was no description of this landing equal to that of the others. I found this very peculiar.

Another bunker
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Moving on, we headed to the Juno centre. There was a Remembrance Day ceremony taking place that we were eager to be a part of. It was great to see so many Canadians and there was a boy choir from Toronto there to perform. The ceremony was nice, although most was in French and we were mostly lost. There was a veteran there from Quebec who spoke. He was kind enough to also speak in English. He spoke of the 14,000 civilians that died in the town of Caen alone (a town that we spent 40mins trying to find the right direction to drive away from) and how he was responsible for this murder and therefore he has a hard time seeing himself as a hero. He also said to his brothers that fell on the beach, the he had failed them because there is still war and atrocities to humankind are still taking place.

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The museum at Juno is a really good one telling about all aspects of the war, not just Juno. But, we found that what happened at Juno was not emphasised enough. We never got to hear what happened here like we did at Omaha, something we had really wanted to hear. When we went to ask the Canadians that worked there if there was anything they could tell us about it like those at Vimy, Somme and Omaha could, but they just looked at us blankly and told us they were closing.

That night, we had to make the long drive back to Belgium, where we were to stay the night. We had found a nice bed and breakfast and the lady was kind enough to stay up and wait for us to arrive.