Five Days in France - 11/16/08
I have been gone only 24 hours and feel I have already seen half the world - if that's possible. I left Paris yesterday on the 1:05 train after first taking the metro the wrong way to the station. I had figured out my problem two stops later and hopped off, went to the other side of the tracks and was quickly in the right lane headed for the train station. I had already waited until the last minute so really didn't have much time to spare with being on the wrong subway and all.
Everything went quite smoothly after that, thankfully. I got my ticket, located the track number and corresponding tracks and found an "unreserved" seat on the train eventually. A reserved seat requires planning.
Smooth sailing to Bayeux, about 2.5 hours away, in Normandy, France. I studied the guide book thoroughly while on the train - and mapped out my walking route through town to the "Family Hostel". I was luckily traveling lightly with a small suitcase on wheels - really not a suitcase - more like a scrapbook box on wheels. Before my trip I had visited Michael's, the craft store, where I spotted it instantly once inside the door and had to have it!
So wheeling along I could see the town was something like a ghost town. Unlike Paris is was very quiet. Was it siesta or was it always this way? Seems it was a little of both because November is not when the most people visit these parts.
Along with overcast skies, the air felt like a very fine misty wet veil - nearly undetectable - but certainly there. In just the right light, my coat sparkled with dew drops. It's called "drizzle" in Michigan, but 'French' drizzle is more like icing on a cake.
It wasn't so bad. I carried on and passed the cathedral of Bayeux, marveling at how they used to make things - tall and out of stone. Eventually I found the hostel which had a sign on the door saying, "Open", 'call this number for service'. "Hello Hostel!" -- I am a budget traveler, I don't have a cell phone. I stood there a while looking in through the window at an empty office room with no one in it. Didn't look open to me. I soon gave up, strolling back to the train station to the other recommended (budget) hotel across the street, titled 'Station Hotel'. It was open and the room seemed fine so I took it for 30 euros one night.
After settling there, I headed back into the ghost town to find the tourist office to see about D-day tours. One downtown street, where I hadn't been before, was hopping. In general it is a sleepy town this time of year, but after siesta it woke up a bit. At least the tourist area was more awake than other parts. I cannot imagine the place in the summer - overridden with bus loads and World War II buff-tourists galore. In many ways I picked a fine time!
That little shopping street was cute and bustling with restaurants, quaint small French ones, and bars, plus the generic souvenir shops, that dot the world with magnets, T-shirts, post cards and such. I wandered until I came to the tourist office where I bought a ticket for a half day tour of the D-day beaches - for 8:30AM tomorrow.
I rambled some more and made my way into the "Tapestry" museum. Sounds really boring, doesn't it? However, it was unusually spellbinding!! Wow, my goodness, they wrote the whole story of William the Conqueror in pictures - with embroidery needles no less. It was made a thousand years ago - and still tells the story eloquently - mostly created for the illiterate and people like me who like pictures better than words. Perhaps a 'tapestry' informs us more than a written version might, with images hinting of how agriculture, fashion, customs and culture (shaved heads) were at that time, highlighted in stitch! Even Haley's Comet visits - meaning God was speaking - disapprovingly of the drama of 1066. The night sky could talk back then.
The audio-guide was good, describing the scenes in the tapestry that unfurls for 70 meters along a dark corridor - almost as long as a football field. I wonder - if you put every page of Les Miserables side by side - how far it would stretch end to end...? The fabric was only a few feet high, demystifying my definition of 'tapestry'. I enjoyed it so much, I bought the 7.50 euro book that has the whole thing with descriptions on one long fold-out page, in the gift shop.
With William the Conqueror on my mind, I wandered again, through the town, beyond the cathedral which was closed, out to where the guide book noted there was a "war cemetery". Allied Forces and some Germans were buried here. Some headstones only say, "German Soldier". Others had names. I found the place, however, in the dark. The gate was closed, but I could see many white identical stone markers in rows over many many graves. I took some pictures but mostly got close ups of the drizzle.
I crossed the street and ran into two big tanks, huge army-green tanks, marking a sort of memorial park. The plaque read, "On June 7...". My birthday! I didn't read the whole thing as it was dark, and I couldn't see, plus I thought I would return in the daylight - although I never did. Besides there's always google for what happened in Bayeux, Normandy on June 7, 1944...
I just got goose bumps. A super quick search found this: "Bayeux, the first city in France to be liberated on June 7, 1944." Every year on my birthday, I am reminded by news and radio stories that something important happened on this Normandy coast.
I walked back toward town using the cathedral spires, rising above all other buildings, as my compass and ended up back on the main shopping street. I walked along until I found the "Ed" store, the local grocery store. I bought three days worth of food. My shopping basket contained the following as I checked through the check out: one cucumber, some kind of fresh yummy looking bread, pre-sliced gouda cheese, chips, walnuts, olives, grapefruit juice, a small bottle (1/2 liter?) of wine, a cork screw and a sharp knife. 16 euros. This would be dinner. The quaint French restaurants do not understand vegetarians plus dining alone is no fun.
I headed back to my hotel room and had a feast. I was really lucky with the French TV that night as there was no cable, no CNN. Instead I happened upon a two hour show of magic tricks, dancing acrobatics and other sensational human feats, something like the cast of Cirque Du Soleil - maybe that's what it was! At least it did not require French words. :) It kept me well entertained, and I was asleep by 11.
Without an alarm, I was lucky to wake up and check my watch at 7:55AM. Rush rush, in the shower across the hall, packed and out the door. I took my wheeling scrapbook box with me, expecting I would leave on the train and not stay a second night.
I was right on schedule for the D-day pickup, myself and 5 others - 5 Americans and an Australian. "Good Morning", I said, knowing they all spoke English since I had booked the tour in "English". !
The Australian had been interested in the Normandy landing since a kid. (Seemed at 20-something he was still a kid!) He asked good questions of the guide, like "Where is the area of the 'hedgerows'?" My questions were more like, "What are 'hedgerows'?" Turned out we were driving through where the 'hedgerows' were at that moment. Hedgerows are like fences of trees and bushes, marking and separating fields. We have them in Michigan and turns out they are really good for the soil! But really bad for tanks - trying to invade. This was one of probably many unexpected obstacles the Allied Forces had to manage... Another tour-goer said, "You've heard the term 'fences make good neighbors'." I said, "Yes, hedgerows must make better neighbors."
For an 'antiwar', 'Returned Peace Crops Volunteer (RPCV)', I have to say the tour was absolutely and most incredibly - fascinating. Wow. An amazing operation they managed. What determination they had, Churchill and all the rest. Based on their performance one could easily see there was a mighty strong will and determination to defeat Hitler and 'liberate' all of Europe.
Fascinating and at any and all expense. So much of the technology they used was experimental, never before tested. How would it hold up in the hour of need? During rough Atlantic seas? So many questions they must have had - fooling and distracting the Germans so the attack would be a complete surprise.... It was a game of cat and mouse. They were out to confuse each other, to attack and take over when the other wasn't looking. Terrorists do the same thing, but I don't think tanks and large ships will solve our modern problems.
How on earth did they ever communicate and organize all these people, getting them to work in unison? Absolutely a next-to-impossible task without cell phones.
The minibus guided tour took us first to Point du Hoc. The soldiers had landed further down the coast in the wrong location and somehow managed to realize and get back on track - which meant moving west to the proper spot for the planned attack. Meanwhile the air force had dropped bombs on the correct area to dislodge, dislocate, kill and scramble up the unsuspecting Germans, perhaps sleeping quietly at the time....
We were there early in the morning before other tourists had arrived. We had the parking lot to ourselves - one of those large parking lots like at Grand Teton National Park, specially marked for large tour busses, RVs, small, medium, large and hybrid vehicles. The guide said the place is overly packed every year on June 6, especially - and all through the summer. Places with large parking lots are usually places Of Global Interest!
By the sidewalk heading to the ocean we passed what looked like a sink hole. Before I could inquire, the guide explained as we passed. "This is a crater from a bomb dropped just prior to the attack." I got my camera ready for a picture -- and then only a few steps later turned to face a field on the cliff's edge - chock full of them. Pitted and scarred still today with craters, wounds of a war, a serious and justified war. Huge pockmarks like what might be on the moon, 10-20-30 feet across in diameter, dangerous enough to fall into, deadly then. Today covered with aged grass so a little softer. Also six German cannons keeping a sleepy but watchful eye on the Atlantic - until that day. One day. This D-day - June 6, 1944. Those men. It happened here.
Not only that. The German concrete and metal and earth, remains of what happened that day tell the story. Their cannons now gone, but underground bunkers and tunnels for protection inside the earth, ammunition supply rooms, and a windowless room with an echo where there were rusty hooks on the ceiling and walls where stacks of beds once hung, six up and down, six across, where men, soldiers could sleep...try to rest - but not on that day. Petrified bags of concrete are today stones, helping the imagination bring the day to the present. Something was under construction.
What a story! I have a crush on Churchill now...
The bunkers were strong and made to prevent attack using a net of rebar and concrete. However, once the Americans landed, climbed the cliff, fought a few individuals hand to hand! and had captured the place, they blew up those bunkers from the inside out, detonating bombs inside, destroying the enemy's ammunition. Concrete blocks the size of Stone Henge went flying. The remains are all there to see.
Next we drove to Omaha Beach where soldiers sometimes drowned before reaching the shore. They landed at low tide because the Germans expected a high tide invasion - all efforts to fool the enemy. I was trying to imagine jumping off a boat in cold water and trudging to shore equipped and ready to kill - and without getting distraught? I suppose anger can be useful to keep the troops moving. What a frightful day it must have been. Those Germans were equally determined - and I am sure - afraid. It is amazing to look at old photos of the beach, then and now. More ships, more men, more forces coming, unstoppable. The Germans refusing to push back.
Our next stop was the American Cemetery where there is a large memorial, a wall with all the names of thousands of men missing in action and never found. Next to only a few of these names there is a little bronze star drilled into the marble next to their state - which means their body was found, since then, maybe in a farmer's field or in another now uncovered place.
For the bodies found, the cemetery sprawls outward toward the ocean with thousands more marble crosses and only a few Stars of David, all lined up in rows facing the ocean, facing home - the USA. All men who lost their lives either D-day or the next day or the day after that - or as a result of those days.
I had asked the guide about women buried there. He said there were only 4 and mentioned he would show us one. We walked further among the crosses, taking pictures, imagining the weight of the place, the event. He said this area was actually American Territory - given to the US by France as a gesture of thanks.
I paused at one stone, marveling at the marble, how smooth and solid, thinking how so many the same size and shape were made. I placed my hand on the top of one cross which stood at the level of my hip. The guide said, "You found it." This one just happened to be one of the four women, "Elizabeth" it said, a nurse in the Red Cross. That was kind of weird.
We moved on to the fourth and final stop, Arromanches, next to Gold Beach where the British Forces landed. Further east is Juno Beach where the Canadian Battalions landed and lastly Sword Beach where the British 3rd Infantry landed. All forces - British, Canadian, Commonwealth (Australia & New Zealand), Free French and Free Polish Forces. That was our team. How did they ever get organized and communicate!!
In Arromanches at the D-day Museum, we learned about the artificial harbors the Allied Forces fabricated of steel and concrete, hollow structures made to float or to be put on things that float that could be transported, pulled by a ship, to the beach and installed and used for supplies, tons and tons of supplies, men, trucks, ammunition, weapons, more trucks, whatever they needed. They had to create and establish a port. The Germans were poised and ready to blow up already established ports as they knew (1) the troops would come by sea and (2) they would need a place to land and land and land again....could not be stopped... Once the first ship came, they could destroy the port, including their own men and be done with it. The big big 1944 secret - was that the Allied Forces were fixing to bring in their own harbor - their own port - on their backs (on ships)... It was something unheard of. And it worked.
I kept asking how they communicated. Turns out they even used carrier pigeons. The guide said - imagine there were soldiers with backpacks full of pigeons on their backs.. That was almost the best form of communication at the time, as one could pretty much guarantee it would not be intercepted. !!! That also means quality pigeon food and first class accommodations since the health of the pigeon would be very important! I kept imagining that those pigeons had to fly all the way to America and couldn't even believe how that was possible. Finally someone in our group shifted my thinking -- they only had to fly as far as England - maybe 100 miles. The guide pointed out that the Chinese still use carrier pigeons in their army today. They can carrying top-secret messages tied to their feet without anyone knowing.
The makeshift harbor was in some respects a work of art. Big blocks, hollow for floating, then flooded with water for sinking, strong enough for lasting... The remains of the break wall they installed is still seen today just off the shore here, and underwater too. Underwater diving tours!? That's what I'll do next time for sure. There are 15 sunken passenger ships, old, out-of-service charters the Allied Forces brought and sank to start building the port - this created the first barrier, just a line, a wall, inside which the ocean wouldn't be so rough.. !!
On these concrete foundations they hauled from England, were placed platforms embedded in the ground yet on pillars which allowed them to move up and down with the tide. Cutting edge technology at the time never used before - used routinely today on offshore drilling rigs!! Ingenious. There was a storm that wrecked one initially installed at Omaha Beach, but the one at Arromanches remained unbelievably in tact. It needed minor repairs and went on to withstand more storms and more troops, ships, supplies.. Perhaps this alone is what made the invasion a success.
>From these platforms a causeway was attached so trucks could come and go, to load and unload back and forth, two ways, driving empty, the other way full. And thus once this artificial port was established and maintained, the Germans retreated -- as more soldiers, more trucks, ammunition, tanks, more and more Allied Forces seized and liberated more and more towns, driving back the Germans to the point of surrender!
An incredible story and even more so as told by the hallowed ground in Normandy herself.
Sincerely,
Heather O'Neal
Of Global Interest Adventure Travel
Ann Arbor, Michigan
(734) 369-3107
ofglobal@aol.com
http://www.ofglobalinterest.com
"Be nice to America, or we'll bring democracy to your country."
A bumper sticker I recently saw on the car in front of me at the corner of 9th and Huron.
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