This is the third in a diary series covering a trip I took to Normandy.
the first one is here and the second one is here
After I left Pointe du Hoc, I returned back to Omaha BEach. I drove up to the cemetery at Colleville. This is the one you saw in Saving Private Ryan. This is on the bluffs overlooking Omaha Beach, the only veteran cemetery Ive been to thats actually on the battlefield. You can walk to the edge of the bluff and see up and down the whole beach
This is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. Ive been to other American veteran cemeteries in the US, including Arlington, but none better taken care of than this one. The French have great reverence for this place.
And so do I.
I'm not a religious person, tho I do believe in God. It's hard not to feel like youre in a holy place here. And under every one of these blocks of stone is a person who gave it all up for what they thought was right. We can only salute that noble motive and the sacrifice that went with it. Anything we can do is only a poor tribute to their sacrifice but this is as good as we can do.
I spent that night in Port en Bessin again. If anyone goes there. here's a good place to stay. I was driving that little silver car on the right.
The next day I got up early again and drove early out to the Cotentin.You saw this on Band of Brothers, the 101st and the 82d airborne divisions going in at night.
I may be only a retroactive Ranger (see previous diary) but I'm ALL paratrooper. I made 43 jumps in the service of my country (and peeled a lot of spuds too) I went through jump school in Ft Benning GA in summer 1966. I was proud to wear jumpwings and I'm STILL proud of it. I don't need or want a beret-- I wore the garrison cap with glider patch the WWII guys wore---thats who I wanted to be like. And that glider patch honors some MIGHTY men. I wouldn't wear anything else.
And the Airborne going into the Cotentin peninsula on D' Day is THE jump for paratroopers, the one every paratrooper looks at and asks himself (or herself now) and thinks "How would I have done on The Big One?" A paratrooper going to the cotentin is looking at the Holy Grail.
In the event, it was another clusterfuck, in that virtually everyone was dropped in the wrong place. Once again, it was the individual aggressiveness, courage and determination of the paratroopers to get into the fight that carried the day.
Ste Mere Eglise was an important road and railroad point in the cotentin peniinsula. The idea was to land the invasion forces at Utah Beach and drive west aross the peninsula, cutting off the Germans in Cherborg. The Airborne dropped in early to secure the causeways off the beach---long causeway roads through normally flat bottom land---and secure roads and railroads. the Germans had flooded the land to thwart paratroop invasion and the causeways were the only exit off the beach.
The rest of the flat farmland had been planted with Rommelspargel---Rommel Asparagus--mines and other obstacles planted all over fields to thwart paratroop and glider invasion.
This Map, from the SME museum, gives a goood idea. Utah Beach is on the right, Omaha Beach is about 12 miles east of there. You see the road and rail line that needed to be cut. You see the causeways off the beaches through thefllooded area that had to be secured
I drove first to St Mere Eglise on a rainy day, which explains the pedestrian photography.. SME is one of the places every Airborne trooper knows, it's been portrayed in many movies.
In the movie The Longest Day, Red Buttons played John Steele, a paratrooper who got hung up on a church steeple. then played dead and watched the Germans massacre the paratroopers who dropped into the town (they were misdropped) There was a fire going on in the town at the time and the Germans were wide awake.
Here's the church he hung off, it's right in the town square
John Steele became somewhat of a celebrity here, coming back to visit it untill he died. There's a John Steele Bar and a John Steele Hotel, that's it up there on the left
The Airborne was landed all over. It became a bunch of small, mostly uncoordinated units taking on the Germans whereever they found them. Fortunately a lot of the deception tactics worked and the Germans were unready for them.
The airborne was also to secure landing zones for the gliders that followed. I think glider operations were really the most unsung heroic story of the war. It took some gts to gget into those canvas crates and be towed up to a 100o miles, bobbing and weaving, with a jeep load of Ammo or a small cannon behind you, stufffed to the gills with ammo to land in a field with God knows what in it. Geez Louise AND the glider troops got---wait for it---no extra pay.
(I want to say that IMHO the two best and most comprehensive books on WWII Airborne and Glider operations are "Paratrooper" and "Silent Wings" by Gerard Devlin, himself a decorated paratrooper. No student of WWII should be without these)
The museum at St Mere Eglise is has one of the 2 remaining Waco gliders in it, (piictured below) it's worth seeing for that alone but this is also the best Airborne museum in Europe.
When I was in the 101st in Vietnam I was in the 327th PIR, formerly a glider unit. I'm proud of that link to these heroes also. I wear that glider patch with pride, in honor of some mighty men.
After SME, I drove around looking for a place to picnic---did I say it was raining? I drove to Utah Beach, about 7 miles away and ate my lunch sitting in the car.
Utah Beach was not near as bloody as Omaha. Many say thats because they dropped the Airborne in to secure it first.
Utah Beach:
The ground forces were---you guessed it---mislanded here also but it turned out fortuitously. The preliminary Air and naval bombardment was much more effective here and the Germans on the beaches put up little resistance. Sherman Tanks were rolling across the causeways by noon.
they Have ANOTHER excelllent museum here. I advise, if taking this tour, to limit yourself to no more than two of these museums per day, you'll get burned out. I mean there's just so many different kinds of jeeps and M1's.
But I'm a Been There Done That Got The T-Shirt kind of person so I stocked up on fridgerator magnets and ball caps for my old Airborne cronies. I also had picked up a bottle of sand from Omaha.
This is not a big area, about 10miles by 10, so I jjust cruised around the roads getting a feel for the place. This was one of those places I'd heard about a lot but being there really made it real. I saw a lot of places mentioned in Band of Brothers, like Brecourt Manor, where they silenced the guns, St MArtin De Varville and St MArie du Mont, pictured below. That's the same monument that's pictured in the book Band Of Brothers
It was dark when I left the Cotentin I drove back to Pt Au Bessin for the 3d and last night, stopping for a rainy, thoughtful walk on Omaha. I think I answered my own question by going to the Cotentin. How well would I have done in The Big One? I guess I'd have done OK.