Today was our last full day in Bayeux before we move on to Mont St Michel tomorrow, which meant that we had a pretty full itinerary. Chuck scored us some more baked French goodies at the boulangerie near our hotel and we headed off to Utah Beach for our first stop. We checked out the French monument first, commemorating the sacrifices of the French armored 2nd division and then headed toward the American monuments and Utah Beach Landing Museum. Despite its location on Utah Beach, the museum provided a really great overview of the entire operation, including the lead up to the invasion and all of the pieces that had to be in place for the mission to be successful. For Band of Brothers fans they had a big room on the Brecourt Manor raid which was very cool.

We stopped for a quick lunch (relatively speaking for meals in France) before heading on to St-Mère-Église, where members of the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions landed in the early morning hours of D-Day. For anyone who has watched The Longest Day, this is the site where the parachute of an American paratrooper caught on the steeple of the church during landing. Because of the heavy firing by the German troops, he was forced to play dead for hours before he could be cut down to safety.

Next was La Cambe, the cemetery where the German soldiers are buried. At first, it seems counterintuitive for this to be a stop on the American tourist’s Normandy circuit, but the cemetery is a great reminder of the lost lives of young German soldiers, many of whom did not willingly choose to enlist. The cemetery is very sedate, in stark contrast with the American and British cemeteries we would visit next.

The American cemetery was our next stop. We had received a request this morning from Uncle Bob, Becky’s stepmother’s brother, to visit the grave of his great uncle, Sergeant James Burgin with the US Army 60th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division, who was killed a month after D-Day and buried in the Normandy American cemetery. Unfortunately, the plots are roped off and visitors must make prior arrangements to visit a particular grave, so we were unable to walk directly up to his grave. However, with some clever sleuthing, we were able to locate the grave from the walkway and Chuck used his fancy camera to zoom in on his grave marker. The cemetery was a very somber and moving experience, but having a particular soldier’s grave to locate personalized the experience for us. We were glad to have the opportunity to capture a picture of his very peaceful resting place.

Our next stop was Omaha Beach. Having visited Utah Beach earlier in the day, we were able to observe the contrast between the two, noting how much wider Omaha Beach is and how much more ground the soldiers had to cover (with almost no cover) to neutralize the gun nests on top of the bluffs. We’ve seen the movies and read in books how much more difficult it was to secure Omaha Beach, but seeing it in person definitely helped us appreciate the scale.

Our last stop was the British cemetery. While the German cemetery was subtle and sedate and the American cemetery was somber and pristine, the British cemetery felt like a celebration of those buried there. Each grave had flowers planted in front of the gravestone, all painstakingly tended. The plots are not roped off, allowing visitors to quietly walk among the grave markers and leave their wreaths and bouquets. It was so interesting to see the differences across the three cemeteries.

The British cemetery was our last stop for the day and we were both pretty worn out, so we grabbed a quick dinner near the hotel before settling in for the night.

Today’s Highlights

• Dipping our toes in the water at both American D-Day beaches
• Three somber but distinct war cemeteries
• Becky being startled by yet another mannequin lurking in a dark corner (ALWAYS WITH THE MANNEQUINS. WHY?!)
• Pizza topped with Camembert and potatoes for dinner
• Calvados (apple brandy, a Normandy specialty) tasting in the hotel bar while we drafted this blog

Tomorrow’s Proposed Adventures

• Touring the Bayeux cathedral
• Viewing the Bayeux tapestry
• Moving on to iconic Mont St Michel