Day 4 in Paris, was actually not spent in Paris. We woke up before the sun and drove our rental car 3 hours west to the region of Normandy. We had a private tour scheduled to see all the historic sites of D-Day. We met with our tour guide, Trevor, in the town of Sainte-Mere-Eglise. This was the first town to be liberated by Americans on D-Day. Paratroopers parachuted down into the village as the first wave of assault. One of the only survivors of the attack was John Steele. His parachute got hung on the church steeple and he played dead for two hours before the Germans took him prisoner. He later escaped and became a living legend around Sainte-Mere-Eglise. You can see a model of him hanging by his parachute from the church steeple.
In this village we toured a D-Day museum and then Trevor took us around the church and gave us a descriptive account of the battle that night in Sainte-Mere-Eglise. From there we drove to Utah beach.
We stood on the beach and Trevor (the tour guide, not my husband) drew in the sand some illustrations of the tactics that were used in the invasion. He also gave us a detailed account what happened on that beach on June 6, 1944.
From there we went to a church in a small village that two American medics used as a home base for treating American soldiers and German soldiers. Trevor told us the story of these two heros, who are both still living, and what happened inside that church many year ago. I'm sad that I didn't get any pictures of the inside of the church, they only shot I got was of a tombstone outside of the church.
After the tour of the church we drove to an old family farm that is now a bed and breakfast for lunch. It was a husband and wife that owned it and wife took our order and went back into the kitchen to cook our lunch. While she was cooking the husband kept bringing out things that he wanted to show us. He showed us pictures that an American soldier drew of the farm while he was injured and staying there, and some cartoon like pictures that the same man drew. The food was amazing, and for dessert they served us apple sorbet with calvados, which is an apple brandy made only in lower Normandy.
The next stop on the tour was Pointe du Hoc which is between Utah beach and Omaha beach. This is where the U.S. 2nd Ranger Battalion was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James Earl Rudder (Whoop!) to destroy the German strongpoint early on D-Day.
Did I mention is was cold and windy there??
This is a monument of a dagger stuck in the ground in honor of the Rangers that scaled the cliffs using daggers.
Trevor (the husband, not the tour guide) walking down into a bunker.
It looks like a golf course, but it is really covered in craters made by all the bombs that were dropped here.
The next stop was Omaha beach.
Once again our tour guide did a great job of painting a picture for us of all the events that took place on this beach on June 6, 1944. It was a pretty somber place while we were there. Our tour guide said that he was leading a tour one day when he saw a veteran on the beach. He started talking to him and then man started crying as he watched children playing in the water. Our tour guide asked him if it was bring back bad memories, but he said that his tears were tears of joy. He was so glad that what they had done that day had now allowed the children to play freely.
Our last stop of the day was the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial.
This was also a very moving place. There was just a sea of white crosses everywhere you looked.
We made Trevor cut the tour short at this point because we had to get the rental car returned by 10:30, and we still had a 3 hour drive back ahead of us. We got back and returned the car just in time. At that point we were so tired and hungry that we picked up a pizza and brought it back to the hotel. We ate it up and fell right to sleep.
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