1000 Places to See Before You Die 10 - The Beaches of Normandy

I think everyone is familiar with D-Day, the military operation in which the Allies crossed the English Channel, landing on the beaches of Normandy and taking the Nazis by surprise. This all started on June 6th 1944. More than 5,000 ships and landing vessels, 50,000 vehicles and 11,000 airplanes crossed the channel headed for French beaches with codenames such as Omaha, Utah and Sword. On the first day alone 4,900 allied soldiers died and more followed since. 

9,386 American soldiers are buried on the American churchyard at Colleville-sur-Mer, while almost 5,000 British, Canadian, Australian and South African men are buried on the British graveyard at Bayeux.  

The site of Omaha beach includes the Monument du Débarquement (a monument to the Normandy landings) and the Musée-Mémorial d’Omaha Beach which contains tanks, dioramas and photograpghs. Nearby the American cemetery lies on a hilltop overlooking the site of the landing on Omaha Beach. (For practical information see this website: http://www.fodors.com/world/europe/france/normandy/things-to-do/sights/reviews/omaha-beach-475247 )

The American cemetery at Omaha Beach

The view from the cemetery over the beach itself

Another site on the coast is Point du Hoc 13 km west of St.-Laurent. A German machine gun post has been preserved here. There is a memorial pillar, but otherwise it stands as the Germans left it, when it was captured by the Allies. (For practical information see here: http://www.fodors.com/world/europe/france/normandy/things-to-do/sights/reviews/pointe-du-hoc-475251 )

This is a machine gun post. As mentioned below I was here on a school trip many
years ago and I didn't feel the need to specify which machine gun post this is...

I went on a school trip to Normandy in 1999 I believe it was. Now this was a long time ago, even before the advent of digital cameras (so excuse the quality of the pictures). I was a young teenager and even though I was honestly a bit tired of the topic of WWII, having been hounded with that theme every single school year for many years, I still found it quite a moving experience, to see these places. Especially the cemeteries made an impression. They are beautifully laid out in a stark contrast to the reason they even exist. And when you walk down the lines of crosses and stars-of-David reality really begins to settle in. It is hard to contemplate the massive numbers that were lost in the war, when sitting in a classroom, but looking out over the fields of graves you begin to understand something of the magnitude of the amount of lives that perished. And these sites only hold the graves of a tiny fraction of the total number of people lost to that war. 

The beaches and the related museums and graveyards are truly a must-see for pretty much anyone. I don’t think any country can claim to be unaffected by the Second World War. If not directly involved in the acts of war, all countries were at least affected by the reverberations in the aftermath. 

All facts from “1000 Places to See Before You Die” by Patricia Schultz and Fodor’s website: http://www.fodors.com/world/europe/france/normandy/things-to-do/sights/the-d-day-beaches