If you know me then you know I am a history buff. Rochelle was graceous enough to let me take her on a 1 1/2 train ride then a 40 min bus ride to the Beaches of Normandy. Normandy is kind of like a provence of France, thus going there we found a whole new feel of what French Culture is like.
A Church on the way there, this one is in the city of Caen.
We Made it!!!
One of many Bunkers lining the Beach, this one had a MG (Machine Gun) mounted to the top and was used as a flank defense for the bigger bunkers.
From the inside of the bunker looking up at the Turret house.
Walkway leading down to the entrance
A View down the beach from the bunker
A larger bunker, one that can be seen in the opening scene of "Saving Private Ryan" This one would house multiple units. As well as spotters for Artillery, that would be stationed farther inland.
An entrance to the bunker
A few of the paths leading to the beach had mini memorials of those who died for their countries.
We were on Juno Beach, Omaha was a little too far for us to reasonably make it to and from Paris in a resonable time. Juno was a landing site that the Canadian landing force was in charge of taking on D-Day. Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno & Sword Beach were all names given by the Allies to coordinate between 12 countries with US and the UK and the helm.
June 6th 1944 the 1,332,000 Allies with 380,000 Axis defending, The Allies were able to defeat the Nazi Atlantic Wall and push back the Axis to which many would claim was the turning point of the war. Estimates of 120,000 allies and roughly that Axis fell during invasion.
Thank you to those served and to those who fell.
2 comments:
My first thought was "wait a minute.. rochelle isn't a history nut!" then i realized what was going on. ;) nice to hear from you doug and thanks for the mini history lesson. I must say, I didn't know anything about the beaches before this post (I'll blame my horrible world history teacher).
How sad, Allison.
And you are not alone!
Your generation seems to know nothing about US history either as this was such an important part of it.
No wonder then there is so little understanding of what is really happening today.
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