D Day Background

To set the context for D Day, we first visited the German gun battery that remains largely intact.  Our guide was a magnificent story teller and explained the background so well.  These massive structures dotted the Normandy coastline in preparation for something that the Germans knew was coming but not where or when.  The above ground batteries were linked with an elaborate series of tunnels which essentially housed everything for them.

While the Germans  were preparing,  the allied forces were also planning.  The amount of preparation for this event in history was remarkable.  One of these remarkable accomplishments was figuring out how to get the supplies ashore to support the soldiers.  They accomplished this by building an artificial port in Arromanches.  They figured out how to haul hollow pillars across the channel, fill them with water to block off the sea and build a port that supply ships could use to land.  Of course they also had to have floating roads to get the vehicles off the boats and these were also built.

We visited many Canadian sites and learned about the soldiers but the museum at Falaise gave a different view.  This museum is dedicated to the civilians that lost their lives.  Since the Germans were occupying France, the allied bombed some of these cities pretty hard.  The destruction of Falaise and Caen was huge and this museum really highlighted the suffering at that time by the local people.

The castle in Falaise

William the Conquerer

As we were leaving our hotel in Bayeux stopped to ask if we were Canadians.  She then told us how her grandmother was just 16 during the war and had been hiding in a bomb shelter under rubble for days when the top opened and a man looked down to tell her he was Canadian and she was free!