Normandy commemorations
A family tour to Normandy was John Sootheran’s chance to discover this beautiful region’s momentous WWII history
Reclining on the deck of Brittany Ferries’ Normandie super-ferry in the early summer sunshine, I pondered how I might have had to make this journey 70-odd years earlier. Would I have preferred to travel by sea, in a wildly rocking landing craft, with freezing water lashing over the sides, and bombs and shells falling all around in a macabre lottery, where sheer luck, not talent or skill, was your only ally?
Or would I rather have made an airborne crossing in a wooden Horsa glider, towed by a four-engined plane and released to the vagaries of the unseasonal summer weather, to (essentially) crash-land in enemy territory?
I thanked my lucky stars these are options we’ve never had to contemplate, largely because of the sacrifices made in Normandy all those years ago.
D-day (known then as Operation Neptune) is marked and commemorated on 6 June every year in northern France, and I recommend this as an event that everyone, adults and children alike, should experience. On that single day, 1200 aircraft and 5000 vessels traversed the
Channel to land almost 160,000 troops in Normandy to create a beach-head – a staging post for the Allies to push on into Europe.
The tales of heroism are innumerable and I guarantee that a few days in the region (particularly during June) will inform and inspire you like no other weekend.
Plan your agenda
There’s so much to see, an agenda will help you make the most of your visit. We travelled on Brittany Ferries’ Portsmouth-caen crossing. This excellent service is on well-equipped ships (with restaurants, cinemas and live entertainment) and takes around five hours.
I recommend it for a short break, because it drops you in Ouistreham, the centre of the British D-day actions.
Choose a campsite near areas you want to visit. There are many excellent options – I’ve stayed at Eurocamp Independent’s La Vallée site, Les Hautes Coutures in Bénouville, and the C&MC site, La Côte de Nacre.
So, here are our must-see destinations and events, based largely on the British beaches of Sword and Juno. If you also wish to visit the American beaches – Utah, Omaha and Gold – these are further to the west.
Pegasus Bridge and Café Gondrée
Ranville, Normandy
The very first shots of D-day were fired here at Pegasus Bridge. Back then, it was known as Bénouville Bridge, spanning the River Orne. The new name derives from the shoulder badge worn by members of the Parachute Regiment. This depicts Bellerophon, a hero of Greek mythology, riding the flying horse Pegasus.
At 16 minutes after midnight on 6 June 1944, six gliders holding 181 men of the British 6th Airborne Division landed silently within yards of the bridge.
The Germans were taken completely by surprise, and the bridge was captured with little loss of Allied life.
Mme Arlette Gondrée was just five years old at the time of the invasion. Her parents owned and ran the Café Gondrée beside the bridge and supplied vital intelligence to the Allies prior to D-day.
Both the café and Mme Gondrée are still there, and this rather upmarket teashop now has iconic status and is a focal point for re-enactors and military vehicles from the period. If you visit, bear in mind that on busy weekends, the café only accepts cash.
Diagonally opposite there is the Memorial Pegasus museum, where you’ll find a replica Horsa glider and the original Bénouville Bridge, which was replaced in 1994. The details of this heroic raid are all here – tales of derring-do don’t get any better than this.
The first Allied casualty of D-day, Lieutenant Den Brotheridge, was gunned down crossing the bridge.
He is laid to rest in the churchyard in nearby Ranville. Next to the church is the tranquil Ranville Cemetery.
Ranville Cemetery
Rue du Comté Louis de Rohan
Chabot, Ranville, Normandy
This immaculately maintained cemetery has to be one of the most serene places you’ll ever visit. Beautifully kept by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, it is both deeply sad and very inspiring.
Ranville Cemetery contains 2235 WWII burials, each one marked with a perfectly aligned white headstone. There are also 330 German graves. You can discover fascinating information online at fallenheroesphotos. org/cemeteries/24.
My daughter wondered why the headstones marked with stars had pebbles laid on them. Of course, these were Jewish memorials, and the pebbles – always laid with the left hand – are a sign that someone has visited the grave. In ancient times, before headstones were used, a small cairn would mark each grave. Leaving a pebble on every visit ensured that the cairn would never disappear.
As you stand in this peaceful place contemplating the unimaginable losses of those times, I can almost guarantee you’ll find you have something in your eye – must be sand blowing inland from the beach…
Longues-sur-mer Battery
39 Rue de la Mer, 14400 Longues-sur-mer Some 25 miles to the west of Ouistreham, you can visit the imposing gun battery at Longues-sur-mer, once a key part of the Nazis’ Atlantic Wall defences. It housed four 152mm Škoda guns in separate concrete casemates
‘Pegasus Bridge was named for the badge of the Parachute Regiment’
with metre-thick protective walls. These fearsome weapons could fire up to 20km out to sea.
It was from here at Longues-sur-mer that the Germans first spotted the Allied armada of 5000 vessels approaching, at dawn on that June morning. The story goes that nobody quite dared to wake the insomnia-afflicted Adolf Hitler back in Germany to announce the impending attack, and the subsequent delay allowed the American forces a little more time to create their initial beach-head.
The area is perhaps the size of a football stadium, and the RAF dropped 1500 bombs on it overnight on 5 June. Two warships also pounded it with 179 shells from their heavy guns. Hard to imagine, and it must have been absolute hell.
Eventually the battery was rendered useless, and
184 German soldiers surrendered to US troops. But given the intensity of the assault, the casemates are remarkably intact and so are the guns.
At the cliff edge is another grim concrete bunker, a look-out post that’s also designed to defend the gun emplacements from beach attack.
Look towards the east from Longues-sur-mer and you can see the Mulberry harbour just along the coast at Arromanches. This is where the Allied forces created an entire harbour in a matter of days, by floating huge, hollow, concrete jetties across the Channel and sinking them at the shoreline. The numbers are astonishing; for example, 600,000 tons of concrete were used to create the 33 jetties, and 2.5 million men and 500,000 vehicles landed at the harbour in the following months.
Ouistreham and Le Grand Bunker
Avenue du 6 Juin, 14150 Ouistreham Ouistreham is a lovely seaside town of 10,000 people, which is also home to the ferry port. The old town is most appealing, with its pretty church, mairie, stone buildings and what might just be the world’s cutest cinema, the Cinéma Le Cabieu.
The shopping and patisseries are good, too, and we found an absolute culinary gem on one visit. Casserole & Bouchons, at 70 Avenue de la Mer, is part of a small restaurant chain, which is much easier on the tastebuds and wallet than it is on the eye!
The garish silver-meets-pink décor belies the really delicious menu, which is tasty and cheap. We visited for lunch and ordered the prix fixe menu. We expected a modest lunch-time snack, but were inundated with regional specialities, along with half a bottle of wine to share. We staggered away 90 minutes later, having paid around £25. Highly recommended, and they have restaurants at nearby Cabourg and Caen, too.
Ten minutes away from the restaurant is Le Grand Bunker, the Atlantic Wall Museum, at Avenue du 6 Juin, 14150 Ouistreham. This rather incongruous, brutalist, concrete bunker sits in an attractive residential area, two blocks from the seafront.
Back in 1944, it was a key hub of the Nazi defences
– a self-contained HQ housing barracks, kitchens, communications, air-filtration systems and an arsenal of weapons inside metre-thick concrete walls.
The top floor was a viewing platform with panoramas across the Channel and the Orne estuary. Each floor
inside the 50ft-high bunker has been very carefully recreated to look just as it would have 76 years ago.
Then, the bunker’s German occupants ended up completely surrounded by Allied troops and when the Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers blew the armoured door off, eventually surrendered without loss of life.
Merville Battery
Place du 9ème Bataillon,
14810 Merville-franceville-plage
Just a few miles to the east of Ouistreham, you’ll find the Merville Battery. Wartime intelligence suggested this emplacement housed heavy guns that were capable of picking off ships supporting the Allied invasion, so an attack was planned.
Some 600 troops were dispatched there by parachute and glider, but only 150 made it to the assembly point. A fierce battle ensued, which culminated in an Allied victory, although only 75 men survived. Sadly, following the battle, it was discovered that only Wwi-vintage, 100mm guns were sited there, which were considered far less dangerous than had been anticipated.
Today, Merville is definitely worth visiting. There’s plenty to see, including a Dakota DC3 troop-carrying plane, like those that dropped the Allied parachutists. Although there’s no large weaponry here, this is still a place with a memorable history.
Veterans
The number of D-day veterans making the annual trip to Normandy has, of course, been seriously depleted in recent years – most are now in their nineties.
However, those who do make the journey are usually happy to talk to other visitors and answer questions, and I would hope most of them appreciate that their pals who perished have not been forgotten.
Normandy beaches
Normandy’s vast beaches are where the horrors and heroism of D-day largely happened. They can be bleak and windswept or golden and inviting, depending when you make your visit.
All along this coastline, there are memorials and monuments, including Monty’s statue at Rue de la Mer, Colleville-montgomery, and La Flamme, on Boulevard Aristide Briand, Ouistreham. This flame-like sculpture sits on top of a cast-iron German machine-gun post.
Caen Memorial
Esplanade Eisenhower, 14066 Caen
The Caen Memorial is an impressive museum built over a subterranean German bunker, from which the coastal defences were managed. The building is home to permanent and touring exhibits and a memorial garden. Visit the website to see what’s on, and don’t miss the impressive Hawker Typhoon fighter plane.
‘Normandy’s beaches were scenes of great heroism, and all along this coastline there are memorials’