I've been to this place probably 5 or 6 times since 1994. It is hard to not be moved.



By the way, the 5th Engineer Special Brigade monument is sitting on top of the main German gun emplacement WN62.



















All photos with a Nikon D810 and a Nikkor 28mm f/1.8G lens. Most at f/11 and ISO 200.

Thanks for posting. I have been looking at touring the Beach for three or four years, thought it would work out this year but it cost me to much to over night in Paris with me using shy miles. Did you do the day trip from Paris? How do you tour the site. It would be VERY moving, can't imagine what those guys went through.

I always overnight at the same hotel (La Sapinière) which is on the beach in Saint Laurent sur Mer. Since I usually arrive in the afternoon (about a 3 and half hour drive from my house) I take a walk up the beach from the hotel to the draw at the East end of the beach, where the 1st Infantry Division monument is located. I think that looking at the site, from the perspective of a man landing on the beach, first, before going to the cemetery is a good thing to do. I almost always have dinner at the same hotel's restaurant, since they do a very good job of it.

Next morning I go to one of any of a number of museums nearby, several are very good. Then I go to Pointe du Hoc (a ten minute drive from the hotel), where the 2nd and 5th Rangers scaled the vertical cliffs to the coastal gun emplacements. Only then do I go to the cemetery, usually around noon, and spend the afternoon there. In 2007 a visitors center was built, that is where the infinity pool in the photo above is located.

I urge anyone going to take the English language tour. If you're lucky you'll get an amazing guide named Anthony Lewis.

Thank you for posting this.

I thank all those who came ashore with the living hell it must have been for persevering, overcoming and winning.
Do you have any pictures from the beach(water) looking ashore?

I might have a shot toward the cemetery from the beach taken on previous visits. From the overlook at the cemetery looking toward the beach this is what you see.




It's so peaceful there now that it is hard to imagine what it must have been then.

Thanks for your post.

Wow. Thanks Wink. I sometimes wonder why some people face sheer terror in their lives through no fault of their own while others seem to be untouched by it.

Wink,
Many thanks for posting the Normandy photos. I lived in Europe for a total of 9 years, but never made it to Normandy. I should have and regret not having done so.

TT

The Pointe du Hoc is just down the road, also a good battleground to visit.






https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointe_du_Hoc

There was a reason for this trip. I wanted my friend Jan Dumon, who happened to be in France, the chance to visit so I offered to be his guide for a couple of days.




This is WN65, at the E-1 exit draw if you want to locate it in a landing map. WN is short for Widerstandsnest, the German term. The original gun is still in the bunker, a PAK 37 50mm anti-tank gun. Inside the bunker you can see the very large hole in the gun armor, probably made by a 37mm gun on a half-track from the AAA AW Bn.

A description of the gun here:

http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/50mm/

This particular place was so hard to take that beach landings were halted at 9:00 AM and this bunker wasn't taken until 11:40 AM. The hotel La Sapinière is about 100 yards from this site.

My father was not in this AAA AW Battalion, the 467th landed at H+120 and was attached to the 116th if the 29th Inf. Div. My Dad was in the 103rd AA AW attached to the 1st Inf. Div. He was occupied elsewhere that day, closer to the Coleville draw, the E-3 exit.





This is an example of a 155mm Long Tom, a large field artillery piece, on an M1 carriage. 100 lb. shell, max. range 22km, around 13.5 miles.





An M4 Sherman tank, main gun is a 75mm, secondary weapons are a .50 cal. machine gun and two .30 cal. machine guns.

Thanks for posting more pictures, every time I look at the pics I'm just in awe at what those men did. To charge into those guns with all the death and destruction around them is more than I can fathom. Thanks again for posting, I must make plans to see it.

Thanks for posting. Very Cool!

Thank you sir.

very nice.

This is just down the road from me. Not a lot of people know it's here...

https://www.dday.org/

quote:

Originally posted by BaxterB:
very nice.

This is just down the road from me. Not a lot of people know it's here...

https://www.dday.org/

I knew nothing about this place. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. I knew of the "Bedford Boys" of course, since they are mentioned in many books and accounts of D-Day. I'm glad to see Bedford was chosen for the Memorial.