Just wondering if any SF members up in la Manche and le Calvados… got involved in any of this …
1 Like
“John has a long moustache.”
Hard to believe that the whole invasion nearly got called off due to bad weather and Ike had prepared both success and failure speeches.
Anyone who has the chance to visit Pegasus Bridge at Ranville should do so and have a beer at the Café Gondrée whilst pondering just how the Ox & Bucks even managed to land their gilders in the same post code as the two bridges, let alone do so and capture them.
1 Like
Years ago we were travelling back with BF to the UK from Ouistreham, by chance on 6th June. I think it must have been 1994. The boat was delayed due to all the DDay celebrations, parachute landings etc. We had a fabulous view of everything from the deck.
1 Like
If you go there you must visit the museum.
It has the original bridge, mock up of the gliders, and an amazing exhibition that explains how close to failure the entire operation was.
Luck, and Hitler having a lie in, was on our side that day
2 Likes
There is also the wonderful British Memorial at Ver-sur-Mer, opened a couple of years ago.
2 Likes
Having mugged up the [then] London Tourist Board ‘Driver/Guide’ exam and passed - 70% of the syllabus is London and 70% of London is St Pauls/W.minster Abb/Tower of London - my first ever tour was the 40th anniversary commem of D-Day for a US 91st Airborne vet and his wife!
In the great US cemetary on 7th June my man met a German officer whose group had captured the c/o of my client’s battalion - but "You got him back because then you captured us!" Amazingly, a Japanese vet joined these two men and a lively - and friendly - chat ensued.
We visited the grave of his once company sargeant-major. This man had had his stripes ripped off and been reduced to the ranks for persistant drunkeness. He still got drunk and was picked off by a German sniper when he blundered off into the bocage one night.
For many years, before I ever went to the town as a resident in Normandy, St Lo has resonated in my mind. It was at St Lo that my 91st Airborne client’s war came to an end. He was on ‘body bag’ duty when a shell exploded nearby. Wounded, he was shipped back to the US with his Purple Heart.
I did three or four more tours that year and 40th anniversary ‘Victory in Europe’ tours in 1985, one of which was for the ‘Philadelphia Gilbert & Sullivan Operatic Soc’ annual European tour/holiday. They bashed out HMS Pinafore in Caen cathedral after a day on the beaches and at Point du Hoc.
On another of the 1985 tours a US Brigadier, c/o of advanced medical teams, stopped as we walked from the beach into the dunes - "I saw my first dead German right here". A sobering moment.
I worked for an American who was 18 when he came ashore on Utah on D+4/5 or so. He said the scene was utterly bizzare. Smoke and explosions from artillery and naval guns raged all along the immediate horizon but set up on the beach were two towers with loudspeakers belting out Glen Miller.
I’m fortunate to have had these experiences of the commemoration of D-Day and been paid for it.
As I sit by the open window in my house in Vire I can hear a marching band. It would be nice to think this was a D-Day celebration but I saw a gathering of the Union clans preparing in the town square for another bout of banner-waving and protest.
3 Likes