The pathfinders were the first to arrive in Normandy as part of the D-Day landings. Parachuting into Normandy just after midnight, their role was to map out the drop-zones for the main landings.
In total, 13400 airborne soldiers landed in Normandy, including E-company – the legendary Band of Brothers.
If you’ve seen the movie ‘The Longest Day’, you will remember the scene where John Steele’s parachute gets caught on the church steeple of Sainte-Mère-Église. Well this is where it happened. He lay there for over 2 hours pretending to be dead until he was captured by the Germans (he later escaped).
A minor correction to the figure hanging with the parachute – he was actually hanging on the other side, but I guess it looks more impressive from the town square.
Have a close look at the stained glass window from inside.
The German cemetery in La Cambe, Normandy, is the final resting place of more than 21,000 German soldiers who died during the Second World War.
Unlike the Allied cemeteries, which have white crosses or stars, the German cemetery has dark stone crosses and plaques.
Many of the graves belong to young men who were conscripted into the Nazi army and forced to fight against their will. Some of them were as young as 16 years old. The cemetery is a somber reminder of the tragedy and horror of war.
More photos of Normandy. A lot of the D-Day artefacts are in museums, but you still see them scattered through the countryside, left behind after the battles.
Field guns
Massive coltrops. These were used to stop just about anything and are remarkable similar to their predecessors used to stop horses, dating back to Ancient Greece.
More guns
Pillbox that clearly had a fair bit of damage
More guns
Another caltrop, with statues of soldiers exiting a landing craft on one of the landing beaches
This is a replica of the gliders that were used in the D-Day landings. The gliders were made of wood, and were only made for a single flight. They were literally towed across the channel and released to crash land in fields. They were used to transport troops, arms and supplies.
This replica is at the Pegasus Bridge Museum. To my knowledge there are no original gliders left since they were never made to last (there are a few restorations in the US).
Pegasus Bridge is a is a bascule bridge (which means it lifts up to allow river traffic through. It was one of the key access points that had to be secured in the D-Day landings, and one of the few places that had an almost text-book capture of the bridge. Although it’s also the site of the first allied casualty in the D-Day landings.
In 1994, when the road was widened, they replaced it with a wider version of the original bridge, which was moved to a museum alongside the canal.
Looking down towards the bridge towards the mechanism
The original bridge, in the Pegasus Bridge Museum. The museum has some interesting exhibits, including a full-scale glider replica, as well as parts of an original glider.
Mulberry Harbour is a most extraordinary piece of engineering. It is literally a floating harbour that was built around the Normandy beach to allow supplies into France during the D-Day landings. They allowed the Allies to land over two million men, half a million vehicles, and four million tons of supplies in the first 100 days following the D-Day landings. To make the breakwater, they deliberately sank over 30 several old war ships as well as other old ships.
Parts of the harbour are still on the beach and floating in the water, and if you look on Google Maps, you can still see parts of the floating harbour in the sea, still floating.
Some of the exhibits inside the Memorial Museum. There are many war museums in Normandy, but this one stands out with some excellent exhibits.
These giant coltrops are still found all over Normandy. They are meant to literally stop tanks in their tracks.
And some anti-aircraft artillery.
These are just a few of the tanks at the Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy In Bayeux. I’ll be sharing some photos inside the museum in later posts, but in the meantime here are a few of the tanks on display in the gardens.
Churchill Crocodile flame throwing tank. It was capable of throwing flames to over 100m distance.
Churchill Crocodile flame throwing tank – from the side
M10 tank destroyer, the workhorse tank of the USA army in World War 2.
The very rare Char Grizzly M4A5 Canadian Tank, basically a Canadian Sherman tank. They stopped producing them when they realised the the USA production would be sufficient for the Normandy landings.
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