27/09/08 - The story of two invasions.

Another beautiful sunrise this morning as it came up over the hill,
and shed light on what remains of what was the busiest harbour in
Europe during the summer of 1944. Port Winston or Mulberry Harbour is
made up of huge concrete blocks that were towed over from England and
dropped into the water to create this huge artificial harbour. In the
1st few weeks of Normandy invasion, the Allies had no natural harbour
to use so this artificial one was used to unload all their supplies.

We had quick look around from the cliff edge and then drove down the
hill to 'Gold Beach' where we came across a memorial for Dave's county
- The Essex Regiment. Then it was time to head to Bayeux and travel
back 900 years to another invasion - The Norman Conquest of England in
1066.

Depicted in a 70 metre long tapestry made shortly after the Conquest -
the series of very well preserved pictures embroidered into the linen
cloth tell the story of how Harold (from England) betrayed William the
Bastard (from Normandy) and crowned himself, succeeding Edward the
Confessor to the English throne. This act was cause for celebration
though shortly after the appearance of Haley's Comet indicated all was
not well. William sailed to England, where the 14 hour battle of
Hastings culminated in Harold being killed by an arrow through his
eye. Thus William become known as William the Conqueror and King of
England!!!

Feeling a little more knowledgeable on England's turbulent royal
history, it was off to the train station to say goodbye to Kerryn and
Dave. Then back to take a look around Bayeux - a very pretty town
almost unscathed from the D-Day landings, and the first town in France
to be liberated. We took a walk around the peaceful, well maintained
4,868 graves of the British war cemetery. This included 8 New Zealand
graves of which we managed to find 2, among the many rows.

Then it was off up the coast to Omaha Beach where thousands of
American and German lives were lost in the most brutal section of the
D-day beaches. Now it is a very peaceful long beach with sand-sailors
(sailing up and down the beach in a little three wheeled cart with
sail) zooming around. But we could imagine thousands of troops landing
on the beach, then having a couple of hundred metres of nothing to
hide behind, as they ran towards the machine guns shooting at them -
horriffic!!

Our last D-day sight for today was away from the beaches in the little
market town of Ste. Mére-Eglise. It was in this area, inland from
Utah Beach that American paratroopers landed in the early hours of
June 6. Unfortunately they ended up scattered all over the countryside
and for those that have seen the movie The Longest Day, one
unfortunate paratrooper landed right on top of the church in Ste.
Mére-Eglise - getting himself tangled up and hanging from the roof.
Somehow he managed to survive as he got a bird's eye view of the
fighting below.
The famous church which still stands, now has a mannequin soldier and
parachute hanging from the church roof to remind us all.