D-Day Beaches

Ryan wanted to visit the D-Day beaches on a day trip which is about 3 1/2 hours drive from Paris but thought that Shauna should remain in Paris to shop and spend time with an Australian woman we met on the Champagne tour the day before to explore the city. The two of us being apart for 12 hours is the longest we've been away from eachother for over 2 1/2 months! Shauna had a wonderful time exploring food establishments and shops so it was for the better as she probably wouldn't have enjoyed the D-Day tour.

Operation Overlord was the largest amphibious assault in history and is also memorialized at the D-Day Museum in New Orleans which Ryan previously visited and highly enjoyed. This clip from Saving Private Ryan allows us to visualize the tremendous sacrifices American troops made for a free Europe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEh7p5ypQ9Y

The first stop on the his tour was Point Du Hoc which was an important landing point between Utah and Omaha Beaches. The 2nd Ranger Battalion took heavy causalities to capture the position but accomplished their mission of destroying heavy guns atop the cliff.
The landscape around Point Du Hoc still bears the deep scars of bombardment. The heavily fortified German positions withstood a lot of the aerial bombings and still appear rather solid over 60 years after D-Day.
Inside the artillery position, not a lot left but enough to get a sense of it's defensive position.
Omaha Beach is pictured below where the heaviest casualties were suffered on D-Day. I read elsewhere that the choices were simple since the troops couldn't go back into the sea and couldn't stay on the open space of the beach so the only option was to head forward towards the cliffs.
On Omaha Beach is a memorial to the US 1st Infrantry Division and the inscription is: "No Mission Too Difficult, No Sacrifice Too Great, Duty First, Forced Omaha Beach at Dawn 6 June"

Below is the reflecting pool of the American Cemetery in Normandy and contains about 10,000 American graves. The French have turned over the land to the American government for care and upkeep in perpetuity. Each marble gravestone is immaculately clean thanks to the efforts of workers like the gentleman below who scrubs each gravestone.

The gravestone below belongs to an unidentified solider and there were many of such graves at the cemetery.
Teddy Roosevelt Jr. died shortly after D-Day and you have to respect a Brigadier General who insisted on going onto Utah Beach with the first wave of troops. In fact, he was the only General to land with the first wave and was the first person off his landing craft. Unfortunately, he died of heart trouble just over a month after D-Day. Medal of Honor recipients like him have their gravestones with gold lettering.
The below view is of Omaha Beach from the American Cemetery and as you can see, it's a long way to the German positions with little cover to be had.
Gold Beach is pictured below which was taken by the British on D-Day. The structures that remain in the water were Mulberry harbors which the Allies built to facilitate the loading of equipment onto the beaches after they were secured. The natural port of Cherbourg was taken a while later so the Allies had to use the prefabricated harbors to get equipment in fast.
To finish the tour, a brief visit was made to Juno Beach which was taken by Canadian troops also with heavy losses. A new memorial center was recently built in the shape of a maple leaf.