This page is a mess, because I wanted a simple page, but the HTML idiots don't want that.

D-Day 2004

So, it was time to go. I'd been up to Normandie before but had never seen the beaches.

This time I packed light and just went to Bayeux. To do this you really need a car or to go when it's not Sunday or D-Day, because there is no transport, except for for cabs, but the Bayeux to OMAHA trip is 50€ -- a ridiculous price, but I was prepared:

Magnum Hitec tactical boots

North Face small backpack

SAS Survival Manual

1000 deg C torch lighter

Bottle of bad Bordeaux

2 small packs of Stackers' chips

Lousy map of Normany (I tried to find the original, used at the time)

Spare socks and undies

North Face Gumbo Gortex jacket

A corkscrew

The Demon In The Freezer

A Beautiful Mind

CWU-36/P

Class 1 Firearms Permit

Fisher Space Pen

Sony P-8 digital camera with various memory sticks

Garmin LEGEND GPS

Sony/Ericsson T68i [you always need commo]

IIIA vest

Gerber stiletto backup knife

Chargers

Corkscrew

So I got up there on the the Saturday night [5th] and found a small French bar (serving one German beer) chock full of Brit gits, so I talked to the owner and these idiots for a while (translating where necessery).

This guy had been 3 at the time and they had abandoned their farm, only to return to search for food. He had 9 siblings. As they approached their farm they were machine gunned and his old man took a round though the thigh. He was lucky as the US Army patched him up and they returned to the farm to find their 3 german machine gunner friends dead.

At some point I'd broken through the guy running the bar's vouvoyer defence and he was into the tutoyer mode; at that point you have won. Two of the Brits were cool and thanked him and myself for his offer of a bath, shower and toilet at 0800 on the morning of the 6th, for a few €.

The others had daggers in their eyes; they had a good deal, but the convict has disproven their predjudices. Ahh, fuck 'em ...

So after a few beers and a great entrecôte at the above restaurant I trekked off, finally cursing the fact that I had left my CAT I Night Vision at home. Then it was time to sleep in a field, after about an hour's walk. That lasted for about an hour and then after four hours of shivering it was time to move.

As I left Bayeux I had my Gerber in my right boot, given that flat-hatting around the country on yer lonesome is not a great idea (in fact various people told me not to go or joked that I would not not come back -- yea of little faith).

So at 0500 I got up. It was cold and foggy, but knew my vest, CWU-36/P and Gortex jacket would keep me warm as long as I trapped my body heated air.

Permet de se rendre sur une image en cliquant

The above shots are taken at around 0500. There was fog eveywhere and the visibility was about 200m; One and a half hours before the first landings at OMAHA. The light was all moonlight [GPS verified] as the Sun [GPS verified] was not going to rise till 0600.

So I trekked toward the nearest beach and continued along the cliffs ...

Then I found a German blockhouse ...

And various lethal assault points and how flat Normandie is ...

Wandering down to OMAHA Fox Red ...

OMAHA Fox Red

This is the sea wall. The first shot looks out towards the sea while the second looks up the slight hill (at Fox Red). The sea wall is about a metre high and around it there are pebbles or large-ish small stones [5x3cm], washed by the sea. This was an unhealthy place to be [MGRS 30U XV 56616 69777, altitude 5m, datum WGS-84].

The problem was that all their tanks sank ('cos they were not USN and the tankers didn't understand wind), it was low tide (like in 2004) and they had the odd problem. It being low tide meant you had to run several hundred metres to the sea wall. During this fun run you had the MG-42 trying to ruin your whole day.

Then, if you made the sea wall, you were pinned down; mortars crashing down and machine gun fire, retreating was suicide and advancing was interesting. This is the scene in Saving Private Ryan, several klicks west at Dog Green, when they bring up Bangalores to blow away the barbed wire on the sea wall.

Once/If you had done that you might be in a better position to attack the German defenses ...

I only walked 15 klicks there and another 15 klicks back -- it hurt [every step on the way back], but I was not facing the MG-42.

Poor bastards ...