Port 89 Honfleur, France

by Ed · June 8, 2022

Bonjour! Comment allez vous? (Hello! How are you?)

The weather forecast calls for rain all day, but there are pockets of clear skies as we enter the harbor in Honfleur on Jun 6th, 2022! Today is the 78th anniversary of the D-Day invasion! And I’m going to visit the beaches of Normandy today! Woo hoo! Joy has a separate tour to see the city of Rouen today.

We wake to see a tug giving an assist once again!

Beautiful little villages rise up the hillside overlooking the port. They have a ferris wheel here, too!

We used our own gangway today, but the port of Honfleur had one available if we needed it. All of those “packages” on the dock are bundles of lumber! Honfleur is one of the largest distribution ports for Scandinavian lumber.

Our bus heads west toward the Normandy coast. We start with rolling hills, then the land becomes flat.

We cross a very serene river, with a beautiful ship at dock!

Then we pass by the inner harbor. All looks good here!

Then we come to the outer harbor! It’s obvious we’re at low tide here! The river and harbor in the previous photos must have locks to control the tides.

For D-Day there were five landing zones, given special code names: Juno Beach (named by Canada), Gold Beach (named by the United Kingdom), Sword Beach (named by the United Kingdom and France), and Utah Beach and Omaha Beach (both named by the United States).

Here we are passing by Juno Beach.

The Cross of Lorraine was the symbol of France’s freedom during World War II, after the liberation of France from Nazi Germany. This cross stands on Juno Beach!

These three flags are also flying next to Juno Beach! United Kingdom, France, and Canada!

This cute tank named Charlie was a designed to be a bunker buster. Unfortunately, this specific tank fell into a bomb crater and three of the five crew were killed. Many years later, the two surviving crew mounted an effort to find and extract Charlie, then refurbished it for display here.

We move away from Juno Beach to head to Gold Beach. Looking back the Cross of Lorraine stands proud above the village!

As we approach Gold Beach it is easier to see how flat the land is by the waterfront – no major dunes or cliffs here.

It is also easy to see the tide is out – there is a lot of open beach . This is how it must have looked, but with a lot worse weather, 78 years ago when the troops began landing at low tide!

We arrive at the Gold Beach Memorial. Preparations are underway for a D-Day ceremony this morning.

This plaque pays honor to the men of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry who landed, fought, and died on this beach on D-Day. Most of the tanks coming with them were lost either before reaching shore, or shortly after.

Again, low tide. There is a lot of beach to cover. But this gave the men time to maneuver and learn where the German batteries were.

To the west we also see the remains of the Mulberry-B harbor that was quickly assembled to support the invasion operations.

Some of the local gentlemen prepare for the ceremony.

Flowers are already waiting in a trailer near the Gold Beach memorial.

A color guard prepares in the parking lot.

As we leave Gold Beach I snapped this shot of the flags, with Mulberry-B in the background.

We head into Arromanches to go the D-Day Museum. Outside, near where the bus dropped us off, were these excellent WW II-era vehicles!

A beautiful sentiment is painted on the side of a restaurant.

This is the D-Day Museum. We’ll enter at the black doors to watch the movie they have for us.

The museum has this sobering panoramic of the beach head with Mulberry B clearly shown.

And another wonderfully-preserved vehicle is here!

After we watch a twelve-minute video on the creation of the Mulberry harbors, we head into the museum to look around. This display is intended to show how many different types of landing craft were available to the troops.

There were displays for each of the countries involved in the operation. This is the United States window. I wanted to show the M-1 Garand rifle being displayed! We used M-1 Garands in our USC Air Force ROTC drill team.

The massive display available here begins with this – a multiple-case, moving water display of the Mulberry harbor system! That greenish water moved up and down in wave-like motion to show how the pier system was designed to move with the tides!

Large floating docks were brought in fo rthe ships to tie up to and offload equipment.

This is an overall scene of the entire Mulberry B system. It includes 15 ships (called Corncobs) that were sunk to make a breakwater (called a gooseberry), plus the Phoenix caissons that weighed 7,000 tons each, and the whales and beetles that created the roads to shore. It was amazing they could float all of this across the channel to install here! (The white and black stripes in the picture are reflections of the museum ceiling panels on the glass over the model, so ignore those if you can.)

Looking outside we see the sections still out in the water, and several sections of the floating dock that have since washed ashore. This was designed to last about 6 months for the duration of the war, and here we are 78 years later and the pieces are still out in the water!

The locals begin driving the duck, jeeps and other vehicles out on the sand. Photo ops! Sirens are blaring on those few vehicles that have them.

When we come out of the museum more jeeps are on the road!

I grab a photo of the manufacturer’s plate, and sure enough this is an authentic Willy’s 1/4 ton jeep!

I’m tickled at seeing the old uniforms. These are local French people wearing US and British uniforms! (We learned it is illegal for anyone to wear German uniforms!)

We head out to our next stop to see an American cemetery then Omaha Beach. We pass this beautiful old church and cemetery. There are military men standing at the entrance to the cemetery, so I’m guessing there are some military buried here. But this is not the one we’re looking for!

We find another interesting church and belltower on the way!

This memorial is for World War I!

This is the cemetery we’re looking for!

As we park the bus we are next to this gathering of ancient vehicles!

These people really enjoy their D-Day! I love the WAC uniform on the right! She’s the only one I saw! There were a lot of women dressed in men’s uniforms, but this is the only female uniform in sight!

We see the Normandy monument from behind. The path is blocked because there is a major ceremony about to take place there.

We can see Omaha beach from here, but no one is allowed to walk there from the cemetery.

We had several fly-bys by three C-130 aircraft! They flew low, and it was thrilling to hear and feel the roar of the engines as they passed! They made 4 passes that I witnessed – one at the D-Day museum, and three at the cemetery!

When I first arrived here I didn’t even get to take this picture before I broke down and cried. I couldn’t see the end of the cemetery! But with the exception of the 4,300 bodies that were asked to be sent back to the United States, all of these died here in World War II, over 9,300.

There are far too many of these headstones in this cemetery! “Here Rests in Honored Glory a Comrade in Arms Known but to God”

This memorial stands in the center of the cemetery.

It is for all of the countries, all of the soldiers who perished. The Jewish epitath says “Think not only upon their passing, remember the glory of their spirit.” The Christian epitath says “Through the gate of death may they pass to their joyful resurrection.”

There is a beautiful ceiling with angels caring for the soldiers and placing a victory wreath on the head of the fallen.

The rows of flags are beautiful against the white crosses. This is a peaceful scene.

The ceremony had lots of choral singing, and bagpipes. Then a single bugle sounds Taps, and the entire cemetery got quiet. All of the military, including me, came to attention and saluted. It was haunting! It was moving!

After the ceremony broke up we were allowed to approach the memorial. This beautiful statue is supported by the words “Mine have have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord” inscribed on the ground around it.

And then another fly-by from the C-130s! Wonderful!

We drive down from the cemetery to Omaha Beach. This is the memorial at the beach.

On the beach below the memorial is this sculpture. It is called Les Braves, and it represents 1) The Wings of Hope, 2) Rise, Freedom!, and 3) The Wings of Fraternity.

There are hundreds of roses lying in the surf!

The tide is coming in, so the beach is not as exposed as it was during the initial invasion.

Our final stop is Pointe du Hoc. This is a cliff point between Omaha Beach and Utah Beach that the Germans had an observation bunker and a battery of 155 mm guns that could point at either beach or at the ocean. After the Allies heavily bombed the point, the US sent a team of Rangers to scale the cliff and verify the state of the guns. French Resistance intelligence reported there were no guns remaining on the point. The Rangers were sent to confirm.

The landscape here is peppered with deep craters! Many bunkers are in ruins.

The memorial to the Rangers is on top of the observation bunker. When the Rangers arrived they had to fight their way to the top, and the German troops and commanders all climbed in the observation bunker to hide.

The Rangers poured gasoline into the bunker’s air vents and lit the bunker on fire. When the German ran out to escape the fire the Rangers picked them off. Long story mde short – the Rangers confirmed there were no guns on the point. But they found some tracks that were made when the guns were removed. They followed them to a farm and found the guns hidden in a barn. They destroyed the guns to prevent them from being used again.

This has been a long, physically and emotionally exhauting day! Traffic is horrible coming back, so we are very late. We happily make it to the ship, so here is my gratuitous photo for today!

We are actually late getting back, so the tugs are ready to get us out of the way!

We spin around, the tugs leave, and we head out of harbor!

We pass this quiet little river with locks to keep the tide under control. There is a big lighthouse at the entrance, and a little red-capped lighthouse inside the river!