Omaha Beach Part 1

It was probably the first Saturday in September 2004 when Chris Carson, his dad "Pops" and yours truly began our day of adventure in France's Normandy region (we had trained from Paris the night before and stayed in the Best Western Hotel in Caen).

After doing breakfast at the McDonald's in Caen (walking distance from the hotel), we took a taxi to the train station to pick up a rental car. Caen is a mixture of new and old--it has a castle or fortress, it has spreading lawn (as I recall a running track on grass), and it has streets. . .which after renting a car, we found a bit confusing.

We rented a small sporty Mercedes SUV (it's really not an SUV, but the one they sell in the US looks similar to what we rented, only what we rented was like a small car) and with the aid of a map, drove to Bayeaux, probably an hour away.

The D-Day Museum in Bayeaux is probably the finest collection of Allied and German uniforms and weapons I've ever seen, including the tanks displayed in its front and side yards. It has a fine documentary on D-Day as well.

We then drove to the American Cemetery at Colles-sur-? One of the colleagues at work there in France had referred us to a certain person who works at the American Cemetery and we met him at the Visitor Center. He provided us with a packet of material as well as French and American hand flags on sticks. Turns out that Matt Damon (star of Saving Private Ryan) had visited the cemetery the day before--he had been nearby at a film festival.

Our cemetery contact brought out a radio-controlled device and had one of us (I think it was Chris, may have been his dad) remotely start a recording of taps that you could hear throughout the cemetery. All visible in the cemetery stopped as taps was played. It was a moving moment, and probably not a person present there didn't shed a tear (I did).

We went into the cemetery itself where there is a large portico area with beautiful flowers and trees framed by maps of the battlefield, and overlooking the cemetery itself. I would have liked to have visited some of the noteworthy graves that our contact had pointed out to us on the cemetery map, but we didn't have time. We walked out to the overlook where you have a nearly unobstructed view both left, right and straight ahead of the beach. We hiked the serpentine trail down to the beach through what is now heavy undergrowth and stood on the beach. I took pictures of Chris and his dad, and they took a picture or two of me.

I hiked back up the trail to the overlook and waited for them to come up. To be continued...