To Utah & Omaha beaches. We spent a day on the US operations on D-Day. Saving Private Ryan is largely fictitious with elements of fact in it. The US cemetery overlooking the beaches is something, absolutely immaculate with all the crosses looking westward to home.
They got into a real mess landing on Omaha, dropping the tanks & troops too early into deep water so most of the tanks sunk & the troops drowned.
We next went to the museum which was pretty good & then on to St Mere Eglise to learn how the US 82nd & 101st airborne got on before the beach landings.
This is portrayed in the film, The Longest Day & may not be true.
The outdoor loos are good here.
The airborne made a bit of a cods up of their glider & paratrooper drops getting them on the ground all over the place so they couldn't fight effectively & took ages to get organised. In the end successful.
This is the guy from Band of Brothers
Some touching stories about medics who treated both allies & enemy alike under fire. Robert Wright & Kenneth Moore were two young soldiers, one with one week's training in first aid & the other with 3 week's training took over this church to treat the wounded, under fire when a mortar shell came through the roof but failed to explode.
The German cemetery is a bit different.
When you look at the beaches & the well sited bunkers it's no surprise to see what a difficult job it was just to survive the first onslaught.
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