Our first stop was on Gold Beach, target site of the British forces for the invasion. Gold beach is more than 5 miles wide and includes the towns of La Rivière, Le Hamel and Arromanches. Arromanches became the location of the Mulberry harbour, the first man-made port erected under combat conditions. The invasion needed a port to bring in supplies on a huge scale, so the allies built concrete pontoons that were towed across the channel and sunk to form the port’s outer perimeter. Twenty of the original 115 pontoons still defy the waves and can be seen from shore. A small museum sits in the town center with access to the beach. We took lots of pictures and had lunch at a local restaurant, 6 Juin.
It seems everyone in town has hooked into the tourist business, which is fine with me. They keep the beaches well preserved and available to people from all nations who want to visit and understand just what happened here 66 years ago. The souvenir shops aren’t too gaudy, and the locals seem genuinely happy to have folks come and visit.
Our next stop was Omaha Beach and the Normandy 
American Cemetery and Memorial. Omaha beach, also 5 miles in length, is overlooked by steep bluffs which rise to 150 feet and command the beaches. These naturally strong defensive positions had been skillfully fortified by the Germans with concrete gun emplacements, anti-tank guns and machine guns. Many of those defensive positions still exist, though civilization as grown up around a lot of it in the last several decades.
Our bus parked in the cemetery parking lot and we walked to the Memorial as a group. Our guide, Christof was extremely knowledgeable about D-Day, giving us tid-bits of information all through the trip to the cemetery. After an overview of the landing, using the memorial map as a visual aid, he took us out into the cemetery. It is unbelievably humbling to stand there and see 9,387 white crosses and Stars of David arrayed in perfect formation, row upon row. There was an solid blue sky above and a carpet of green grass below, as we wandered among the silent markers, quietly noting the names, dates and states of each of these brave souls. I found myself noticing things that I could relate to: graves of guys from Pennsylvania, boys from bomber squadrons (one of my former squadrons. the 668th, flew A-20 Havocs supporting D-Day) and parachute regiments. Most were from June 6th and beyond, but I saw a couple from days before, probably Rangers or Pathfinders who had led the way for the invasion to follow. So many stories untold and lives cut short.
The visitors center was very nice. It wasn’t very big but very informative. They even had a computer system you could use to find the burial plot of people interned in the Cemetery. What I didn’t know was that their database covered ALL the American Military Cemeteries, located on foreign soil. Just on a whim, I typed in the name of my great uncle, Howard E. Robeson, who was killed while flying in North Africa in 1942. I had heard stories about him, but didn’t know any details. His name pulled up a listing that said he was killed on 19 December, 1942, and is buried in the North African American Military Cemetery, in Carthage, Tunisia. It even listed the unit he was assigned to at the time of his death, all information I didn’t know. My grandmother had given me his log book and wings when she died, but until this moment, they didn’t mean much more than a name from a family story. Being here on THIS hallowed ground brought him to life as real member of my family.
After too short a time, we hustled on the bus and drove down the road to a small sea-side village, arriving just as it started to rain a bit, giving us a more accurate feeling of true Normandy coastal weather in the summertime. Upon arriving, we had about 10 minutes to walk down to the beach, take some pictures and collect some actual sand from Omaha Beach. Luckily I had a plastic baggie with me, because the tour guides never mentioned that was going to be on the itinerary. I quickly scooped up a couple of handfuls and carried it back to the bus to share with some of the other members of our group.
After our little detour to the waterfront, we continued west a couple of kilometers to Pointe du Hoc, site of an epic D-Day battle where 225 Rangers scaled a 100’ cliff under a withering German counter-fire to disarm a battery of captured French 155mm guns, which overlooked both Omaha and Utah Beaches risking heavy casualties in the landing forces. Upon reaching the top of the cliffs, the Rangers found the gun batteries empty, the guns moved weeks before to safeguard them from the bombing attacks. 
Of the 225 Rangers who attacked the cliff, only 90 moved inland from the gun boxes.
The area around the gun defenses is littered with bomb craters, remnants of the allied bombing attempts to disable the huge guns from the air. There very few restrictions to visitor movement on Pointe du Hoc so kids were scrambling down and around both the craters and the busted bunkers and gun emplacements. There are a couple of elevated platforms close to the cliffs where you can see up and down the coast for literally 20-30 miles in both directions, so it is easy to see that danger this location posed for the allied invasion.
At the end of our hour on Pointe du Hoc, our day was basically done; save for the 2-1/2 hour bus ride back to the boat, arriving just in time for ANOTHER great dinner.
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