Normandy Day 2 Part 2

We definitely wanted to go back to Point-du-Hoc as well.  Point-du-Hoc comes from the old Norman word for Hook, and here is a picture of the "Hoc."

One of the more interesting things here is the remains of the craters from the bombing and shelling.  Here is a picture of a damaged bunker from a near miss.

The area is marked with hundreds of bomb craters of various sizes, many of them complete misses.  Here is an example of many of the small bomb craters that did not hit any of the bunkers.

Here is a larger crater with Brian at the center to give you an idea of size.

Finally, another type of crater.  During the battle, the Rangers found the storage area for most of the German artillery shells.  They gathered all the other ones they found and put them all in this storage bunker and "disposed" of them with a large explosion.  Please click on this picture and find Brian in the crater and notice the difference in size as compared to the previous picture.  Also you can see some of the large pieces of solid concrete that were thrown from the explosion near the crater lip.  However, what is not in this picture is the pieces that were thrown at least 75 yards from this crater.  Really one of the most impressive examples of how powerful modern weapons can be.

We drove back to Omaha beach and got a good picture of the "Hedgehogs" that were on the beach to damage landing craft.

Outside the museum near Omaha beach is one of the landing craft used on D-Day.

And here we are getting some sand from Omaha Beach.  We decided to get sand from the two American Sectors.  We are still thinking of the best way to display the sand in an appropriate way.

Driving around from sight to sight, we stopped in St Mare du Mont and while walking around saw this average house.  We noticed the authentic American appreciation everywhere we went and took this picture to try and convey the gratitude shown by the locals to this day.

Here is a close-up of the street sign in the above picture.

Our final stop on our second day was at the German Military Cemetery.  We have been to a German cemetery that is close to our house in Luxembourg and this was also a moving sight.  It is interesting to note the more earthy and natural feel to the German cemeteries.  Here is a view from the monument at the center of the cemetery so this is about 1/4 of the total area.

The German markers have 2 names per marker.  You can see the bottom marker is for an unidentified soldier with the phrase "Ein Deutscher Soldat."  

As well some markers were for two unidentified soldiers with the phrase "Zwei Deutsche Soldaten."

At all the German cemeteries is a monument depicting the mourning mother and father.  Perhaps that is the biggest feeling we took away is how many of these men did not choose this fight and how many families were devistated by the actions of one.