"Band of Brothers Adventure" Day 3 -- NORMANDY, Part 2 (Beaches) ...

After exploring the gun emplacements, we worked our way down to the area overlooking Gold beach and could look at some of the remaining barges that were placed out there in the ocean to serve as an unloading dock for all of the logistics of the war. In this picture below, you can see some of the remaining Mulberry Artificial port. (The black and white picture is a war photo of the beach area during the invasion).

 

 

 This plaque depicts the cliffs at Cherbourg.

The plaque shown here gives you a one-over-the-world view of the layout of the beaches and areas of responsibility.  To get a better grasp of this area, click on it to enlarge the picture.

So following this, we worked our way down to the actual beaches.  My dad's artillery unit came ashore here so this was a must see portion of our trip.  Once we got to the beach itself, I just had to take off my shoes and walk out into the water, the same water where so many came ashore and where so many men lost their lives for our freedom.  As you can see from the picture, the beach barriers and impediments are gone, and the tide is out.  No one is shooting at anyone so I decided to start walking out to get an idea of what their distances might have been.  Again, if you click on these pictures, you can get an idea of how far I went out before I got to water.

Once I got here, I turned around and stared back at the beach area.  It's absolutely unbelievable that they went that far into the blistering fire of the Germans.  As soon as the front gates fell on the landing craft, there was nothing between them and the enemy guns. I took this picture of a house on the beach that I think was a part of the Band of Brothers mini-series.  The guides tell us that it wasn't used that way, but it sure would have been a good place for a machine gun (at least until the first naval fire started).

Supposedly the open window in the left on the second floor is where the Germans had set up their guns. Then I just had to take another picture of that "guy" in the shadow.  Looks a little different on the beach.

 

"They had come to win.” They hadn't come here to fear. They hadn't come to die. They had come to win.”  (Stephen E. Ambrose)

Hooah 

P.S. I forgot to put in here a couple of pictures that really highlighted the difficulty Americans and the Allies had storming the beaches and working inland.  They also highlighted the preparations the Germans had taken to stop or at least make it very difficult for the Americans to get off those beaches.

These are pictures of machine gun emplacements built into the side of hills bordering the road leading from the beaches. Granted there has been a great deal of growth of underbrush over the years, but they were really pretty hard to pick up and they look pretty well-built.

I know it is hard to see but this gun emplacement is shown pretty much in the center of this picture, about 1/4" down from the top (the little dark spot).Hard to see and even harder for the GIs to take it out.

This gun emplacement is in the middle of the big concrete wall just above the chimney.  It is losing some of its surrounding ground but was an extremely well-built gun port with a field of fire straight up the road from the beach.  Troops would move up the road and past the machine gun before the Germans would open up on them. 

 
These were just two of the ones that I got pictures of, but the guide told us that they were dispersed all over the sides of the hills and cliffs.

 

"Band of Brothers Adventure" Day 3 -- NORMANDY, Part 1 (Gun Emplacements) ...

OK.  This day started off in a little bit of a rush.  Seems we forgot to set our alarms correctly and we just happened to wake up at the same time we were supposed to be checking out of the hotel and getting on the bus for our drive to Normandy.  Miss the bus and you have to arrange for your own transportation to the next stop.  Wonder what a French cab would cost for the trip from Caen to Normandy ?  Well, no need to worry -- we made it, no showers, no breakfast.

(Note: On all of these pictures of this trip, please click on the picture to enlarge it otherwise a lot of the details will go unseen.)

Once we got to the cliff area overlooking the beaches, this is what we saw...looked pretty much like any other farmer's wheat field.  The gun emplacements probably would have been pretty hard to pick up from any great distance.

As we walked up closer to them, I was amazed by their size and the fact that there are as many still standing as there are.  I have read that the Germans had a special mixture of concrete that they used on these emplacements and other areas like the Maginot Line, Hitler's bunkers, etc. I guess the reason I am amazed they are still there in this quantity is that I know the power of the shells the Navy hit them with.  I guess also that the armies that attacked the beaches fought through these so quickly (relatively speaking).

Something our guide pointed out was the small little indented areas on the tops and sides of the gun emplacements.  Most people who have never studied these think that these are marks from the shelling.  Actually, these were small areas where the Germans put grasses and bushes in order to break up the silhouette of the structure.

We spent the better part of the morning here and walked in, over, and through these testaments to history.  One that stuck out in my mind was featured in the movie "The Longest Day" when the German officer was looking out through the opening, out toward the sea and saw the armada of  Allied ships coming toward the coast.  I forget what expletive he used, but I know what I would have said.

Standing in his exact spot, and seeing that awesome fleet -- I probably would have needed a new pair of underwear!!  I was trying to refrain from saying "You have to see it to believe it" but that certainly is the case. I have seen a lot of things in the Army, but nothing like this would have been.

When you are on these tours, you have to pretty much carry a back pack with you because you cover so much ground and if you need any snacks (remember we missed breakfast) or water, the buses are nowhere to be seen.  So, as I was taking pictures of all of these things, I just happened to take this one of me with my back pack.  I thought it looked like a soldier from long ago walking these grounds. This was taken just at the edge of the cliff where the Rangers came up. Unbelievable.

So now it is on to the next part of the morning's experience.  From here we went to the area overlooking the beach where the Brits landed and where the "Picadilly Circus" was located and then on to Omaha Beach.

"They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate." (President Franklin D. Roosevelt)


Hooah 

Pretty sound advice ...

A little while ago a couple of my new neighbors here in North Carolina and I were talking and they gave me some "good old Southern sayings"  that made a lot of sense to me. (See the article from Jan. 30, 2020). Over the years I've had "old sayings" from guys in the Army, from some of my teachers in the schools where I worked, certainly from preachers and even some from politicians (Although I generally trust the worth of the sayings from the first groups, I really find myself questioning anything said by a politician, hesitantly listening with one hand on my holster and one hand over my wallet.).  So when my old friend Bob send me these pearls of wisdom "from an old farmer" I thought they might be worth looking at.  After all, if this is advise from an old Shelby County farmer it will generally ring true.

Advice from An Old Farmer

• Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.

• Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.

• A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.

• Words that soak into your ears are whispered… not yelled.

• Meanness don’t jes’ happen overnight.

• Forgive your enemies; it messes up their heads.

• Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.

• It don’t take a very big person to carry a grudge.

• You cannot unsay a cruel word.

• Every path has a few puddles.

• When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.

• The best sermons are lived, not preached.

• Most of the stuff people worry about ain’t never gonna happen anyway.

• Don’t judge folks by their relatives.

• Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

• Live a good, honorable life… Then when you get older and think back, you’ll enjoy it a second time.

• Don‘t interfere with somethin’ that ain’t botherin' you none.

• Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.

• If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin’.

• Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.

• The biggest troublemaker you’ll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every mornin’.

• Always drink upstream from the herd.

• Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.

• Lettin’ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin’ it back in.

• If you get to thinkin’ you’re a person of some influence, try orderin’ somebody else’s dog around.

• Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. Leave the rest to God.

• Don’t pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he’ll just kill you.

• Most times, it just gets down to common sense.

Pretty good advice.  Think I'll try to remember some of this. Better yet, maybe I can pass some of this along to others.  Maybe this might be something I will review with my grand kids.

"Do, or do not. There is no 'try'." (Yoda)

Hooah

Student Pilot's Journal ...

A friend of mine sent this to me the other day.  He flew when he was in the Navy and thought I would enjoy this.  I was a private pilot for a number of years while I was in the Army, and flew to meetings in other states in the little Cessna 172 as it was much easier, required less time, and was less of a hassle to do so. Besides, the government paid for it !! Is this a great country or what??   

As I read this short article, I thought back to my time as a student pilot and recognized some of these traits in myself and other student pilots who would hang out in the pilot shack, extolling their daring and self-proclaimed feats of aerodynamic brilliance.  I really wasn't as bad as our subject "student," as my absolute operational rules were:  1) Do not scare your passengers, and 2) the airplane needs to be returned in the same condition is was when you started.  With that in mind, enjoy the article (Thanks, Keith).

A Flying students’ diary

Week 1
Monday: Rain
Tuesday: Rain
Wednesday: No rain; but no visibility either
Thursday: Take instructor to lunch. Discover I don’t know enough to take instructor to lunch.
Friday: Fly! Do first stall and second stall during same maneuver. Cover instructor with lunch.

Week 2
Monday: Learned not to scrape frost off Plexiglas with ice-scraper. Used big scratch as marker to set pitch.
Tuesday: Instructor wants me to stop calling throttle “THAT BIG KNOB THING.” Also hates when I call instruments “GADGETS”
Wednesday: Radios won’t pick up radio stations, so I turned them off. Instructor seems to think I missed something.
Thursday: Learned 10 degree bank is not a steep turn. Did stall again today. Lost 2000 feet. Instructor said that was some kind of record — my first compliment.
Friday: Did steep turn. Instructor said I was not ready for inverted flight yet.

Week 3
Monday: Instructor called in sick. New instructor told me to stop calling her “BABE”. Did steep turns. She said I had to have permission for inverted flight.
Tuesday: Instructor back. He told me to stop calling him “BABE”, too. He got mad when I pulled power back on takeoff because the engine was to loud.
Wednesday: Instructor said after the first 20 hours, most students have established a learning curve. He said there is a slight bend in mine. Aha–progress!
Thursday: Did stalls. Clean recovery. Instructor said I did good job. Also did turns around a point. Instructor warned me never to pick ex-fiancée’s house as point again.
Friday: Did circuit work. Instructor said that if downwind, base and final formed a triangle, I would be perfect. More praise!

Week 4
Monday: First landing at a controlled field. Did fine until I told the captain in the 747 ahead of us on the taxiway to move his bird. Instructor says we’ll have ground school all this week on radio procedures.
Tuesday: Asked instructor if everyone in his family had turned grey at such an early age. He smiled. We did takeoff stalls. He says I did just fine but to wait until we reached altitude next time. Three-Niner Juliet will be out of the shop in three days when the new strut and tire arrive. Instructor says his back bothers him only a little.
Wednesday: Flew through clouds. I thought those radio towers were a lot lower. I’m sure my instructor is going grey.
Thursday: Left flaps down for entire flight. Instructor asked why. I told him I wanted the extra lift as a safety margin. More ground school.
Friday: Asked instructor when I could solo. I have never seen anyone actually laugh until they cried before.

For those who have known the thrill of being a pilot in charge of an airplane that is capable of carrying one into the land of angels, this will hit home as funny, scary, unbelievable and amazing.  We've all been there...and now we look back and remember those times.

When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.  (Leonardo Da Vinci)

Hooah