D-Day Landing Beaches And Southampton

Yeah, so I'm playing catch up.  When you do a back to back cruise (part one: cruise from New York to Southampton; part two from Southampton to Barcelona - so two cruises, back to back), some things don't change at all - your stateroom, your beverage package, your prepaid excursions, things like that.  Some things completely change - you have to start all over with your internet package, you have to start all over with the person in charge of housekeeping for your stateroom, you have to start all over with new bartenders and wait staff...oh the trials!  It's eyebrow-heightening.

Anyhoo...let's rewind the tape to yesterday.  We visited the D-Day beaches - Pointe du Hoc and Omaha, and then toured the American Cemetery and Arromanches where the Americans built a movable harbor to supply WWII troops with materials, food, services...virtually everything they needed to wage the onward battle.

So you joined the army with your buddies and you trained for nothing else but to kill Nazis.  You've listened to your commanding officer and know the hell you're about to be in.  You've prepared for the worst and hoped for the best.  The weather on June the 6th is horrible - cold and rainy.  You're in a landing boat approaching the French shore.  You're thinking it won't be too bad because Hitler is actually asleep when you're scheduled to go ashore, and the German army thinks you're going to be in Calais instead of Normandy...so...

As your craft comes ashore, you see the cliffs ahead of you.  You know your mission is to take the beach and secure the forward cliffs.  But as you feel the sand beneath the boat, bullets are flying past you.  The water is cold.  Bombs are blasting the bunkers ahead of you.  Huge concrete blocks and debris are flying through the air.  People are screaming.  Your whole world is splintering apart, and your buddy has just been assassinated.  The boat ramp just lowered, and it's your turn to try to make it onto the beach.  Your turn to try and make it past the cannons and the land mines and the machine gun fire.  Your turn to step over the dead and drowning.  Your turn to scramble up the cliffs.  Your turn to die.

Can you even imagine the panic, the chaos, the frantic running and dodging and sheltering against a steep cliff?  Can you hear the bombs, the bullets, the screams, the shouted orders?  Can you feel the earth rumble beneath your feet as a shell bursts open a crater just yards away from you?  Can you smell the acrid air of death and smoke and gun powder?  Can you taste your fear?

It's horrifying.  But it's what you did.  But for a few, your story ended here.  But for a few, your name is on a grave.  But for a few, you are forever etched into a wall in France near a beach.

The beaches today are beautiful.  Peaceful.  Serene.  Birds are chirping.  Flowers blooming.  Breezes whispering.  The scars are touchable.  Huge craters.  Broken rebar and concrete.  Rabbit warrens of bunkers for 20+ men cracked open for us to explore.  Gun casements lay open for us to point and imperceptibly shake our heads in awe.

I couldn't take pictures.  It seemed inappropriate.  It seemed a violation.

But at Omaha beach there is a monument in the sand and a poem on a panel.

It was really hard for me to venture onto the beach.  Many tourists were in the surf and along the waterline.  I couldn't leave the platform.  I would not have been able to leave the boat.  There are no words for those who did...only tears and silent heartfelt thank yous. 

The American Cemetery in Normandy is beautiful, almost uplifting.  It's a lovely monument to the more than 9,000 buried here.  In death, everyone is equal, and the cemetery is evidence...so equal.

I think what really got to me is that there are the graves of the known and the graves of the unknown.  Unknown...like, no one ever claimed them; no one ever named them.  They lost their dogtags and were never identified.  More than that there is a wall inscribed with the names of those missing.  Never a trace found of them.  Along that wall is the inscription: Here are the recorded names of Americans who gave their lives in the service of their country and who sleep in unknown graves; this is their memorial; the whole earth is their sepulcher. 

Let that sink in for a moment.


Okay.  Moving on.  Today we were in Southampton.  Not really a tourist town...it's a huge commercial port and all the cruise ships dock there to resupply.  There are some great medieval walls here, though.

The first leg of our cruise ends here...more than 1000 of the 1200 aboard got off and a new group got on for the next bit to Barcelona. 

I needed a reset after yesterday's tours, and I got it in the form of a lovely little brewery built inside an old wool mill: The Dancing Man Brewery.  Great beer, great food.  We also did a bit of a pub crawl up Bugle Street to the Duke of Wellington and the Titanic Public House.  All in all a beautiful day and a good beer day.

Tomorrow we'll be in Guernsey - a bit more of Britain in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy.  And I just thought it was a cow.  Hmmm...