Pictures from Normandy

Marissa and I went to Europe a couple of weeks ago and had a blast. We went to London and Paris and for a day we went out to Normandy to see the D-Day landing beaches and the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach. I thought I would put up a couple of pictures that we took there.

This is one of the guns that was launching shells onto the beaches. It could hit two of the assault beaches because it could throw shells over 8 miles. One of these guns was totally destroyed by a direct hit in the opening in the front by a shell from a naval destroyer. The other three were not too badly damaged by the navy even though they were hit many times. The concrete is 8 feet thick and reinforced with rebar so the bombing couldn't do much.

This is a crater left by those same shells that couldn't damage the gun emplacements. As big as that crater looks, the picture doesn't really do it justice. These were in an area called Pont du Hoc which was left pretty much as it was in 1944. The grass brew back but the craters were never filled in.

The cemetery is the one that is shown in Saving Private Ryan in the beginning and end with the rows and rows of white crosses. It is an incredible place and I highly recommend going there if you get a chance. Is really humbling to be there and see acres and acres of crosses (over 9,000 and 149 Stars of David). Almost all of them died within a few days of June 6, 1944 and the were almost all a lot younger than we are now.

The water you can see is the English Channel. Just after that row of trees the ground slopes down to the beach.

It is a lot steeper than it looks, but you can see the actual beach in the picture. This is the beach where the first scene of Saving Private Ryan is set.

There is also this little round chapel in the cemetery that is no more than 20 feet in diameter. The ceiling of the chapel is a tile mosaic. This is two pictures that I took that I put together so it looks like one picture (which is why it looks a little distorted).

Like I said, it is an incredible place to be and if you get the chance to go, you should.