Normandy: Mont-Saint-Michel and the D-Day Anniversary

At the end of May 2022 I went to Normandy on a work trip for the anniversary of D-Day, and I took Nathaniel with me so he could see France. Most of the week was work, and that part stays off the blog. This post is about what we saw around it. The trip home, with a stop at Cantigny, gets its own post.

Sainte-Mère-Église

The church at Sainte-Mère-Église, our first stop before the work started.

The name is literally "Holy Mother Church". In the first hours of June 6, 1944, paratroopers of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions dropped in and around the town in a mission called Boston. Fires in town lit the sky and made the descending paratroopers easy targets. A force led by Lt. Col. Edward C. Krause of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment took the town around 5 a.m., which made it one of the first towns liberated in the invasion.

Paratrooper John Steele's parachute caught on the church. He hung there for two hours, playing dead, until the Germans captured him, and he later escaped. A dummy paratrooper still hangs from the spire. The church itself dates to the 11th century, and its earliest records go back to 1080 to 1082.

Mont-Saint-Michel

Mont-Saint-Michel from the flats.

According to legend, the Archangel Michael told Bishop Aubert of Avranches in 708 to build a church on this rocky islet. The Romanesque abbey church went up in the 11th century. The English besieged the Mount in 1423 to 1424 and again in 1433 to 1434, during the Hundred Years' War, and never took it. After the French Revolution the abbey became a prison and held political prisoners until 1863. The Mount and its bay have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979.

The tide here ranges about 14 meters (46 feet) between high and low water, which is why the flats stretch out so far. The commune had just 44 residents in 2009.

The main street up the island, packed with half-timbered houses.

The abbey, seen from inside the walls.

A gap between the buildings, with the tidal flats below.

The rock and the old stone buildings along the edge.

A kitchen full of copper pots.

Escargot for dinner.

Carentan and Utah Beach

Carentan is a small town that mattered a great deal in June 1944. The 101st Airborne crossed the flooded Douve River on June 9 and fought through the town house by house on June 10. Taking it linked Utah and Omaha beaches, and U.S. forces held it after a German armored counterattack on June 13, the Battle of Bloody Gulch.

A large Gothic church in Carentan.

A Viking-style ship at the quay in Carentan.

Nathaniel on Utah Beach, where the 4th Infantry Division landed on D-Day.

The Anniversary Week

A stone arch bridge over a river in the Norman countryside.

A ceremony in Carentan on June 4, with soldiers in camouflage and a crowd along the street.

June 6: The Normandy American Cemetery

The English Channel from the Normandy coast.

Rows of white crosses at the Normandy American Cemetery.

A small American flag and a French flag at a grave.

An aircraft overhead on June 6.

The cemetery is in Colleville-sur-Mer, above Omaha Beach. It began as the temporary St. Laurent Cemetery, set up by the U.S. First Army on June 8, 1944, and was dedicated in its present form in 1956. It covers 172.5 acres and holds 9,389 burials. In a semicircular garden on the east side of the memorial, the Walls of the Missing carry almost 1,600 names.

Omaha Beach.

When the week was over we started home, with a stop on the way. It was a big one for the 1st Infantry Division, so it gets its own post: Cantigny: Where the Big Red One First Attacked. Possum et ego.