Sunday we visited the Memorial de Caen. It’s a museum which relates the events which lead up to the D-Day landing, and has a memorial to the Canadian and American soldiers in the gardens behind it. The British are currently building a memorial. More Canadians were actually killed liberating Caen than on D-day itself.

After the museum we walked around the garden behind it with the memorial to the falled Canadia troops.  There’s a large slab of black stone with a Latin inscription.  It’s a Virgil quote meaning "Nothing shall ever blot you from the memory of time".   The yellow maple leaves falling everywhere in the constant drizzle seemed fitting. 

Next we headed out to visit the Canadian War Cemetery at Beny-Sur-Mer-Reviers. The cemetery is in the middle of the countryside, surrounded by farms.   Driving up to it we were sure we were lost.  There were no sign we could see.  No buildings, no people anywhere.  We were so sure we were lost that we actually pulled over to try to figure out which way to go when looking around for a sign – any sign that would tell us where we were.  That’s when we saw maple trees.  Bright yellow – their fall color standing out starkly in the midst of the French countryside.   

On June 6, 1944 Canadian forces landed on Juno Beach.  Many of them never made it home and are buried in the Canadian Cemetery.  There are more than 2,000 fallen soldiers buried there.  The constant light rain kept bringing down more and more yellow maple leaves which lay in drifts blanketing the base of the tombstones. 

From there we went to see Juno Beach itself.  There were two small plaques to commemorate the Canadian landing.  There is a huge statue to commemorate the De Gaulle’s landing several days after the Canadians liberated the beach.  A creperie with a bright neon sign stood ready to serve anyone venturing out to the beach on a rainy day.

Further west along the coast, beside their landing site at Gold Beach, the British forces build Port Mulberry in one day, using retired ships and 600,000 tons of concrete. It served as a base for Allied supplies during the Battle of Normandy. It was originally built to last 18 months, but the ruins can still be seen.

For Remembrance Day/Armistice Day/Veteran’s Day (November 11th), we spent the weekend visiting the D-Day Beaches in Normandy.  We started at a memorial to the parachutists who landed near Sainte Mere-Eglise. One of them got stuck on the church steeple and the locals risked their lives to give him a proper burial. 

Then we went on to Utah Beach, which was the site of one of the American landings.  Standing on an empty, peaceful beach it is hard to imagine the circumstances that the American soldiers faced here when they came ashore.

Further down the coast, at the Pointe du Hoc was the most difficult landing. 225 specially trained US Rangers scaled the 30m cliffs and took the key German position. They then held it until help arrived 2 days later for the 90 survivors.  Even today the ground is littered with craters from the battle.  The bunker at the tip of the Point is barely above the ground. We have no idea how they managed to attack it, let alone capture it.

We went on to the American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, near Omaha Beach. The cemetery is so large it would take an aerial photo to capture it all. Nearly 10,000 American soldiers are buried there.  In the center of the cemetery is a small chapel.  When we first entered the cemetery we thought that was the far end of it and were already overwhelmed at the number of graves.  When we walked over to it, we realized we’d only seen half the graves.  

At one end of the cemetery stands a memorial with a statue called the "American Youth Rising from the Waves". The inscription around the top of the memorial reads, "This embattled shore portal of freedom is forever hallowed by the ideals the valor and the sacrifices of our fellow countrymen."