Sainte-Mère-Église

Today we visited the Bayeux Tapestry in Bayeux, which handles about the events of the Norman invasion in England in 1066. After that we visited the artificial harbour of Arromanches-les-Bains and the Normandy American Cemetery n Colleville-sur-Mer.
Then we moved up to Pointe du Hoc, 6.4 km west of Omaha Beach which is a cliff top standing 30 m tall. It was a point of attack by the United States Army during the Battle of Normandy in World War II. Many of the original fortifications have been left in place. The site is speckled with an impressive number of bomb craters.

To end the day we drove up to Sainte-Mère-Église, a small town which played a significant part in the World War II Normandy landings because this village stood right in the middle of route N13, which the Germans would have most likely used on any significant counterattack on the troops landing on Utah and Omaha Beaches.

A famous incident involved paratrooper John Steele of the 505th PIR, whose parachute caught on the spire of the town church, and could only observe the fighting going on below. He escaped capture by feigning death until the town was taken the next day. The incident was portrayed in the movie The Longest Day.

Sainte-Mère-Église