The top picture is of the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach. The visit to the cemetery was the climax of the tour.
Friday
We arrived in London on Friday, August 30th. All we hoped to accomplish that day was to stay awake into the early evening. After leaving our bags at the hotel, we had lunch near Trafalgar Square just across from the National Gallery.
I am not a huge fan of Botticelli's Venus and Mars, but I felt more like Mars than Venus on the first day.
Saturday
On Saturday morning, we went first to Westminster Abbey. We had visited before (in 2015), but again it is such an interesting site that we wanted to go through it again. To me, Westminster Abbey is more graveyard than it is cathedral. I always wish that we had a bit more time to look at the grave markings on the floor. We did stumbled across Stephen Hawking's grave. It was near that of Isaac Newton's grave.After Westminster Abbey, we boarded a boat to go up to Greenwich and the Royal Observatory. Below is the Tower of London from our view on the boat.
Greenwich is the site of the Royal Observatory and the Prime Meridian. Greenwich also has the Cutty Sark.
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A view from the boat coming into the dock. |
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From the grounds of the Royal Observatory looking back to London
The Royal Observatory tells the story of the development of the chronometer. Its inventor, John Harrison, spent over 30 years of his life on four different versions. He then spent nearly 10 years fighting with Parliament over the prize money. George IV finally came to his rescue.
I didn't bother with a picture of my feet astride the Prime Meridian (plenty of others did). We did learn that the satellite companies have its prime meridian about 100 meters to the east. I don't recall the reason why. So we did wander to the east trying to get our phones to give us 0º, 0', 0" for the longitude.
 Sunday
Sunday, we decided to take a trip out to Windsor Castle. I liked the town which is very walk-able. Although it was crowded because it was Sunday, it was still a nice break from a much busier London.
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Just climbing up from the train station |
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Along the Thames |
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On the bridge over to Eton, where we had lunch
Because it took over an hour to get there by train, we didn't arrive until a little after 11. So we walked around town and then down to a park on the Thames. We didn't realize that Eton was across the river from Windsor. We had lunch at the restaurant on the lower left of the last picture above.
After lunch, we headed to the castle.
 This shot is while we waiting for the tour guide to start her tour. It was a 50 minute sprint around the grounds. She was very good, but not too willing to wait for anyone who didn't walk at her speed. She mainly concentrated on the fire at Windsor Castle in 1992. It caused extensive damage to the castle. I recalled the fire being reported, but I confess that I did not realize how extensive the damage was. Here's a shot of St. George's Hall after the fire and below after its renovation.  
This is the original heart of the castle. It has been in place for nearly a 1,000 years. First, it was just a dirt embankment with some quarters constructed into the ground. Then a wood structure, then stone. Over time, it has grown to a size to enclose the surrounding townspeople in the event of attack and a siege.
  This is a view of the Queen's courtyard. Her private quarters diagonally across my view at the fence.
Because it was Sunday, we missed getting to see inside of St. George's Chapel. Just below is a side view of it. I enjoyed the rest of the tour and I thought it was worth the train trip there and back.
After our busy afternoon, we wanted to do high tea in the town. We ended up at McDonald Windsor Hotel. I have had tea before in the late afternoon, but we were amazed at the amount of food that comes with high tea. Below is some of the remains of the top layer of our giant three tray tea service.
 Monday
On Monday, we toured St. Paul's. St. Paul's is several miles east of Parliament. We stayed at the County Hall Marriott just across from Parliament before our National Geographic tour started. I took this shot of St. Paul's from the Thames on our ride up to Greenwich on Saturday.
I was surprised that St. Paul's was not a Gothic design. The interior pillars are massive compared to Notre Dame in Paris. This was apparently intentional even though St. Paul's was built nearly 500 years later. The English did not want it to look like a Catholic cathedral. There has been a church at this site for 1,500 years, but this building was started in the 1660's.
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As with many sites in London, it's not hard to come upon a memorial to World War II. This memorial is behind the main alter at St. Paul's. It is a memorial to the American service men killed in England during WWII. The encased book is over 500 pages long. Each day, one of the staff at the church turns the page so that each day a new page of names is displayed.
I climbed up to the Stone Gallery to snap a few pictures. Deb climbed even higher to the Golden Gallery. You can see the London Eye in this picture (it's at the center of the picture on the horizon). Our hotel was located just behind the London Eye. You will also notice the number of construction cranes in this picture.
After lunch on Monday, we went to the top of the Shard. So, here's two more pictures from an even higher height. These pictures were taken from the observation deck at the 72nd floor.
The first is a shot of Parliament and Westminster (Parliament is at the right and Westminster is almost dead center). The second is of the Tower of London. You get a better sense of the size of the Tower of London.
To close out the pre-tour time in London, we went to see Fiddler on the Roof on Monday evening. I had never seen this play, but of course I did know a good part of the music. (Although I am not a rich man I did find myself "biddy biddy bumming" all day long). I thought that the production was very good. I am glad that we went and got to see some theater in London.
Tuesday
Because we weren't being picked up until 2:00, Susan and I took a bus up to Buckingham Palace area and viewed the Da Vinci exhibit at the Queen's Gallery. The exhibit was of his sketches. I recognized some of the sketches. Quite a few were devoted to Da Vinci's anatomy studies. Although you needed advance tickets, the gallery was still quite crowded.
During the afternoon, we transferred to the Royal Horseguards hotel to join our National Geographic group. Including the four of us, the group numbered 25. Although this picture comes from a little later in the week, here is our group.
After some introductions, we walked over to the Churchill War Rooms. These rooms were constructed at the beginning of the war. The bunker complex is beneath the Treasury Building and it was where the cabinet met throughout the war. Churchill did sleep here occasionally, but not as often as I had thought. It was where we had our welcome dinner. The guy in the picture below must be tired. He's been standing there since 1939.
Wednesday
On Wednesday we boarded our bus and did a tour of London in the morning. We visited two of the locations where Eisenhower had his headquarters during the earlier parts of the war. The picture below is the FDR Memorial in Grosvenor Square Gardens. FDR was revered in Britain on nearly the same level as Churchill.
We had lunch near St. Paul's and then headed off to tour the HMS Belfast.
The HMS Belfast is a light cruiser that has been saved and docked here near the Tower Bridge since the late 1960s. In the picture above, Deb (I think) gave me a nice crown to wear. King Thomas I?
After the Belfast, we headed for the Imperial War Museum. That museum is devoted to both World Wars. It was well laid out. We only spent a couple of hours there but you could have spent a lot more time there. Marty, our tour guide, led us to 5 exhibits and spent 15 to 20 minutes on each.
Thursday
On Thursday, we first drove to Bletchley Park. It is the site where the German cipher system, Enigma, was broken. The site is now an interactive museum where you could spend hours trying to decode puzzles to explain the immensity of the task that the British faced after the fall of France. If you are visiting London, it is well worth seeing. I understood a little better some of the tricks and just dumb luck that helped crack Enigma.
The manor house was more of the administrative office. The real work was done in one of the 20 "huts" that were built. The huts were a lot like army barracks that you might see on a U.S. base in the late 50s and 60s. A couple of the huts were preserved and now house the interactive exhibits.
This is a shot of a space inside one of the huts and below is one of the offices inside the manor house.
After having lunch at Bletchley Park, we headed next to Southwick House. Southwick House became Eisenhower's headquarters in the last few months leading up to D-Day.
This giant map was constructed by a puzzle company and was delivered to Southwick House in the weeks before D-Day. After it was delivered the employees who built and installed it were detained there until after the invasion. Eisenhower used it to plot out what was happening on D-Day and the weeks thereafter.
After our tour of Southwick, we were driven to Poole. We spent the night there.
Friday (9/6/19)
Very early on Friday our bus and our group boarded a ferry for the trek across the English Channel. We were advised by NatGeo to expect the worst in terms of sea-sickness. But none of our group had any troubles. Our ship was quite large with 5 decks (I think). The seating area (we had assigned seats) was more roomy than a jetliner. The top deck was restaurants and shops. The cruise took about 5 hours.
Our first stop was a German cemetery.
You might think it odd to visit a cemetery of German dead in Normandy. The Germans lost around 200,000 men in the Normandy defensive campaign. American Graves units buried these dead soldiers because the German dead needed to be buried. By 1948, the German (West) government took over the maintenance of these and dozens of other cemeteries in Western Europe. Compared to the American cemetery at Omaha Beach, the German cemetery is very simple.
The Germans are buried three to a grave. I included this one since it is one of Susan's distant cousins (Christian Schmid...I don't know how distant since Schmid is just another spelling of Schmidt). The second name is translated as "an unknown German soldier." Christian Schmid died almost three weeks after D-Day while the last soldier died on D-Day. Both of the identified soldiers were not young men. Christian Schmid was 3 months shy of 41 and Hugo was almost 30.
We next traveled to a memorial for 7 paratroopers executed by the Germans on D-Day. The memorial is in a small church graveyard nearby where the paratroopers were shot in the back of the heads after being captured near a chateau in Hemevez.
We next traveled to a memorial for 7 paratroopers executed by the Germans on D-Day. The memorial is in a small church graveyard nearby where the paratroopers were shot in the back of the heads after being captured near a chateau in Hemevez.
After that we made our way to our Hotel La Marine in Barneville Carteret. We stayed there for three nights. Although it was 45 minutes from the American beaches, it was a very nice hotel.
Saturday (9/7/19).
On Saturday, we headed to Utah Beach. Utah Beach ended up providing an easier landing than did Omaha Beach. One of the main reasons is that the landing force ended up about a mile away from its target due to the strong tide. Teddy Roosevelt, Jr., who came ashore very early in the morning famously decided that "the war would start here" instead of trying to re-position the force further up the beach. Although it is a little out of order, below is a picture of the grave marker of Teddy Roosevelt, Jr. He died about a month into the Normandy campaign from a heart attack. He was in pretty poor health on D-Day but would not stay back and demanded to land shortly after the initial waves of landings. His decision to keep landing troops a mile from the target zone was one of the lucky decisions that was made on D-Day.
We covered several topics on Saturday. Our day started at the museum at Utah Beach. The two pictures show the relative easy rise from the beach. Because the force landed so far from the intended target zone it was not as heavily guarded. But that decision led to other complications later on in the campaign.
After walking down to the beach, we toured the museum. It was also laid out well and housed examples of the obstacles that the troops faced and the equipment that was landed with the troops.
After touring the beach and museum, we moved inland to see a memorial to the assault at Brécourt Manor. If you have watched HBO's Band of Brothers, you know that its main character is Major Richard Winters. Winters was a paratrooper who had landed during the early morning hours of D-Day. His commander was killed in the flight over and Winters assumed command. One of his first tasks was to take a battery of four German guns guarded by 60 German soldiers. He did this successfully with only 12 men under his command. This memorial to E Company is at one corner of the field where the German guns were located.
While we visited several other sites on Saturday afternoon, what I will remember most is our visit to Sainte-Mère-Eglise.
This little town and its church were made famous by the film "The Longest Day." The film had a power lineup from John Wayne, Richard Burton, Fabian, Sean Connery, Henry Fonda to lowly Red Buttons. Red Buttons portrayed the paratrooper (Joe Steele) who allegedly got his parachute hung on the church steeple. It is one of the highlights of the film since he has a birds-eye view of the action on the town square. It is now thought this paratrooper never got hung up on the steeple. Some of the other facts in the movie about Sainte-Mère-Eglise are true. For instance, the fire that erupted and brought the whole town out in the early morning hours as paratroopers were landing in and around the town. But except for the Red Buttons character, no one remembers a paratrooper hanging from the steeple. The paratrooper was never able to explain how he got down and why Germans didn't spot him in that very visible spot. But the town has decided to go with the myth by having the mannequin left there permanently.
The top picture is of the church from the front and the next is the side view from the town square.
Sunday (9/8/19).
Sunday was our last full day of touring in Normandy. We traveled to Omaha Beach to see Pointe Du Hoc. Below is a picture taken from above Pointe Du Hoc. It gives you a sense of how different it was from Utah Beach. The cliffs are about 100 feet above the water.
The Longest Day gets several things wrong about Pointe Du Hoc and one thing right. First, the one thing it got right. Prior to D-Day, the Germans had moved the heavy guns from the fortification at Pointe Du Hoc to several miles back from the beach. In the movie, Fabian delivers that information with disgust with a "so we did this all for nothing" line.
What the movie got wrong about Pointe Du Hoc was that it took hours to take. During the pre-dawn bombardment, the U.S. Navy had managed a lucky shot that collapsed part of the face of Pointe Du Hoc. The collapse created a mountain of rubble that brought the troops within 20 feet of the top. The movie shows several hours of scaling the cliff when the first group was on top in a matter of minutes.
The real battle for Pointe Du Hoc took place several days after D-Day. Because of the problems of landing at Omaha Beach, the troops that landed there had great difficulty getting too far inland. At Pointe Du Hoc, the troops were nearly routed on June 9th by German counter-attacks. Navy shelling saved the day.
This picture is from further up the beach looking back toward Pointe Du Hoc. Again, notice the cliffs and the rises that come off of the beach.
This is a picture of a German fortification about a quarter of mile from the beach. The gun here was used to fire on ships and not troops. Just above here was a smaller fortification for mortars to be fired. Mortars were aimed at the beach and the troops coming ashore. We had our lunch on the stairs leading to this fortification.
After lunch, we headed to the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach.
These six members of our group are veterans. They presented a wreath on behalf of our group after which the National Anthem and then Taps were played. The cemetery became very quiet and most of the crowd of people in the cemetery stopped to show respect for the ceremony. From the pictures you can see how well designed and maintained the Omaha Beach cemetery is. The crosses are perfectly aligned and the lawn is mowed to perfection. What struck me later in the day was the realization at how poorly we take care of many of our veterans before they die. I wish that our level of concern for veterans during their lives would approach the concern shown for the appearance of their final resting places.
This is a view from the cemetery looking mainly to the east.
Monday (9/9/19).
On Monday we had to make our way back to Paris for our flights back to the U.S. on Tuesday. On our way back we made two stops. The first was to view the Bayeux Tapestry, which is really a 270 foot long embroidery. It tells the story of William the Conqueror's invasion of England in 1066 (the only other successful cross-channel invasion). Because it is so close to the invasion beaches, it is well worth a tour. Besides the fact that the Tapestry was created nearly a thousand years ago, it's more amazing that it has survived.
I liked the town of Bayeux. Here's the cathedral from behind and toward the courtyard in the front of the church. The last is of the street leading away from the church. These pictures give you a good sense of a typical town in Normandy.
Our last stop in the area of Normandy was at Pegasus Bridge. This is another scene from The Longest Day. The movie gets this battle exactly right. The British plan was to land six wooden gliders near the bridge to take and control that bridge until the British and Canadian troops made their way up from the British invasion beaches. The gliders were released from their tow planes just as they reached land and then glided to the landing zone. Five of the gliders landed within 100 yards of the bridge just after midnight on D-Day. One glider missed the river and kept on gliding inland. The 180 troops that landed managed to take the bridge in a matter of minutes just as depicted in the movie. One of the soldiers died when he fell out of one of the gliders after impact and drowned. Another was killed in the fighting on the bridge. There were no other casualties. If you were to write this story as fiction, no one would believe it.
On Monday evening we had a farewell dinner. I really enjoyed the National Geographic tour. Marty Morgan was an excellent guide.
Like our tours on Roads Scholar, this group was great. A friendly well-read group makes the tour all the more enjoyable.
