July 23, 2018 - Normandy, France
June 6, 1944, the day the allied forces landed at Normandy on 5 beaches over a 80 km stretch of shoreline. The code names were Utah and Omaha beach where the landings were led by the Americans, Gold and sword beaches led by British forces and Juno beach which was led by the Canadians. Our focus today was to visit the Canadian memorial at Juno beach. No funny punchlines today.
A panarama of Juno beach
Outside of the Juno memorial,
359 Canadians lost their lives on the first day and a plaque has been placed here for each one of them.
Inside the memorial the Canadians are honoured with this monument filled with poppies.
As we walked thru the memorial there were several stations where you could listen to stories about the D day invasion at Juno beach
Outside we continued our tour to the beach itself.
These concrete structures littered the beaches.
Attached to the top of each pyramid would be an explosive mine for invading landingcraft. Because of these the invasion had to happen at low tide forcing the soldiers to have to run an additional 500 yards up the beaches leaving them open to German machine gunners.
The beach today
The sand of Juno beach
As part of our tour we also went to Gold beach were 4 German pill boxes still remain.
This pill box remains vertually intact
Big guns indeed
From Gold beach we headed to our last stop, one of two cemetaries where our Canadian troops were buried.
2,048 Canadian soldiers buried here
Tomorrow, Stonehenge
Impossible to visit these places and not be moved. And Stonehenge, as a kid we used to stop there on our way to the West Country and clamber on the stones. Not any more I think!
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