As the weather was very windy today we decided to skip the beaches and go inland instead. We actually started at the end of the Battle for Normandy which was the closing of the pocket at Falaise to stop the retreating German army from escaping.
Just before entering the town of Falaise we stopped at the Polish cemetery - the Polish Free Army was very intrumental in the closing of the Falaise Gap.
From there we proceeded into the town of Falaise which sufferred a lot of damage during the battle. The church, some 800 years old was partially destroyed but has been rebuilt, as has the rest of the town. The chruch still bears marks of the battle and the tower is pocked with bullet and shrapnell holes.
We visited the excellent museum at Falaise in which are displayed vehicles and weapons used both by Allied and German forces during the battle. There are also many diaramas [3-D model] displaying the soldiers in their original uniforms with their vehicles.
From there we proceeded to the town of Trun which was the northern point of the pincer movement where the British, Canadian and Polish armies pushed the German armies to Chambois. Here Patton's forces held the southern end of the pocket - refer to my chapter on Falaise Gap earlier in my blog. A few miles out of Trun at Moissy we visited the ford on the River Dives where the Germans passed through in their retreat. We also drove on the Corridor of Death - this was the road that the German vehicles and artillery attempted to escape on. Here they were bombed both by the Polish artillery from Hill 262 as well as from the air by fighter bombers. On that short stretch of road over 10,000 Germans troops were killed - it was a bloodbath.
We then drove up Mount Ormel to the Polish Memorial and museum. From that vantage point we overlooked the valley of death from where the Poles bombed the Germans. The guide at the museum told us that for months after the battle there was a black cloud of flies feeding off the carcasses of the dead Germans and their draft horses.
This was the beginning of the end of the end for the Germans in the west.
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