AZZAVILLE BATTERY

The Azzeville Battery is a series of bunkers situated a few miles north of Utah Beach. The guns here had heavily shelled the Americans on Utah Beach. A company of the American 27th Infantry, with the aid of a bombardment from the Battleship USS Nevada, overpowered the Germans and thus relieved the troops on Utah Beach.

The Battery has undergone a full restoration and has recently been opened to the public. With the aid of a recorder phone the visitor is conducted on his own tour through the underground battery complex. The storage, command and living areas, all reinforced by heavily reinforced concrete, can be appreciated as one walks along the underground passages joining the various batteries. You can imagine that you are with the Germans in their underground bunker. These bunkers were camouflaged with paint to look like ordinary houses but the French Resistance described their whereabouts to the Allies.


There is also a very good movie with interviews of local French residents. It gives you a very good insight as to how the French lived under the Germans. The locals were ordered to help build the bunkers and they did everything they could to sabotage and slow their construction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

UTAH BEACH

American infantry units landed on Utah Beach on the morning of the 6th June - this was a fairly successful landing, especially as a result of the Airborne having taken the positions on its western flank.

There is a very good museum built into an old German bunker in which a restored DUCK (Landing Craft) is displayed. An excellent movie is also shown to visitors showing the D-Day landing on Utah beach.

The marker Kilometer 00 is placed on Utah beach and these stone markers with successive numbers are to found at all the historic sites.

 

 

 

SAINT MERE-IGLESE

American airborne forces parachuted into the area around St Mare Eglise in the night before the D-Day invasion so as to secure the area west of the invasion beaches.

We visited the church made famous in the move “The Longest Day” where John Steel (played by Red Buttons) landed on the roof of the church, his parachute then snagging on the steeple and he hung for several hours until the Germans cut him down and took him prisoner. Below is a picture of the church with a model of John Steel and his parachute

 

 

The old water pump still remains in its original position which was also shown in the movie where the town residents had formed a human chain passing buckets of water in an attempt to extinguish the flames of a house burning as a result of the bombing.

 

 

There is a marvelous Parachute Museum where a perfectly restored Dakota C47 is displayed with troops of the 81st Airborne boarding for a parachute drop into enemy territory

 

 

 

 

Also a full size Horsa glider is on display with troops of the 101st Airborne (Screaming Eagles) on board

 

 

 

 

THE FALAISE POCKET

After a long drive from Brugge via Dunkirk, Calais and Hornfleur we have finally arrived in Bayeaux

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.

BRUGGE AND AREA

Before going to Normandy, Dennis and I decided to visit Brugge in north-west Belgium. We landed in Brussels, hired a car and drove to Brugge. The town was not damaged during World War II so all the old buildings still exist. The market square and several of the buildings are very beautiful with baroque detail and golden statues. We took a bus tour around the city and enjoyed the rows of old buildings, the cathedrals and several windmills. We then took a boat trip along the many canals to see the city from a different perspective. We could picture the scenes from the movie 'In Brugge'. One can also take an old fashioned horse and carriage around the town which is very romantic. The shops are wonderful specialising in beautiful lace and chocolates to die for! The fashions are outstanding and plenty of different styles and shoes. The food here is excellent, especially the fish. I had a sole today that rivals anything you can get in South Africa and Dennis had a huge bucket of mussels. Everything comes with lovely chips. Today we drove across the border [which doesn't exist!] to Holland. We saw a supermarket with only fish of all kinds to buy, even some we had never even heard of and all fresh from the North Sea -mussels, prawns, sole, kabeljou, eels, scallops, crabs, live crayfish and of course lots of herring being cleaned to be eaten fresh on the spot! We drove to the Noth Sea to Zeebrugge where the ferry leaves for England. The wind was blowing a gale and the rows of electricity-generating windmills were working overtime. We stopped for coffee and one of the items on the menu was an upside down Russian coffee. Was this supposed to be Kafe Hafuch!

We are staying in a fairy-tale castle complete with a moat. It is full of genuine family portraits, old furniture, turrets and probably a resident ghost! The bathrooms have been modernised but otherwise it must be the same as when it was owned centuries ago. Outside our window ducks swim in the moat and further off cows graze quietly amongst the spring flowers. Really an idyllic place.

Tomorrow we are off to Bayeaux via Dunkirk and Dennis will update you as to our travels.

THE END OF THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE AND ITS AFTERMATH

On the above map you can see the limits to where the Germans advanced which is depicted by the black dashed line - this was the Bulge that was formed by the German offensive and that was where the battle got its name from.

Although only some 8 kilometers from its banks the Germans did not manage to cross the River Meuse and were finally stopped at Celles. Having run out of fuel They had abandoned and destroyed most of their tanks and heavy equipment and had begun an orderly retreat to the east.

Patton immediately saw a marvellous opportunity to squeeze closed the salient at its shoulders by having the British pushing from the north and the Americans from the south so as to trap the German army in a pocket. Montgomery and Eisenhower opposed this move as they felt it could be too dangerous with resulting high losses and vetoed pattons suggestion. Instead they pushed the Germans eastward from the nose of the Bulge, giving them ample opportunity to make an orderly retreat back to Germany where they could recover to fight another day. Patton was livid but there was nothing he could do about it. It took the Allieds until the middle of January to expel the Germans to where they had started their attack.

The losses were horrendous. For the Americans over 10,000 soldiers killed, 47,000 wounded and a staggering 23,000 missing in action. There are no official records for German losses but they were much higher that those of the Americans. The Americans could replace their losses easily - the Germans could not.

The Battle of the Bulge was Hitler's last real action on the western front. His army had been decimated and the Allieds pursued the Germans to Hamburg, Berlin, Bavaria and Austria whilst the Russians were approaching Berlin from the east. Within 6 months the war was over and the Germans surrendered.

Even though Montgomery attempted to claim success The Battle of the Bulge was purely an American victory. Moreover the American army let down their troops by not supplying them with the correct winter clothing, insufficient ammunition, food and other necessaries. The Battle was essentially a series of skirmishes and the American GI fought with bravery and resilience - it was really the victory of the dogface GI

After the war Patton was fatally injured in a motor accident in Austria and died a few weeks later. He was buried with the troops of his 3rd army who had lost their lives in the Bulge in the American Military Cemetery in Luxembourg.

The information I used for compiling this tour was from the following books and media:

1. A Tour of the Bulge Battlefields by William C.C. Cavanagh
2. Kampfgruppe Peiper at the Battle of the Bulge by David Cooke and Wayne Evans
3. Ardennes 1944 - Hitler's Last Gamble in the West by James R Arnold

Movies:
1. The Battle of the Bulge
2. Patton
3. Band of Brothers

Internet
1. Wikipedia
2. Google Map and Earth


We will based for 1 week in Malmedy which is more or less central in the Bulge area and from there will spend a few nights in Brussels and then return to Israel

I hope to add to this blog and send you fotos from our tour

Till next time from Europe