LE MONT ST MICHEL
Our journey was good and Janet drove with a caravan on tow for the first 'real' time. Before we left she had three hours tuition. I am sure she was nervous but we kept her first experience to dual carriageways, albeit driving on the right and sitting on the wrong side of the car of course. She did brilliantly and it means our usual four hour journeys will be half as tiring for me. And, yes I did let go of the dash very soon indeed.
The site we are on is excellent by French standards. Indeed pretty good by Caravan Club measures. Even our pitch is of reasonable size, which is not often the case over here. And its only 13 euroes a night all in so we are happy.
Little village of Courtils is sweet with a hotel, some gites, and a boulanger which appears to be never closed. Pleasing walk of about 500 metres to the village.
Nearest town is Avranches which I can now confirm is as good as first sight suggested. Hilltop and fortified again – I pick em – it is quite large, with a lot of new build but, as ever round here the wreckage of the war has been made good by recreation of what was lost. It does sometimes seem too crisp but overall the effect is great.
On Monday I went on my own to see some of the Normandy landing sights – Arromances and Gold beach, where the main British contingent landed. This was where the successful one of the two Mulberry harbours was built. The US had the other for Omaha but the weather, an onshore wind and an error over water depth meant it was largely lost. I have never been in doubt of the amazing importance and achievemt of the Mulberry harbours, alongside the sheer cold blooded heroism of every man who took part in the landings. But I had never grasped the scale of the logistical achievement.
To be told they were 60 metres long, 18 metres wide, 14 metres deep and weighed 6,000 tons each is not at all the get the point. They are immense. They are massive quantities of steel and concrete formed into multi-celled boxes of thin air, ready to be floated 60 miles or so and then to be sunk. They would then sit in six or seven metres of water and provide the breakwater for the piers that were then floated inside, sunk and used as docks. Whereupon the Americans' floating bridges were strung out up to ten MILES long for the resultant mass of tanks, trucks, guns, ammo, men, Red Cross vans and all the rest to make its way ashore. Until this week I saw this as huge, impressive, amazing. Today I am lost for words. They amassed all this, towed it across the Channel under fire, assembled it in raging seas. Their breakwater is the size of Plymouth sound. It is huge, immense, amazing but it also now seems impossible. At Arromanches it had always distressed me that some of the remains of this flotsam was left stranded on this stunning strand. But I was wrong. Of the, now wait for this, 118 – yes 118 – bits of Mulberry harbour brought here a mere 20 odd remain. And these few still dominate the scene. Close in one of the dock units lies crooked in the sand. You could play football on top of it. Maybe you should, just to prove the point. For what I cannot concieve is that in the midst of dreadful war, turning out fighter aircraft, and bombers by the hundred, and tanks, and guns by the thousands, and trucks and ammo by the millions of rounds somehow these massive chunks of stuff could have been built, assembled, transported, gathered together on the beach, dragged into the sea and finally towed to their destination. How? How could it have been managed? And in heavens name what did it cost? No wonder we were broke. No wonder it took us until this century to pay off the war debt. And maybe we should be even more angry that a bunch of chancers and duckers and divers in the City should have robbed us of the chance to recover fully from that long ago horror. Shame on you, City of my fathers. Shame.
I roamed a little along the beaches but the sun shone, the sea was blue, the sand almost white. The realisation that men dressed in dripping serge had stepped off creaking landing craft, armed with a rifle or a machine gun and faced with withering fire from the slopes above seemed hard to handle.
Until I got to the Cinema 360 degrees. It is a bit commercial, yes. But this a little bit of a thank you as the French know how to do it. Son et lumiere in effect. Nine screens ring the audience. Brilliant editing puts images and sound from the landing, the battle, the ruin but then mixes them with the same places today. The grainy black and white is loud in volume and in pathos. Today is quiet and serene. Where a tank crashes through a street then, today uses clever filiming and has us sitting in 'it' but running through the same peaceful orchard or busy market or street. Where a landing craft crashed clumsily through the surf to oblivion or heroism, we ride a fishing boat serenely. In either case we sit within, looking forward or watching behind. Then, again and suddenly, gunfire, noise, pain, bandages, blood. They do not hold back. One lady gasped involuntarily at what we saw. What lasted then for hours, days, weeks and whole lifetime for too many, is done in 20 minutes. But you leave a little wiser. Three young Americans appeared as I entered, coming as I later realised from the exit to re-enter and watch again. One said too loudly, too excitedly: “That was not at all what I expected”. Right, nor I. They watched a second time. Not sure I could have actually.
I drove along Gold Beach where the main British divisions landed. There is little today to show for the carnage and sacrifice. As someone who held a 303 rifle, fired it over mid and long range, saw what it could do I have little doubt this was a place of fear and horror. The Germans fired their machine guns from good cover on the running figures of Lowry-esque targets. They would see no faces, see no terror, hear no cries. A man would fall, maybe rise, shudder again and move no more. In the nest the German would suddenly freeze. A step, a crack of twig, a skittering metal pineapple, a shattering blast and, maybe mercifully silence.
There was, there is no separation, no point of differenc for friend or foe. They fear, they fight, they suffer, they die. Grey Nazi or Khaki Brit they bleed red and die cold. What a waste, even if for this one war we at least could claim a true aggressor to be held back.
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