Twice across the English Channel

Concrete caisson which doubled as
sleeping quarter for the men in the harbour

Arromanches looking west to
Pointe de Tracy

 We arrived in the late afternoon to a particularly inhospitable weather welcome from Arromanches-les-bains with a very strong wind blowing straight off the Artic somewhere. After a few days of very warm weather this came as a bit of a shock and we had to search out the thermals. The inhospitable weather also hid the amazing jewel that is Arromanches. We set off in the morning to discover the D-Day museum and were absolutely enthralled. Like the Australian War Memorial it was a place you didn't want to leave because the story was told so well – the ingenuity, the awe, the heroism, the futility, the hope, the waste, the poignancy of realising that so much blood was shed on that beach 71 years ago.

Iron causeway - was used as a traffic
bridge in France after the war

Little did we realise the sheer scale of the D-Day invasion and the fact that the Allied forces created 2 artificial harbours - Mulberry A and Mulberry B (A for American, B for British) to sustain the invasion. Mulberry A was destroyed in a wild storm only a couple of weeks after D-Day but Mulberry B survived and was used through until December 1944 when the front line was too far from Arromanches for it to be effective as a supply base. The whole harbour was created within a few days of D-Day. First they sank merchant ships (obviously they weren’t good for much anymore) to make a break wall then 115 huge concrete ‘caissons’ were sunk after being towed over from England to make the permanent breakwall and have anti-aircraft guns installed. Next they installed the floating docks connected to the beach by 1.2km of floating causeways – one going to the beach for unloading and the other to for empty trucks to return to the ships to collect more supplies. Two other one way causeways were installed to unload fuel and munitions and another for troops. Again all of these causeways were towed from England. It was an amazing engineering feat with the harbour operating 24 hours a day and able to unload 18 000 tonnes of supplies a day. Some of our ports these days may struggle with those figures! To think all this had to happen in a couple of days and be hidden from the Germans in the planning stages.

Outside of the Bayeux tapestry museum

Our second trip across the English channel (not literally) occurred with the visit to the Bayeux tapestry and the Norman invasion of England by William the Conqueror in 1066. Some 900 years difference and sailed in the opposite direction but probably travelled at about the same speed. In both cases the invading force was met with jubilation from some but huge bloodshed in battle. It just goes to show that we don’t always learn from history and that our footsteps may be very muddy.

With almost a minimum of fuss we travelled to Mers les bains – for whatever reason the GPS decided it did not want to take us down the non-navigable country lanes but instead over a couple of amazing modern bridges at Honfleur and Le Havre and delivered us safely. Tomorrow we head off in search of the Trois Arbres War Cemetry to find Lance Corporal Herbert Henry Dale  – some very sketchy directions courtesy of the Australian War Memorial and now with our knowledge of French road sign chaos we will see what occurs.

Love to all

S&E