P and J's Excellent Adventure: Dropping in on Carentan

We started the day by visiting a 'garage sale' market in the town. There were some curiosities that might have been considered if we were at home, and some monstrosities. If you want to see how bad they were see J's blog (link on side of page).

I was happiness filled by this:

Yes, it's a genuine wartime double-double Bailey bridge, a few kms from Carentan.

This area was where American airborne landed to protect the join between Utah beach on the Cotentin peninsula and Omaha on the Calvados coast. The area is naturally marshy and William the Conk won one of his earlier battles in this area against rebellious barons. (He allowed half of them to cross a bridge then attacked the rear half, forcing many to drown in the river as thy retreated.) The Germans took advantage of that marshiness by inundating much of the countryside. Hundreds of paras drowned in the swamp and it often restricted fighting to along raised roads.

Carentan was a transport hub and hosted an inland port. We found a nice spot for lunch under trees alongside the canal, then walked intot he town. IT being a holiday Sunday there were very few people about...

Apparently the last sea-worthy Higgins boat (LCVP). You can take trips around the harbour in it. 20000 of these were made, so they were a significant factor on the success of the many Allied amphibious landings.

101st Airborne's HQ in Carentan.

Just up the road was a (double) museum - the D-Day Experience and Dead Man's Corner. They were a bit pricey so I was dubious but were actually very well done. The first had its exhibits 'narrated' by one of the combatants. The bits and pieces were personalised so there was a story behind a lot of them. In the end it was revealed that the 'narrator' had died before he even landed. His body, hanging from his 'chute in a tree, had been used for target practice by passing Germans before being buried in an temporary grave. Fortunately he was eventually identified and he was able to be buried decently. The experience part involved a simulated flight in a C-47 which ends by... no, I won't spoil it. There was also a 3-D movie which was OK, especially as we could say "been there, done that" for many of its shots.

Amongst the militaria were Eisenhower's leather jacket and Capt Winter's (of Band of Brothers fame) jacket.

Dead Man's Corner was the German 6 FJR HQ and was named after a US tank commander who was killed in his tank turret and not recovered for several days.

On leaving we got to see some of the worst parking ever:

Yes, that's actually parked and the driver is inside the museum somewhere. Merde!

Since it was close we went to see one of the para's objectives: The barrage gate used to control the water in the surrounding meadows. This is one of the ways the Germans flooded the area.

Here you can see the last of four bridges that carried the road south from Dead Man's Corner (St Come du Mont) to Carentan. The original bridge had to be taken by bayonet charge with heavy casualties on both sides.

This is the barrier that was one of the objectives

Finally we drove to our park-up in Sainte Marie du Mont which has a church with an unusual spire and also saw heaps of confused fighting in the night preceding D-Day and on. It was HQ for the defending German Division (719 ID?) They have panels that tell some of the incidents that occurred. (One just says a parachutist landed on this wall)

Very unusual renaissance style tower (1840s). It housed German observers and then US snipers. I imagine it has a fantastic view over the countryside as the village on on a rise.