ISM ENIGMA Travelogue : 09/07/2015 Pointe di Hoc and Saint Mere Eglise today.

This morning I drove 63 miles along the Normandy coast to one of the WWII D-Day Invasion sites called Pointe du Hoc, where the American Rangers nearly 100-meter-high cliff, with perpendicular sides jutting out into the Channel. It looked down on Utah Beach to the left and Omaha Beach to the right. There were six 155mm cannon in heavily reinforced concrete bunkers that were capable of hitting either beach with their big shells. On the outermost edge of the cliff, the Germans had an elaborate, well-protected outpost, where the spotters had a perfect view and could call back coordinates to the gunners at the 155s. Those guns had to be neutralized. The Allied bombardment of Pointe-du-Hoc had begun weeks before D-Day. Heavy bombers from the U.S. Eighth Air Force and British Bomber Command had repeatedly plastered the area, with a climax coming before dawn on June 6. Then the battleship Texas took up the action, sending dozens of 14-inch shells into the position. Altogether, Pointe-du-Hoc got hit by more than ten kilotons of high explosives, the equivalent of the explosive power of the atomic bomb used at Hiroshima. Texas lifted her fire at 0630, the moment the rangers were scheduled to touch down.
There are so many gigantic pot holes and some as huge as an Olympic swimming pool.

I spent a few hours taking the photos and then drove another 32 miles up the coast to a small village called Saint Mere Eglise, made famous not only by WWII but by the town's main claim to fame, which is that it played a significant part in the World War II Normandy landings because this village stood right in the middle of route N13, which the Germans would have most likely used on any significant counterattack on the troops landing on Utah and Omaha Beaches. In the early morning of 6 June 1944 mixed units of the U.S. 82nd Airborne and U.S. 101st Airborne Divisions occupied the town in Operation Boston, giving it the claim to be one of the first towns liberated in the invasion.

A well-known incident involved paratrooper John Steele of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR), whose parachute caught on the spire of the town church, and could only observe the fighting going on below. He hung there limply for two hours, pretending to be dead, before the Germans took him prisoner. Steele later escaped from the Germans and rejoined his division when US troops of the 3rd Battalion, 505 Parachute Infantry Regiment attacked the village, capturing thirty Germans and killing another eleven. The incident was portrayed in the movie The Longest Day by actor Red Buttons.

I had a wonderful relaxing day doing this and I forgot, for a while, all of the physics and inventing I have been doing full speed over the past three years, which is now going to pay off BIG TIME. I had a great lunch at a small cafe called C-47 Cafe named after the plane the C-47 twin engine multi-tasking jewel of the Army Air Corps. during WWII.

Enjoy the photos: