Excursion- Caen.

On Saturday February 26th I had an excursion to Caen and the coast. I left to the Gare Saint Lazare train station at 6:40 AM. It was a littlemore than a 2 hour train ride to Caen and I endedup falling asleep for most of the ride. Iarrived in Caen around 10 AM, the group got into a small bus and we headed for the Memorial Museum which is for the World Wars. I really enjoyed the museum and would recommend it. It's set up nicely so you pretty much follow a path through the years, truly amazing photos and interesting videos. I took me about 2 hours to go through the museum, I took a lot of pictures and spent time reading most of the information. After that, I watched a 15 minute film that was pretty good as well. There was two screens going side by side, one with preparations of the Allies and one with the enemies up until the D-Day battle and then it cut to a modern day shot of the beaches on a sunny day and then flashed back to the battle. After the film I ate lunch and then everyone got back into the bus. We got a tour guide from the museum to take up to the beaches and to the American cemetery. She was really nice and did a great job with the tour.On the 40 minute drive to Omaha beach she explained why Normandy was chosen as the place of attack and why the date was chosen. She explained that a previous battle had taught the Allies that they needed to attack on sandy beaches instead of pebble because the pebble was too difficult to work quickly on. She explained that Normandy is relatively flat and easy to move quickly on as well. She also explained that they needed to attack when it was mid-tide because during high-tide there isn't enough beach to get everyone on to and during low-tide there was a quarter mile of land which was too much to cover while being shot at from the hills. Also it had to be during a full moon because the Allies needed to take out bridges from the sky during the night and the moon would allow them to see well enough. There was only three dates corresponding to the conditions during that summer May 5th, June 5th and July 18th (I think). The first date was too soon and things couldn't be ready by then so June 5th was chosen. Then there was a weather report saying there was a huge storm coming for that date, the Americans got more information about the storm though knowing there would be a pocket of weather in the earlymorning suitable for the attack. The Germans weren't aware of this and weren't ready for the attack because they assumed there was no way for anything to go down with such bad weather. The Germans were so unprepared in fact that one of the main generals (I think) left Normandy the day before because his wife's birthday was on June 5th so he went to go celebrate with her. I also learned that the Allies were very lucky they chose the middle date insteadof the last because on the last date with the conditions, the worst storm of the decade occurred. I found the whole story to be amazing, what good luck or fate for the Allies. We only actually stopped at the Omaha Beach because I wanted to collect sand from there, we were suppose to go straight the the cemetery. I wanted sand from this beach because I had collected sand from one of the other beaches and I wanted to add to the collection since I got to visit this place again. The beach was beautiful, we went on a nice day. The sand was golden and so soft.I miss being around the ocean. After a short stop this beach we left for the American Cemetery.

On the way there we saw some of the holes that the Germans hid in to fire at anyone that may try to attack the coast. It was amazing to see that things are still around. It may sound dumb to say but it makes the war seem more real, it's not just a story you read about in books and hear about from grandparents, it's a real hole that a man crouched inside of to fire a huge gun at another young man that was fighting for his country. Really the whole day meant a lot to me, very eye opening. Once we got to the cemetery it started to rain some and we went under an area that had maps to show where the fighting occurred. The tour guide told us facts about the cemetery for example almost 10,000 men are buried there. The families had the choice to have the bodies buried in France were they died or to be taken back home. We also learned that on the dog tags on the bodies, the men that showed their Jewish religion were buried under the star rather than the cross, only about 140 men, I think. More were probably Jewish but because it was so dangerous to show that at that time, many men didn't. The crosses

were a lot bigger than I expected, probably about 3, 3 and a half, feet tall, all facing west towards home, America. It stopped rainingand the sun came out as we started to walk through the cemetery. We saw a few specific graves. One was an unknown solider, one of many in the cemetery. On the back of the headstone was a number, just like all the other graves but on the front insteadof a name, rank, home state and death date it just said, "Here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God." I thought it was very sad that so many families never knew what happened to their sonsor husbands or brothers, the men buried under these stones are just mysteries. I saw the graves of the Niland brothers, two brothers that died in the war and also had two brothers that survived the war. In the cemetery there are brothers buried next to each other and also fathers and sons. I also saw the grave of Theodore Roosevelt Jr, who was given the gold star for a decision he made that saved the lives of many men, his information is written in gold becauseof this. The cemetery was very nice, very green grass and information signs are written in English first and then French (a nice/surprising change). I took a walk on the path around the cemetery and then it was time to go to our next stop, the Arromanches beach. It was about a fifteen minute drive here and we only were here for another 15 minutes.

It was quite windy, which is exactly how I remembered it being the last time I was here. The cliffs at this beach are so beautiful, I wished we had more time to go down on the beach rather than just take a few pictures from a cliff. We then headed back to Caen, dropped off the tour guide and went to the train station. We were all given 10 euros for dinner and had an hour to find something to eat. 5 other people and myself went to a cafe across the street from the station. We watched the France vs. England rugby match and ate, I had the Croque Monsieur and a small carafe of white wine. It was another 2 hour-ish ride back to Paris. I sat across from another girl in my program, Bita, and we talked the whole way back about frustrations we had/are having with Abroadco and about things we're loving in Paris and the food. I'm a huge candy monster so of course I had packed sour gummy worms and a Twix bar for the ride home. After we got back to Paris we all met up at Citè, the dorms for most students in Paris, and went out for the night. I had a great day.