D-Day +65years: personal connection

This year’s 65^th anniversary of D-Day is a couple of months away, and sadly, will probably be the last significant anniversary where there will be more than a handful of survivors able to attend. My own father is 88 this year, and there are now only one or two of his former comrades from the RAF still around.

He will be coming to Normandy, as usual, this summer for a visit. He did not land in Normandy in 1944, but in the south of France in August, near St Tropez, in what was called the D-Day of the South, but which is now almost entirely overlooked. He had been fighting in Corsica before, so it was an obvious outcome as the northern invasion was making progress. It was no easy trip: landing on a beach under fire. His best mate beside him was shot dead as they ran; could have been him.

As the participants fade away, the facts become increasingly lost in the fog of Hollywood films and inventions. Few people, for example, seem aware of the tremendous importance and breathtaking innovation of the floating Mulberry harbours, which made the invasion possible, or know that of the five landing beaches only one was not an immediate success.

For the 60^th anniversary of D-Day, we took my father to the extraordinary and moving Memorial museum at Caen. This is dedicated to peace not war, and puts the emphasis on the people and not the hardware. When the staff knew he was an ancien combattant (veteran), we were all given free admission, and the constant help and attention of the incredibly soignée hôtesses who are the guides and attendants.

At one point, one of them kneeled beside him – he has to use a wheelchair these days – and said ‘Merci, merci pour tout vous avez faites pour la France’ – thank you for everything you did for France. As she said it the other people around were in tears, she was in tears, and though he tried hard not to let it show, so was my father. Later he said that this was the first time anyone had ever thanked him personally, and it was the first time he had realised that no one ever had.

Many of the exhibits in the museum are around the occupation, not just D-Day and its aftermath, with documents such as death sentences for resistance members, photographs of events, people and hardship – everything from death to starvation, and the resistance. My father also said later that this was the first time he had ever had to think about the occupation and the lives of the people they were invading, effectively to rescue.

We now rarely think of the reality of those days, or of the people, particularly civilians, who died during the occupation and the liberation. The photo at the top of this page is of the war memorial at Ouistreham, where all the western crossing ferries now land. It is outside the wonderful Romanesque church that you can see at the end of the road to the centre of the town as you drive out of the port. The names are categorised: soldiers, deported to the concentration camps, shot, and just ordinary civilians killed (this group of names is continued on the other side of the memorial).

I hope that those who visit Normandy for the anniversary will see the events for what they were, and not just the raw material for another wretched shoot-em-up computer game. There were no second lives, no-one got up and had another go. The dead from the invasion and the war overall are still dead.

The Caen Memorial is off junctions 6 or 7 of the peripherique nord, the northern ring road, and there are good public transport links from Caen. It is imperative if you want to understand the reality of war and D-Day.

My father has written his memoirs – not badly, as it happens – and there are copies in the Imperial War Museum and the RAF Museum. The memoirs  have been published on Kindle as an eBook from Amazon, and more details including chapters to read on this website.

Normandy beaches

Contrary to the Hollywood version the D-Day landings took place (almost) simultaneously on five different beaches, code named Sword (British), Juno (Canadian), Gold (British), Utah (US) and Omaha US), and involved all the western allies; US soldiers were a minority. For those who want to understand that extraordinary event, you must visit the Caen Memorial Museum, exit 7 on the Caen peripherique (ring road), which includes archive film from both sides. This is a museum dedicated to peace not war, and also shows a great deal of very moving information about the Occupation and the effect on civilian life in France, rather than the usual boys' toys and violence.

However, this post is not about those beaches along the northern coast, but rather those further south in Normandy, and as they now are. All along the west coast of the Cotentin peninsula, as far as Avranches, are some splendid, sandy beaches that are little known. The picture is of St Martin de Brehal. Part of that is because of their history, as well as their location. When the railways came to Granville and the region, a whole series of little holiday villages developed. This was because it had become possible for the Parisian middle class families to send the wives and children to the coast for the summer, with the men joining them for August.

The beaches were ideal, because being part of the shallow Bay of Mont St Michel, they shelved gently, were very sandy and safe for children. The holiday villages grew up because the villages after which they are named are actually almost all a couple of miles from the sea. Places such as Breville-sur-Mer or Lingreville-sur-Mer are not sur mer. The sea retreated several hundred years ago, leaving exposed land that has been turned into excellent market gardens. Especially good for leeks and root vegetables such as carrots. But the villages were too far from the sea for small children, maids and mothers to walk every day, in both directions. So, all sorts of little cottages, chalets, bungalows and, occasionally, fairly grand houses, were built beside the sea. Many were rented.

If one visits, say St Martin de Brehal, today, many of the properties directly facing the sea are being renovated and extended, and there are many newer developments, including apartments, being constructed. In summer most of the beaches have life guards.

Apart from miles of sand, many of the beaches are also used for farming mussels, oysters and other seafood. Mussels are grown on ropes of coconut fibre (it doesn't rot in sea water) and where there is a mussel farm, at low tide the poles with their ropes are exposed, and tractors and trailers drive across the beach to maintain and harvest them. These mussels are moules de bouchot – highly prized, plump little fellows, and now have their own AOC, like wines and cheeses.

At the solstices, when there are extreme high and low tides, there is a phenomenon known as the peche a pied – fishing on foot. The tide goes out an enormous distance, exposing rock pools etc that are never normally seen. Thousands of people arrive, with rakes, shovels, buckets and other equipment, in search of wild shellfish, crabs etc. And I do mean thousands – more people at the December low tide on the beach than at the height of summer.

All year round, splendid walks and sights.