Beaches of wartime

The last couple days have been incredible, going to a couple of places of history that i have wanted to go to ever since hearing about them, Northern france in dunkirk and the mass evacuation, Normandy and the famous battles here, the Dday landings and a few of the towns i know of and always wanted to see.

Starting in northern France in the city of Dunkirk, near the Belgium border.
In 1940 the British, french and Belgium forces had been pushed back to the coastlines, some 330,000 men, all on Dunkirks beach, what i didn't expect to see was nooone else around but a few dog walkers and a couple of other people on this massively long open beach.

With the tide out and the beach clear of tourists you could see how you can have so many people on it, waiting for rescue, how the boats had the problem of low tides and nowhere to land, how flat the beach is and how much of it is underwater in high tide.

We had walked along the beach for a while just taking in the sights, couple of landmark areas and a few information points throughout town and the beachfront describing the events that happened through the mass evacuation, a day here learning and walking the beach with nice weather in winter time, what more could you ask for?

Dunkirk itself is a nice place to visit, free transport on all buses, runs well and on time, the centre of town is nice and has a few museums but all are pretty much closed in winter, couple of historical ships, walking trails with information along the way and what the places looked like during the war, in contrast today its hard to imagine...

And we had almost walked into Belgium, only 10k's more along the beach :p

The second but most important to me to see was the Normandy area, we had travelled from Dunkirk to paris, stayed the night, then early morning to Caen.

Spent that day mapping out all the places i wanted to see, and the next morning, we had got our hire car, thanks France, a country that doesn't care if we are Australian and upgraded to a SUV auto instead of the tiny 2 door manual i booked.

Now you might think, driving a left hand side car on the right side road, in a city I've never driven before in a country whos language i can't read but the basics, might be hard. But honestly it was a great experience in itself, taken all of 2 minutes to get the hang of things.

Anyways, our first stop along the way was a place called Pointe Du hoc, a complex of bunkers, shore gun batterys and the story of US forces climbing the Cliffsides, taken over the area and held in for days against counterattacks.
the point itself is fully explorable, going into the bunkers, the impact craters from shore bombardment even just a wonder around the sides of the cliffs and the speechless views from here, understanding why the Germans had that point fortified in the first place.

One other beach i have wanted to see, is Omaha beach, nowdays it has a road along it, the beach has golden sand, a few monuments for different reasons are along the way, a few photos of before and afters are along the way too, but go back to June 6 1944, this had anything and everything on the beach to block the Allied forces from landing here, Stroming the beach over a 6 km stretch. It truly hard to imagine the sight of this place and what happened here, lives lost, and what now is a empty open beach, how far that seemed for someone getting over the boat and having to run from the water to the cliff, underfire, artillery and all the obstacles in the way.

And if you can't understand the impact of the war just on the beachs and towns alone, then head over to the nearby US cemetery where that alone has over 9000 marked crosses in uniformed lines, it was a heavy emotional day to understand how what happened so long ago, changed the course of history for so many, and the effect of these places had to so many countries and only after 11 months since Dday WW2 was over.

Sadly we didnt have time to fully explore everything, it would take days to see it all, visiting the other 4 beaches, towns, museums and the several other cemeteries of allied forces, but its still an amazing experience and sight to see everything we had.