In which Sid and Doris spend so long at the engrossing Utah Beach Museum that they have a hurried, hilly, rough and anxious ride to the ferry at Cherbourg.
All military plans had D Days and H Hours because it is impossible to put an exact date on given that military circumstances and weather may change. The largest ever amphibious invasion was Operation Neptune, beginning on 6th June after a day’s postponement for better weather (while tide and moonshine were not much changed).
By March 1943 Major General Frederick Morgan and staff of 50 British, Canadian and US officers had their draft ready to present, some of the intelligence having come from holiday snaps sent in following an appeal on the BBC.
In similarly practical style, all US officers landing in France were given a 1943 copy of the 1939 Michelin Guide so useful for its town maps, though many of the restaurants would have been shut. And not just on Mondays.
With limited resources the first plan went to three beaches. At that time there were only 653 tank landing craft and Morgan did not have the clout to get the more of everything he knew was needed – so he asked for a Supreme Commander to be appointed. Montgomery saw the plans and agreed they were deficient. Eisenhower persuaded US politicians to turn up the effort in the arsenal of democracy so there would be five beaches. The date was put back five weeks so more ships, vehicles, planes and men could be brought to bear on D Day.
In Dover Sid and Doris learned about Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of Dunkirk, managed by Admiral Ramsey. Now he was responsible for the co-ordination of the navies’ contribution to Neptune. The chart below shows the fleets setting out from Salcombe to Newhaven towards the five beaches. You can see the 84th and 101st Airbourne (see Band of Brothers) setting off from airfields near Salisbury to land behind Utah.
And here is the traffic plan for moving men and kit from ships to the beach.
The whole enterprise is boggling. Though Cherbourg was not taken until June 26th (and then with the docks unusable) by June 30th over 850,000 men, 148,000 vehicles and 570,000 tons of supplies had been landed across the beaches and temporary harbours. (Sid has ordered a book on the logistics of Neptune, so best not raise the topic until that has worn off.)
The museum was engrossing and better than expected. The wider story is brought home with the experiences of people on the day, both attackers and defenders. As it says at a nearby German cemetery, ‘not all of whom had chosen either the cause or the fight’. Probably went for quite a lot of conscripts of all nationalities.
The museum is not much about the kit but here is a B26 as flown on the day with a GMC truck of the time. (The Airfix range did not include bulldozers, graders and other seaside necessities.)
So it is not until 12.30 that S and D leave for Cherbourg, abandoning the plan to take flattish roads to St Vaast for lunch. Rather a hilly but direct route is plotted. It rains. The road surfaces take progress down by two gears and eat into Doris’s battery. The lanes are small, so sometimes Doris makes a route change as a puncture down a crappy track is not what is required. Bocage is officially no fun. Cereal bars take the place of quayside lunch.
And if you look very carefully you can see we are on the EV4, it goes from Roscoff to Kiev (France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Ukraine). A great ride in many circumstances, but why choose these claustrophobic, tooth rattling ditches to ride?
After the sweat of the cross country hill route we get into Cherbourg in plenty of time. The day’s plan had included a late stop at Cherbourg’s Glaces Moustache Artisan Glacier and Salon de The.
But somehow soggily cycling across town lost out to checking into the ferry port with the motorbikes and having a vending machine coffee in the pedestrian shelter. How did that happen? Moods just do change when on Epic Journeys.