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| Tank in front of the Overlord Museum. |
As time was closing in on us for this one day, self led tour, we still had time to see more on our list. We stopped for a quick bite to eat at a local french eatery only to have a hamburger, fries and a coke zero. So much for the french foodie experience.
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| A large US Flag flower arrangement was set beside the tank |
Right now, we were just trying to get through the day! Our next stop was the Overlord museum. Operation Overlord was the code name for the Allied invasion of north-west Europe. The Assault phase of Operation overlord was known as Operation Neptune. This operation, The Battle of Normandy is the name given for the fighting in Normandy between D-Day and the end of August 1944. There were many fictitious operation names provided to the enemy to throw them off.
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| Overlord Museum – Normandy France |
This one is the real deal. Chuck wanted to visit the Overlord museum most importantly because the Overlord memorial is in Bedford.
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| National D-Day Memorial – Bedford, Virginia taken several years ago |
We wandered around the gift shop and the tanks outside but didn’t walk through the museum, realizing we’ve probably seen most of it already in another museum today.
After the museum we made our way to the Eglise Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption Cathedral also known as Sainte-Mere-Eglise. This Cathedral was destroyed and rebuilt.
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| Eglise Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption Cathedral |
It is most famously known for the landings of the paratroopers in the 82nd and 101st Airborne Division directly into the arms of the German forces. A lot of the towns buildings were on fire, caused by a previous raid that night by the Allied Air Forces.
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| Front of Cathedral |
This resulted in many of them losing their lives. Some paratroopers were pulled into the raging fires, while others were easy targets in the sky being illuminated by them.
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| Inside the cathedral |
The most famous story is that of private John Steele. John’s parachute got caught on a pinnacle of the church tower and hung there helpless pretending to be dead to avoid getting shot.
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| Side of cathedral with cemetery plots. Some not too old. |
Eventually after a few hours he was taken prisoner by the Germans.
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| A photo of the cathedral as it looked that day when it was destroyed. |
Many pictures I’ve seen during my research show a replica of a paratrooper hanging from the Churches steeple by his parachute but we didn’t see it. They must have taken it down or we missed it for some reason.
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| French and American flags made from flowers just outside the cathedral |
May God bless you always!
WorldTravelReynolds 