I recently visited Normandy with Brenda, my cousin Hugh and his wife Catherine to belatedly bear witness to Roy's part in the immense and magnificent undertaking that was Operation Overlord.
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Thanks to James Simpson for having written such an excellent account of The Suffolk Regiment's landing on D Day.
https://jamesdsimpson.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/blog-post-14-d-day-posts-part-1-the-beach/
We stayed at a hotel a few yards from Queen White Sector but it was hard to get an impression of how it looked in 1944.
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There were various monuments scattered along the beach. This one is to naval personnel.
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The bunker at Ouistreham was a former communications and range finding centre for the area and the museum was worth a visit. The gun is the famous German 88 mm described by Max Hastings as "quite simply the best gun produced by any combatant nation in the war, with a formidable killing power against all allied tanks".
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There was also a landing craft, similar to the one that Dad and his company probably threw up in, which was built for the film "Saving Private Ryan".
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However it was the museum and monuments at Pegasus Bridge that provided us with the most vivid impression of the first action to take place in Overlord, when three gliders landed undetected, at night, on a narrow strip of land within a few yards of the bridge.
This is a newer bridge. The monument to the right is where the first glider landed and the memorial to the left is to Major John Howard of the 6th Airborne Division who took and held the bridge.
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This image shows how close the gliders landed
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The original bridge is preserved in the grounds of the museum as is a replica glider.
http://www.memorial-pegasus.org/mmp/musee_debarquement/index.php
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The Suffolk's main objectives on D Day were the fortifications at Morris and Hillman, both named after makes of car.
