History

Probably due to the film Gettysburg, Little Round top gets all the press, but the fighting was every bit as tough at the Devil's Den and the Peach Orchard, out in front of Little Round top. General Sickles had extended his lines forward to the orchard and the large rock pile known as Devil's Den despite being told not to by his superiors, leaving Little Round Top uncovered - Sickles wanted to fight on higher ground, but had insufficient forces to extend his line that far forward. When a Confederate effort to turn the flank approached LIttle Round Top, Strong Vincent's Brigade (including the 20th Maine, featured in Gettysburg) was rushed into place.
In the Devil's Den, monument to the 124th New York, Col Van Horne Ellis and Maj James Cromwell, both killed in the battle.

In the Devil's Den, monument to the 99th Pennsylvania. Little Round top is in back, the 20th Maine Monument (on the site where that regiment fought) is on the lower southern slope in the woods (to the right in the photo.)

20th Maine Monument on Little Round Top

The American military cemetery at Colleville sur Mere is the famous one, the one featured in the opening and close of Saving Private Ryan. It consolidated a number of temporary cemeteries, including ones at Saint Mere Eglise and La Cambe. This first photo is of the graves of Theodore Roosevelt Jr and his brother Quentin.

Quentin was a Lieutenant in the 95th Aero Squadron in WWI; his grave was moved to be next to his brothers after WWII. Theodore was a Brigadier General and Assistant Division Commander of the 4th Infantry Division, and landed in the first wave on Utah Beach on D-Day. That wave landed well east of its intended location, and had the potential to be come a real disaster. Roosevelt dealt with it so effectively that he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and tabbed for promotion to Division Commander. He died of a heart attack a little over a month later, though, before he could take command of a division.
This next photo is of the grave of Lieutenant General Leslie McNair.

McNair was the commander of Army Ground Forces, based in the US and in charge of all training. He was in Europe observing, in anticipation of taking on a major command in the ETO. He was killed by Allied bombs which fell short at the beginning of Operation Cobra.
Most Americans don't really think about it, but there are German cemeteries in the area as well. When the US consolidated, the Germans took over the site of one of the US temporary cemeteries, and their principal cemetery in Normandy may be found at La Cambe:

The church in Saint Mere Eglise is most notable for the paratrooper from the 82nd Airborne who got caught on the steeple, played by Red Buttons in The Longest Day. After the war, one of the new stained glass windows was devoted to the paratroopers.

If you examine the window, you'll see the AA ("All American") emblem of the 82nd Airborne Division, the insignias of the individual Parachute Infantry Regiments, and other imagery associated with airborne troops in the window.

The assault on the bridges at Benouville is a moderately well known story of D-Day; it is featured prominently in the film The Longest Day (and the book the Longest Day is based on) and is well covered in Stephen Ambrose's most excellent book Pegasus Bridge. There are links to Amazon for these at the bottom of this blog entry.
The short summary for those who are not familiar with the story is this: the first troops to land on D-Day were members of a British Glider company, commanded by Major John Howard. They were to land, in 6 gliders, at two key bridges which, if captured and held, would keep the Germans from hitting the flank of the British forces advancing from the beach. They were to hold until British special forces, advancing from the beach, relieved them. Though they were pressed hard by the Germans, they succeeded. The French subsequently named the bridge Pegasus Bridge, a reference to the emblem of the British Paratroopers.
This first photo is of the modern bridge located on the site of the original bridge:

This photo shows two of the three stone markers where three of the gliders landed next to the bridge, and the bust of Major Howard. The strip of land they put down on is quite narrow, the piloting of the gliders was truly impressive (the other three gliders landed next to another bridge on the same road; the road crossed a river and a canal in short order, and both bridges needed to be taken.)

The original bridge was not sent out for scrap, it is now located on the grounds of the nearby museum devoted to British Paratroopers:

The glider used in the assault was a British model called the Horsa. They were all destroyed in the cleanup of the battlefield; designed as use once devices, they'd been used and were now litter. None survive, the "Horsa" at the museum is a reconstruction:

Amazon Links for Pegasus Bridge and The Longest Day:

Voie de la Liberté (Liberty Road) is a route across France, starting in the area of Utah Beach and Saint Mere Eglise, ending in Bastogne, roughly following the route of Patton's Third Army. It was dedicated in 1947. I have not traced its route in great detail, but it has two "0" markers, Km 0 in Saint Mere Eglise, where the 82nd Airborne parachuted in the early morning hours of D-Day, and Km 00 on Utah beach, at roughly the spot where the first units of Patton's Third Army (including the French 2nd Armored Divsion) crossed the beach after the invasion.
The 0 marker in Saint Mere Eglise:

The 00 marker on Utah Beach:

Most of the Sherman tanks on display in Normandy are "Easy Eights", a model which showed up fairly late in the war, with a long barrelled 76mm gun and a distinctly different turret and suspension. Easy Eights didn't fight in Normandy, they weren't in combat yet. This tank, which is on display at Utah Beach, is an earlier M4A1, with the cylindrical turret, the short barrelled 75mm gun, and the early suspension.

Painted in the colors of the French 2nd Armored, it's a tank that might might actually have served in Normandy in that unit. The 2nd Armored was brought into combat as part of Patton's Third Army, activated as part of the follow through to Operation Cobra at the end of the Normandy campaign. The French have placed this tank on display at Utah beach to commemorate the arrival of the 2nd Armored at Utah beach as the first major French unit to enter combat as part of the liberation.

There were two Mulberries constructed on the D-Day beaches, one at Arromanches on the British landing beach known as Gold Beach, and the other on the west end of Omaha beach. Most readers are probably wondering "what the hell is a Mulberry?". There's a lot of backstory, so prepare for the boring exposition part.
In 1942, a Canadian division made a raid on the French coast at the port of Dieppe. The idea was to capture the port, hold it briefly, then bring the troops back off, to get some experience and try things out. It was a fiasco. Nothing went right, and the bulk of the Canadian troops were killed, wounded, or captured. The Germans took one lesson from from the Allied failure at Dieppe, the Allies took a different lesson. The difference in their responses would prove to be telling.
The Germans decided it was important to invest more resources in the defense of ports. The Allies, on the other hand, decided that attacking ports from the sea was a very bad idea, and replanned the invasion so that they would be attacking beaches rather than ports.
The only problem with the Allied decision was that if they didn't take a port, well, then they didn't have a port. This is one of those cases where Churchill's enthusiasm for oddball ideas paid off. I'm not sure if it was really Churchill's idea or not, but he certainly was one of its biggest advocates, and he is often given credit for it. What was the idea? The British built two complete artificial ports out of floatable concrete and steel structures and sank them underwater to hide them. Once the troops were ashore in Normandy, the two artificial ports, Mulberries A & B, were raised from the bottom, towed across the channel and placed at Omaha and Gold beaches by June 9th, 1944.
The notorious channel storm of June 19th destroyed the Mulberry at Omaha Beach, and almost no traces are left of it today. Some parts from it were used repairing Mulberry B, which was in much better shape. Supposedly the British engineers on Gold Beach took much better care anchoring the Mulberry than the US engineers at Omaha. Mulberry B operated for 10 months after being built, and much of it remains at Arromanches, where there is also an excellent museum devoted to the Mulberries.
The photo shows pontoons that supported the steel roadways running out into the port area, sitting on the beach. Large breakwaters are visible off in the distance.

This is the last posting from Pointe du Hoc, next up will be a brief discussion of Mulberry B at Arromanches in the British Sector of the landings. The photo is of the Ranger Monument at the end of the point. It is no longer accessible as the cliff is considered too unstable for casual access.

The area at the top of Pointe du Hoc is administered by the American Battlefield Monuments Comission, who are responsible for overseas military cemeteries and certain other sites (such as Pointe du Hoc). They maintain Pointe du Hoc in a manner that allows you to get a good sense of what the place was like the morning of D-Day. I would judge this to be an essential stop for anyone touring D-Day sites.

This is what remains of one of the two completed casemates for the guns at the top of Pointe du Hoc. More of the story after the picture...

When the Rangers got to the casemates, they were empty, with telephone poles placed to look like gun tubes. Some have claimed that the brass knew the guns had been moved recently, I don't really know the truth of that, but the troops didn't know until they got to the top. Some enterprising Rangers observed heavy tire tracks in the mud and followed them back to find the guns, a kilometer or so back from the bluffs, set up and ready to shoot, but idle. They disabled them and returned to the point, where the Rangers had to hold out for a couple of days until troops from the Omaha Beach to the east linked up with them.
The casemates were constructed in an unusual manner. Instead of buildling wooden forms and pouring concrete, they built cinderblock walls around the outside and inside, then poured concrete in between and in the holes in the cinderblocks. This apparently got the bunkers built quicker.
Errata: One source gives the size of the French guns as 155s, not 75s as I said in my first post on the subject. It may be correct.

In the prior entry, I showed one of the results of the aerial and naval bombardment. The site is relatively untouched since WWII, and you can see the extensive pattern of craters from the shelling and the bombing. The morning of D-Day, it must have looked like the face of the moon.
However, the US didn't trust the bombardment to put the batteries out of action. The 2nd Ranger Battalion was assigned to scale the bluffs and put the guns out of action (This action is depicted in the film The Longest Day, which is not too inaccurate as these things go, but does contain some errors.) The following photo shows the bluffs in this area (not the ones the rangers climbed, but a nearby, representative example):

Point du Hoc is bluff projecting into the English Channel, between Omaha and Utah Beaches. During WWII, the germans emplaced a battery of 5 or 6 captured French 75mm guns on the bluff, with a direct line of sight to Utah Beach, and the ability to place indirect fire on Omaha Beach (Omaha Beach is actually closer). Originally placed in open gun pits, before the D-Day landings the germans had started building concrete casemates for the guns. at the time of the landing, two of these were completed. The location was a active construction site, and so there were piles of materials there, such as rebar (steel reinforcement bar) and bags of concrete. the site was heavily bombarded, both from the air and by naval vessels the morning of the landing.
This photo is of what is left of one of the piles fo construction materials, still there 64 years later.

I have a number of photos from Point du Hoc, and will further discuss the history of the site in later parts. Point du Hoc has a special place in the history of the Army Rangers.