Revisit historic Normandy landings with P&O Ferries
On 6 June, 1944, the largest invasion from water to land was carried out by the allied forces on the beaches or Normandy in France. Matthias Scherer explains why the annual remembrance tours and museums about the landings are worth a visit.
Countless books and a few Hollywood film (e.g. “Saving Private Ryan”, “The Longest Day”) have been produced about events leading up to the historic date and the invasion itself, and still hundreds of history and military aficionados, but also laymen and women looking to learn more about a milestone of European history and World War II (the landings eventually led to the liberation of Paris), come to the Normandy every year.
This year, it will be 67 years since the landings, and P&O Ferries offers you a leg up in making your way to the location of this historic site and learning more about what happened that day.
Once you have gotten your ferry from Dover to Calais, it is only a three-hour car drive to Caen, the main town in the area and a military objective during the wartime operation. From Caen, most of the historic sites are easily accessible. The town is also home to the excellent Caen Peace Memorial, where a constant, very informative exhibition about the D-Day landings is on display.
The l’Abbaye d’Ardenne (“Ardenne Abbey”) is located in nearby Saint-Germain-la-Blanche-Herbe, too. The abbey was used as an observation point by the German forces and later became the site of a massacre of Canadian prisoners of war. The abbey was restored in 2006 and is now a war mamorial.
There are dozens of companies offering specific full-day tours (among the best ones is Executive D-Day Tours, but the places essential to anyone interested in the Normandy landings are the five sectors along the Normandy coast where the allied forces landed: Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno and Sword Beach.
The tours happen throughout the year, but P&O ferries urges you to make use of any stray holidays you might have before your summer vacation to visit this deeply impressive site of modern history.
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