One more war museum to visit - Jill & Phil

To complete the visit to Bayeux Phil wanted to go to the Musee de Memorial de la Battaille de Normandie. It is the only site in the region to present the military operations that took place on Norman soil in 1944.

It was a fair hike up the hill away from the cathedral to this museum. We sort of wound round small roads, but as we often find in France when you are close to a museum or such, the vital sign to help you get there is missing. We could see the three guys ahead were also wandering hopefully!! Eventually we found it.

A very comprehensive, chronlogical story of the invasion, from the detailed planning in England, the gathering and training and many practises for the pilots, seaman, artillery and infantry forces was put together with dialogue and impressive cabinets of all things military. The landings on the 5 different beaches and the resistance of the German army was explained. The intense fighting and bombardment of Caen and the eventual destruction of the local German army at Falaise who were caught in a trap, explained the other side of the story.

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Lots of examples of vehices and weapons were used. It was an excellent overview of the first 6 weeks of the Allied invasion forces liberating Paris as the end point of the Normandy campaign.

It was an excellent demonstration of the Normandy battle in all its phases and finally shown on a 25 minute black and white film.

Across the road is the British Military Cemetery where 4,144 World War II Commonwealth soldiers are buried. It looks massive with so many headstones. The messages on most of the tombstones would make you cry like a mother's sadness at her son's death; a wife and a child bidding farewell. It was so emotional and made you realise the sacrifice that so many families had to bear. So many of the insigna we now recognised as a result of our military history lesson over the past few days.

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A sentence in Latin on the Memorial's pediment in tribute to the fighters reminds us that the British liberated William the Conqueror's country in 1944.