LeHavre

Our day started early.  Since we moved further south and east we made port before sunrise.  If it you can ignore the tanker farm at the port it is pretty.

This part of France can be the gateway to Paris or to the beaches.  To students of American history the names Omaha and Utah Beach are synonymous with D-Day and the landing of Allied forces in France.  The French know and respect this but they are also public beaches and it is August.  There are remnants of the landings but not to the scale that Saving Private Ryan depicted. 

Villages nearby still remember liberation by American forces in different ways.  One of them remembers an American Paratrooper who became stuck on the church steeple.  Certain of his own death by the rifle of a German soldier pointed at him, he is saved by one of his fellow troop members who fired his pistol at the German just before dying from his own gunshot wound.

The American Cemetery at Colleville-Saint Laurent is the final resting place for nearly ten thousand American service members who died nearby.  Maintained and administered by the U.S. Government, the cemetery is a vivid reminder of the cost of war.

In some ways our vacation seems like it began weeks ago.  In other ways it is concluding far too quickly.  Tonight we pack up and later in your day I’ll post my best and worst lists for the vacation. 

Here's your candle Jo Jo