Tuesday & Wednesday 10 & 11th May 2011 - After leaving Le Mont-St-Michel we arrived at Bayeux where we stayed for the next two nights. This was our third visit to Bayeux so you can guess we like it. It is right up there on the list of pretty French towns. It is small enough not to worry about traffic jams yet large enough to have a good selection of restaurants. It is most famous for the Bayeux Tapestry which protrays the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. We had however, seen it twice before so we didn't plan on a third viewing this time round.

We chose to visit this area for the third time to see Ste-Mere-Eglise and Utah Beach, both made famous during the D Day landings of the 6th June 1944. During our previous visits of 1982 and 2007, we saw Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword Beaches as well as the American Cemetery at Coleville-Sur-Mere. We had however, not previously visited either Utah Beach or Ste-Mere-Eglise and we wanted to right these small omissions.

Ste-Mere-Eglise and environs was the drop zone for the American 82nd and 101 Airborne Divisions whose role was to protect the right flank of the landings at Utah Beach and then secure the roads leading to the beaches to block any German counter attack. The movie The Longest Day, covered the D Day Landings and the parachuting of both the 82nd and 101 Airborne Divisions into and around the area together with glider landings of troops and equipment.

Ste-Mere-Eglise is remembered most for the parachute landing made by one Private First Class John STEELE of the 82nd, who landed on top of the church with his parachute becoming entangled with a spire, trapping him 20 metres above the ground and hanging off the side of the church wall.


He played dead for two hours fearing the defending German garrison would shoot him if they realised he was only ensnared. Eventually he was hauled down and surrendered to theGermans, who in turn surrendered to him later that day. In the movie The Longest Day, PFC STEELE was played by the well known actor Red BUTTONS. The real PFC STEELE revisited Ste-Mere-Eglise several times before his death.

Because the drop of PFC STEELE and his encounter with the church steeple is so well known, there is on permanent display a dummy dressed in appropriate airbourne uniform hanging from a parachute from the same steeple as the fortunate American failed to avoid for had he landed on the cobblestone road surface adjacent the church he most likely would have suffered fractures to both legs as did many of his colleagues.

When we were at the church taking our happy snaps, a tour of combined arms young French officers, both male and female arrived. We watched while they were given a history lesson of events and then we snapped them too!

We decided to visit the Airbourne Museum at Ste-Mere-Eglise, with the roof designed to look like an inflated parachute.

We spent a good two hours wandering around and found the display excellently presented and based around a C47 Boeing aircraft that was used to parachute the troops and to tow gliders.

As we were getting ready to leave a group Harley riding Poms from the Thames Valley HOG turned up and we felt obliged to chat to and take their picture. Nice guys & gals.

We then moved onto Utah Beach which is the lesser known of the two American invasion beaches,

with Omaha Beach grabbing all the headlines and rightly so due to the intense German bombardment rained down on the attackers, the 1st American Infantry Division, the famed Big Red One, and their high casualty rate suffered.

In contrast, Utah Beach was lightly defended and the invading Americans overcame the German defences reatively quickly with minimal casualties suffered.


After two days in Bayeux we loaded up the P-D and made tracks for Le Mans and the Grand Prix De France!! Casey to win!!