D Day Tour (Omaha Beach & Band of Brothers)

Today was one of the most interesting and impactful days I've had on this trip.

My visit to the D-Day beaches (specifically Omaha Beach—the worst sector for the Americans) and surrounding areas that were involved in the Battle of Normandy. I signed up for a tour through Overland Tours that focused on the American sector in the morning and followed the footsteps of the *Band of Brothers* show in the afternoon (the 101st Easy Company paratroopers). We lucked out in that it was a small group of four (2 Belgians, 1 American, and me). My guide was Guillaume, and he was so informative, kind, and really passionate about the subjects. Even though we weren't going to the Canadian sector (Juno Beach), he found time to mention specific Canadian facts to me during the tour.

The Beaches of Normandy

On June 6th, 1944, the Allies (British, US, and Canadian forces) attacked the German fortifications in France. It was an all-out naval, air, and infantry assault which saw 156,000 troops landing on the beaches alone. There were five beach fronts that were divided by different Allies: Utah & Omaha for the US, Gold & Sword for the British, and Juno for the Canadians.

My guide told me interesting facts about the code name choices. The US beach codenames (Omaha and Utah) were chosen for where two clerks were from who worked in the office of the general. The British chose their names based originally on sea/fish because it was called the “Neptune” Operation. They chose Goldfish, Swordfish, and Jellyfish (later dropping the “fish” part). However, the Canadians said “Jelly” was a ridiculous name, so the Canadians chose Juno; it was the name of a Canadian officer’s wife.

Omaha Beach

Omaha was the most heavily fortified beach due to numerous hills and bunkers. Bunkers and guns never faced the sea directly (they were on an angle to create a crossfire). The Germans had a few years to build and study the formations of the land as well. Of the American sector, Utah was the most successful landing, and Omaha was... well, the intro to Saving Private Ryan.

I felt very, very small while standing there. It's a piece of history that I learned about and now I'm here. And the world keeps turning. History is wild.

When we were at Omaha Beach, we saw a rock called “Ray’s Rock” (named after medic Ray Lambert), which he used as a makeshift medic station, hiding behind it to treat soldiers he rescued from the water. Omaha Beach is very large; this rock was not.

We also visited the remnants of German bunkers & trenches in WN (Widerstandsnest) 62. It housed a radio communications bunker and was a significant strongpoint. Multiple bunkers/ trenches housed field guns, machine guns, and 25–35 soldiers. Its elevation made it even more deadly to the soldiers arriving on the beach.

American Cemetery

We then went to the Normandy American Cemetery. It’s very respectful and honors 9,388 US soldiers who died and 1,557 MIA in the battle for Normandy (not just on June 6th specifically). The rest of the 29,000 who died were expatriated back to their home soil. It is the second-largest US cemetery outside of the US (the first is in the Philippines for the Pacific Front). It has a large memorial and 10 different sections for the graves (some roped off so you can’t walk on all of them at once). In between graves of known soldiers are those of unknown soldiers. 💔

I took a picture of a random grave and researched more about the soldier when I had some downtime later. I thought it would be a good way to humanize the immensity of this site. 

“Preston V. Wells. Killed in Action: Landed on Omaha Beach (Easy Green sector) as part of the engineer units tasked with clearing beach obstacles and enabling supply movement. According to his friend Bill Burleson, he was wounded or killed almost immediately upon exiting his landing craft.”

Easy Green Sector was right beside the sector I was standing on (Easy Red) when I was just on Omaha Beach. Wow. 🥺 You are not forgotten, Preston Wells.

Pointe du Hoc

The next stop of the tour was Pointe du Hoc. Pointe du Hoc was a German position on a 100-foot cliff that had six cannons that could fire at both Omaha and Utah Beaches. It was imperative that these were destroyed so that the landings could proceed. Destroying them was critical to the invasion’s success, so the U.S. Army Rangers, an elite assault unit, were sent in. Intel was incorrect in that the guns were actually moved inland, but regardless, the Rangers succeeded in their mission and held Pointe du Hoc for two days (suffering 60% losses!). It was an insanely challenging aspect of the battle.

The Church of Sainte‑Mère‑Église

This story was made famous in the film The Longest Day (I actually haven't seen it! On my list now 🙈). A paratrooper, John Steele, famously got caught on the church steeple in Sainte-Mère-Église during the D-Day drop and hung there wounded for hours until he was captured (and later escaped!). They now have a replica paratrooper hanging on the steeple to honor him and all the other troopers that landed and liberated the town (even if, factually, he landed on the side opposite the square!).

Angoville-au-Plain Medics

Robert Wright & Kenneth Moore were two relatively fresh medics who landed in Angoville-au-Plain and set up a makeshift medical center in the church. They treated both American, German, and civilian injuries and saved 80 lives in three days.

Band of Brothers

The afternoon was spent driving around to different areas that had significance historically and in connection to Band of Brothers specifically. Here are some of the places we saw:

• The field where Winters parachuted in (off-target during the D-Day drop, like many in the 101st Airborne)

• The street where Easy Company ambushed soldiers on horseback (and Garnier’s trigger-happy actions reflecting his emotional response to learning his brother had been killed in action — shown in Episode 2. Side note: these were not German troops but Georgian POWs used as supply runners—new things learned!)

• The crash site of Lt. Meehan’s C-47 plane (the lead aircraft in a V-formation; tragically, one of 23 paratrooper planes lost on D-Day... resulted in Winters being promoted)

• The site where Lt. Spiers reportedly executed German POWs—just after Malarkey had a brief conversation with one of them and found out he was also American (Episode 2)

• Brécourt Manor—where Winters led a major tactical victory and military maneuver, taking out cannons aiming at Utah Beach, which helped the Utah landing be a success (Episode 2)

• Carentan—the strategic town that Easy Company helped liberate with fierce urban fighting after securing their D-Day objectives (Episode 3)

Good Mooooorrrning, Vietnam!

This was my kind of day, the modern history nerd in me was incredibly happy. I once took a university course based just the Vietnam War, so it was pretty interesting to visit the War Remnants Museum and the Chu Chi Tunnels today. :)

The War Remnants Museum houses a whole whack of American bombers, helicopters, flame throwers, and tanks on the outside. I went a little photo happy. But when you go inside, you're hit with hundreds of pictures of the atrocities committed by US troops during the war. Made me feel a little gross that I took so many picture of the artillery outside.

American tanks leftover from the Vietnam War

One of the most interesting galleries was the one showcasing photos of victims of Agent Orange. Agent Orange was a chemical dropped on the Vietnamese by the Americans during the Vietnam War. It contains dioxin and causes many deformities and developmental problems to those directly and even indirectly through second generation exposure (passed on through the parents initial exposure, working in contaminated agriculture, etc). 4.8 million Vietnamese were exposed and I even saw a picture of a girl born with no arms/legs (just stumps) in 2008! While the museum didn't really capture my interest for too long, it was really interesting to see the war from solely at Vietnamese point-of-view. This was even more apparent at the Củ Chi Tunnels.

A tour to the Củ Chi tunnels was next on our Vietnam War History itinerary . The tunnels (which are in the Củ Chi area) are an example of and homage to the elaborate tunnel system and guerrilla warfare tactics that the Viet Cong used during the war. At the beginning of the tour, you were shown a very dated, propaganda film about Củ Chi and glorifying killing the "American Devils". Quite different than what would be in an American textbook, I bet.

A volunteer demonstrates how they popped in and out of the tunnels

They demonstrated how they popped out of the holes and camouflaged them. They showed us ways that the Viet Cog survived living underground to avoid detection (such as using termite mounds to disguise air holes and then using dead GI clothing and soap to throw off the scent of dogs trying  to sniff out the air holes). They even showed us the different types of booby traps they used and how they made them.

I couldn't believe how ingenuous they were. They only had AK-47s to combat against machine guns and tanks. So they had to use guerrilla tactics and booby traps to defeat their enemy. They sharpened metal taken off the enemy into sticks which they would then line the bottom of traps with. If they didn't have metal, they'd use sharpened bamboo. They'd take unexplored bombs, cut them open, take the bomb powder and make their own delayed mines to take down tanks. Even though they were slaughtered 10 Viet Cong to 1 GI, the fact that they even killed any seemed a great feat to me.

Bamboo spiked booby traps

I find it incredibly lucky that I am visiting a country and locations that I studied in university. It's amazing to physically be somewhere that you've read about. Facts keep flying into my head throughout the trip and as soon as I read something I go, oh yeah! I remember that! Once a (history) nerd, always a nerd it seems. :)

A Dark History of Cambodia

In my travels, I have had the opportunity to visit sites of extreme human atrocities. I have been to the Holocaust Museum in Berlin, Auschwitz in Poland, and the Terror Hanza in Budapest. Each has left a profound impact on me, both from a modern history student standpoint and a personal, emotional one. Visiting Auschwitz was one of the most powerful and impressionable experiences I have ever had. Today, I will add the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Choeung Ek Memorial (the Killing Fields) in Cambodia to that list.

* I only took two photos during this visit. They are both at the entrances to the complexes. I did not feel comfortable taking photos in a place where so many people were killed. *

To give you some context, the Khmer Rouge were a communist revolutionary force that rose to power in 1975. Their leader, Pol Pot, wanted to radically revolutionize the nation by creating an "equalized" agricultural working class. To obtain this ideal society, he forcibly relocated everyone from the cities to the countryside and turned them into  slave labourers. Those who he deemed intellectuals, CIA/KGB spies, foreigners or even people with "soft hands and glasses" became enemies of the new regime and were tortured and killed. In their three year reign, it is believed that about 1.7 million Cambodians perished in this political genocide. 

We started off at the Tuol Sleng museum. This building complex used to be a high school before the Khmer Rouge took over the country. After, it turned into "Security Prison 21" or S-21, the largest torture and detention centre in the country. We didn't hire a guide and instead just walked through the buildings, reading the sparse signs and taking it all in. 

The entrance to Tuol Sleng museum

One building housed the torture cells, where all that remains were rusted beds and shackles with a picture of what the Vietnamese saw when they arrived (often a mutilated dead body on or beside the bed). The next building was one where they would hold mass amounts of people, upwards of 30 or 40 until there were rooms in cells for them. Now, it was filled with haunting photographs of the victims. They stare at you, young/old, male/female as you walk up and down the rooms. I found that to be very emotional. Each face is a different story and each face was systematically murdered only 40 years ago. In one room, they put stories to the names and included the biographies and "confessions" (often forced and untrue after torture) of the victims. The hardest one to read was of a 20 year old boy who had worked on a farm and was accused of stealing rice rations. He maintained his innocence throughout his confession. 

The next two buildings housed the cells, first brick ones and then wooden ones. There were barbed wire on the balconies so no one could throw themselves off the building and commit suicide. I actually started to have a bit of a panic attack in the wooden one hallway and had to leave. I felt very claustrophobic and way too empathetic. It was easy to imagine how horrible it must have been to stay there.

Out of approximately 17,000 prisoners in this detention centre, only seven survived. Of those seven, two were at the end of the museum. They had written books and posed for photographs. While I didn't buy a book or take a photo, when I waked by the less busy man, I gave him a polite head nod. He acknowledge and nodded back. Sometimes words can't be said. Sometimes nothing should be said.

After the prisoners time at Tuol Sleng, they were transported 17 km to Choeung Ek. They were told they were just being transferred to a different building, unbeknownst that they were being driven to a killing field. During the Khmer Rouge, there were numerous killing fields and mass graves across Cambodia. The Cambodian government decided to turn Choeung Ek into a memorial dedicated to all of them. That was next on our list.

At the entrance, there is a large Hindu stupa where you go to pay your respects.  Inside were the exhumed remains of 8,895 bodies they had recovered from the mass graves. They were arranged tastefully but honestly. They grouped different types of bones together on different platforms, indicated ages and genders on skulls and how they were killed. Some may think this morbid, but the memorial centre believes that we owe it to the victims to tell how they died. I agree. I mean, isn't that kind of why we have obituaries? 

The Stupa at Choeung Ek

For this memorial, we were given helpful audio guides. The difference between the Cambodia n killing fields and the concentration camps of WWII is that they didn't burn the bodies. Instead, they were thrown into mass graves. As you walk around the paths, you often step on or view bits of bone (I walked over a bit of a femur I think) and cloth that have been stuck on roots and are slowly being eroded to visibility. That was pretty heavy. It wasn't everywhere, it wasn't like you were crunching bones as you walked. There was a ton of greenery and trees with just wisps of the past hidden here and there. One mass grave, I saw half of a jawbone with some teeth in it. There was a tree that they called the "killing tree", where they would smash babies into and then threw them into a pit with their deceased mothers. Even though the children were innocents, "to kill the grass, one must pull out the root" they believed. No child would come back seeking revenge. Freaking heavy stuff.

As I walked around and listened to different stories and testimonies, one in particular stood out. It was called the "Magic Tree". It would hold giant speakers that played revolutionary anthems or songs to drown out the sounds of mass murder. They played a snippet of a song along with the sound of a generator and said "this is what the victims would have heard before they were killed". Looking around and listening to that sound made you feel like you were there.

The part that made me really angry during this tour is the fact that the four highest ranking Khmer Rouge leaders are still alive and only went on trial by tribunal in 2007. Pol Pot died in 1998 without any justice other than house arrest in the last year of his life. They are in their 80s now. The first case brought to trial judged Comrade Duch, leader of S21. He admitted guilt and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He's 72. The other cases are awaiting verdicts while some of the defendants dying in that time or becoming unfit to stand trial because of dementia. It seems incredibly frustrating to me. They got to live comfortable lives for 30 years.

As you read this, you probably felt uncomfortable or unsettled and you should be. I was when I visited it. The Vietnamese were when they liberated them. The survivors were when they found out what happened to their families. Yet, it's an important uncomfortableness.  I believe that by witnessing sites of atrocities, it will force us to confront the worst of humanity and help create a better society in the future. Yes, it may be wishful thinking, but maybe if everyone in the world was forced to confront these issues of genocide and murder, maybe it'd change some things. Obviously, the writer George Satayna says it best with the famous quote: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".