This morning we drove to Caen to visit the best museum in the region, the Caen-Normandie Memorial. It is huge and very well done, but too general to learn much detail about individual units. After, we drove south to Falaise, to see where Dad’s unit had passed through after the decisive Battle of the Falaise Pocket in August 1944. The town was largely destroyed and is now a modern town, home to the imposing castle on the hill where William the Conqueror was born a thousand years ago. With nothing to see there connected with Dad, we moved on north to St. Lo.
St. Lo’s destruction in July 1944 was almost total; today it is an attractive, if more modern, small city. We stopped at the tourist office to find out the location of the famed Hill 192, the location of the US victory against the Germans that was crucial to the Allied efforts to free France, but the young women at the desk had no clue. One handed us a brochure of WWII sights in the area, and after we left we noticed an entry for Hill 192 and directions to it, as well as a memorial for the Second Division. (See Dad’s photo below of a tank destroyed in the Hill 192 battle.)
Within a short time, we found both places on back roads, not too far from Dad’s base at Cerisy la Foret. As we took pictures of the historic marker on Hill 192, a rainbow appeared on the horizon toward the sea.
We began the first day (yesterday) with a visit to the American Cemetery above Omaha Beach. We had visited it about ten years ago, where we realized for time first time why Dad was in Wales: preparing for Normandy, based on seeing the large map in one of the pavilions next to the graves. He died in 2001, and although we knew he was here D+5, we didn’t realize the full extent of his time in Normandy until recently.
We looked again at the large map and guessed that he probably had left from Milford Haven, Wales, rather than from Swansea or Cardiff, which were much farther away from St. Dogmaels, Wales. [But we were wrong: two months later, when we learned that the company had left from Plymouth, England.] At any rate, it was a lovely quiet morning, with mostly French families visiting this very moving place.
Here are a couple of pictures Dad took on D+5, when the 111th Ordnance company landed at Omaha Beach:
The goal of the day was to find the Abbey of Cerisy-la-Foret, between St. Lo and Bayeux. This was because, long ago, my sister asked our dad about a small watercolor painting of an old church that had hung in our childhood home, and that had always been rehung in our parents’ two later homes. Dad told Marcia that he had been based there soon after landing at Omaha Beach on June 11, 1944.
We located the village of Cerisy-la-Foret on the map, not ten miles from our B&B, and arrived early afternoon in a cloudy drizzle. Our first clue that this was the right place was a monument to the Second Infantry Division at the top of the lane leading to the abbey. By now, we had figured out that Dad’s unit, tank and small arms repair, was continually being detached and reattached as needed throughout the war. We think that for a short while, he was part of the 29th, then part of the 2nd, here, in the early summer of 1944. That belief was confirmed by the small monument at the head of the lane leading to the abbey:
Dad and Donald McGowan at the abbey, summer 1944 Andrea at the same spot, 2013
We were happy to see, on this Sunday in October, that the Cerisy abbey was open for visitors. While Ed parked the car, I walked around the side and made a wonderful discovery. There in front of me, to the left of the entrance, was the very wall of the church that formed the background of a couple of photos of Dad and his buddy McGowan. I couldn’t believe it was so easy. Because the wall looked so destroyed, I thought it might be a church anywhere from France to Germany, the result of war devastation. But this wall had just fallen to pieces over a thousand years, quite naturally. They took the picture because this was their home at that time.
We went in to pay to see inside the abbey. When we showed the girl at the ticket desk our picture of Dad and his pal outside, she became as excited as we were and refused to let us pay, even giving us a postcard, a booklet, and a poster from the little gift shop. Her English was limited, and she didn’t know anything about the troops there, but her mother, now 80, had told her stories about the air raids and bombs hitting the nearby villages during the war. It was another remarkable day.
We learned a few months later, after talking with Arthur Brooks, who was one of the company officers, that there were no fresh food to be had in Normandy, and that the men subsisted on C rations for a month or so. That explains these photos of my dad’s:
“C rations again,” Dad wrote. “You still have to stand in line for everything.”
Early morning, and we are on the ferry now, crossing the calm English Channel from Poole, England, to Cherbourg, Normandy, France, a four-hour trip on a very modern ship. As the sun breaks out of clouds, we pass by the yachts and condos and sailboats of Poole harbor. I think how different Dad’s departure must have been, in so many ways. What was in his mind as he left Britain, headed for a dangerous and uncertain future?
My thoughts are quite the opposite. I am looking forward to exploring new places, revisiting a few old favorites, and enjoying croissants with butter and jam for breakfast. So is this what all those good men gave their lives for, so that we spoiled brats of the next generation could have a good time?
Later: We disembark in Cherbourg, after a very quiet and comfortable journey across the Channel. The Hertz rental car office is not far from the ferry drop-off point, but we have an hour to wait until it reopens at 3pm. So we haul ourselves and our bags into a small bistro a few doors down from the car place and order coffees. The owner is friendly and seems to know some English, so I show him two photos Dad took of Cherbourg: the fortress and a main street from July 25, 1944 (“the day of the 3,000 plane raid for the St. Lo breakthrough.”) .He immediately recognizes the street–Boulevard Robert Schuman–and pointed the way.
And the fortress high above town can’t be missed.
We find and photograph–in the sudden downpour that materialized just as we took the camera out–both sights and head for our B&B in Gefosse-Fontenay, about an hour east off the road to Caen, past Utah Beach. This will be our base for the next two days. When we arrive at this wonderful 15th century farm, the sun is shining.
We had not visited Mwnt, a National Trust property north of Cardigan, Wales, since we learned that the 111th was taking rifle practice there on D-Day–and where the men learned about the invasion of France for the first time (see earlier blog for Dad’s photo that day).
So on this absolutely perfect weather Welsh morning (not many of those this time of year), we drove over to Mwnt to take a picture from the exact spot the men were shooting from that historic day, not far from the 1400s church there. A lovely deserted beach is off to the left.
Dad liked to take me and my sister, Marcia, there years ago, but he never mentioned THAT particular day in 1944. Now we wonder what was in his thoughts each time he came back here. When those young men got the message here to immediately pack up and head to Normandy, they must have wondered if they would ever see home–much less this lovely spot–again. After four years of preparation, the war became intensely real to them that day.
Mwnt is one of Marcia’s favorite places ever. Today we thought of her and wished she could have been with us; it was her birthday today. Happy birthday, Marcia!
We are in Wales now, near the place where my father was billeted from early December 1943 to June 7, 1944, at a former 1800s workhouse with the undeservedly fancy name of Albro Castle, in the village of St. Dogmaels, near the market town of Cardigan, Wales.
This in fact was not quite the first stop on our trip to follow my father’s WWII route. The day before we left the U.S., we paid a visit to the U.S. Army 29th Infantry Division Museum in downtown Baltimore, Maryland. There, Sergeant Sayson helped us look through their archives for any information about the 111th Ordnance Company in Europe. The results were disappointing; the only mention found was after the war had ended, when the unit was in Bremen, Germany. They were part of Task Force Bremen, the group managing the post-war occupation of that area.
So, today in Wales (October 14, 2013), we met with Tracy and Peter Newland at the Coach House Cafe, St. Dogmaels. They are the current owners of Albro Castle and the couple who sparked our efforts just last June, as related in the first posting of this blog. Tracy, when removing wallpaper from one of the bedrooms, discovered graffiti left behind on June 6, 1944: the signatures of my father’s two best friends throughout the war and for the rest of their lives after. This coincidence is all the more remarkable because there were 185 men in the company at that time, and we think all of them could have been accommodated at Albro.
Not long after Ed and I arrived at the cafe, which is next to the ancient ruins of St. Dogmaels Abbey, another remarkable coincidence happened. Tracy, on entering the Coach House, ran into Nia Siggins and Melrose Thomas, members of Hanes Llandoch, the heritage group for St. Dogmaels, who were just leaving. They hadn’t seen each other in ages, and Tracy explained why she and Peter were there. Nia then told her that she and Melrose were busy working on a WWII memorial project, part of which aimed to find the American GIs who had been based in the St. Dogmaels area and somehow bring them, or their children, back to St. Dogmaels for the 70th anniversary of D-Day next year. The photo below shows me, Peter Newland, Tracy Newland, and Nia Siggins.
Needless to say, we all sat down together and talked excitedly for more than an hour about our common interest. I was able to tell them that just before we left on this trip, I had discovered a listing in my father’s papers of all 183 men in his unit who survived the war, their full names, and hometown addresses as of 1948. We parted with promises to help out and keep in touch. And try to locate as many of the men and their families as we could.
WWII Tracings 