Utah Beach, Normandy, France

7 min readSep 16, 2021

After getting settled into our Airbnb in Bayeux (pronounced by-you), we decided to start our exploration of Normandy in the westernmost sector of D-Day at Utah Beach. We’ll slowly make our way east to see more historical sites of the Allied invasion in the following days.

At 1:30 a.m. on June 6, 1944, more than 13,000 American paratroopers of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions began to drop several miles inland of Utah Beach. Darkness, poor weather and intense German antiaircraft fire caused many of the paratroopers to be scattered miles from their intended drop zones.

At the village of Sainte-Mère-Église, the night drop is memorialized with a paratrooper suspended from the church spire. American John Steele spent two agonizing hours hanging high above the ground after his parachute got caught. He hung there limply, pretending to be dead, so the Germans wouldn’t shoot him.

We slowly walked around the church reading the biographies of American servicemen who fought here. The village was decked in American, French and Allied flags. Church windows blown out during the fighting had later been replaced with stained glass designs commemorating the paratroopers.

Happily, Thursday morning happened to be market day in Sainte-Mère-Église. We wandered around the stalls while sampling cheese and cider. We even enjoyed a bratwurst hot off the grill (in a baguette of course).

As we drove toward Utah Beach, we passed through the tiny hamlet of Baudienville. A well-known photo that appeared in Life magazine at the time showed American troops resting outside a cafe there.

The building and sign look much the same today:

We stopped again when Mom spotted a bright yellow field of rapeseed and felt compelled to re-enact the Sound of Music:

Soon we arrived at Utah Beach. It was quiet. We read that it looked now much as it did back in 1944. The tide was out when we walked down to the sand, as it was when the soldiers landed in the early morning of June 6 so they could better navigate the German mines and beach defenses.

We made a point to visit the highly-recommended Utah Beach Landing Museum. It was built over the remains of a German strongpoint that US soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division stormed.

An excellent video at the start of the visit made clear the importance of the site and summarized the action. It was hard not to get emotional listening to veterans recount their experience on that harrowing day.

The museum presented many excellent artifacts including a Martin B-26 Marauder bomber (one of only seven B-26s left in the world today). French school children on a field trip looked over the outdoor displays as we walked among them.

Heading inland from Utah Beach, we followed the path of American soldiers as they streamed into Normandy. Three important roads converged at the village of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont with its church topped by a distinctive onion-shaped dome.

I dashed into a local boulangerie (bakery) for croissants and drinks that we combined with cheese and olives purchased earlier in the day at the market. We ate our picnic lunch in the shade of the trees surrounding the church.

There were signs throughout town describing events that happened here around D-Day including a story of two German soldiers who hid in the church but were eventually caught as Americans took control of the area. Again, American flags fluttered in the breeze from houses and local shops.

I recognized a memorial alongside the road and we pulled over to inspect. This was the statue dedicated to Major Richard Winters. The heroic story of Easy Company, from the D-Day landings, to fighting in Holland, Belgium and Germany, was told by historian Stephen Ambrose. Remember “Band of Brothers”? This was Winters.

Our final stop of the day was another stone church, this in the tiny village of Angoville-au-Plain. Two American paratroopers, medics Robert Wright and Kenneth Moore, set up an aid station inside the 11th century church shortly after landing at a nearby drop zone.

They braved open countryside to search for the wounded, taking soldiers from both sides back to the church to carry out life saving aid. Soon, American troops had to pull out of Angoville for another objective and the Germans returned.

The medics demanded the German soldiers entering the church leave their weapons outside, which they did after seeing the Americans treating German wounded along with their own. Blood stains were readily apparent on the wooden pews of the church which had served as makeshift hospital beds.

Both medics received the Silver Star medal for their actions in the church at Angoville. Later in life, Robert Wright expressed his wish to be buried at the church. While international regulations prohibited this, some of his ashes were evidently smuggled into France and buried in the churchyard. The unofficial headstone read R.E.W., Wright’s initials:

After a full day, we headed back to our home base in Bayeux. This is a beautiful town full of medieval architecture and one of the only cities close to the D-Day landings spared destruction.