Wendy,
That sounds like a great idea. Honfleur is supposed to be very pretty. Gretchen's uncle Bill was with a Nebraskan Nat'l Guard unit (the 134th Inf) and was killed in the assault on St. Lo. So, she and I will likely do a D-Day Beaches tour in any eventuality.
Thought you might like something I dredged up.
The Juno Beach Centre or, in French, Centre Juno Beach, is a museum located in Courseulles-sur-Mer in the Calvados region of Normandy, France. It is situated immediately behind the beach codenamed Juno, the section of the Allied bridgehead on which 14,000 Canadian troops landed on D-Day 6th June, 1944 .
The Centre was conceived in the 1990s by a group of Canadian veterans who felt that the contributions and sacrifices of Canadian soldiers during the liberation of Europe were not properly commemorated and represented in the Normandy region. The project, spearheaded by veteran Garth Webb and his companion Lise Cooper, began initially as a grassroots fundraising campaign that eventually gained the financial support of many institutions and businesses and the Canadian and French governments at many levels. The Centre was inaugurated on 6th June, 2003. Over one thousand Canadian veterans attended the inauguration in 2003, as well as the 2004 ceremony for the 60th anniversary of D-Day.
The museum's scope is not only the D-Day landings. Through detailed and interactive exhibition rooms, the museum relates the story of life in Canada before the outbreak of the war, Canada’s civilian and military contribution to the war effort, and contemporary Canadian society in the decades since World War II.
The building itself, designed by Canadian architect Brian K. Chamberlain, is a single story structure endowed with five main points, thus resembling a stylized maple leaf. The exterior is clad in titanium scales and stands about 100 meters back from the present line of sand dunes. A ceremonial area, which features a statue entitled Remembrance and Renewal, stands between the Centre and the dunes. A gap in the dunes is filled by a symbolic structure shaped as a landing craft—a memorial to the French Resistance. An intact German bunker, once an observation post, stands immediately in front of this memorial.
The museum also houses a temporary exhibition space which changes approximately once per year and which highlights various histories and themes relating to Canada past and present.
The Juno Beach Centre is open year round and closes routinely for the month of January. It offers guided visits of Juno Beach that are provided by Canadian students.
As a litle remembered aside, the first wave of Canadians landing at Juno suffered 50% casualties, second only to "Bloody Omaha."
A couple of Longest Day movie trivia:
Bill Millin: the Bag Piper who accompanies Lord Lovat's commando plays himself in the movie!
Richard Todd: who plays Maj. John Howard, who led the assault on Pegasus Bridge was a young private in the 6th Airborne and was in the glider assault at Pegasus!
Greg
