Merville Battery (optional) - The members of 9th Para, British 6th Airborne Div., commanded by Lt. Col. Otway, went through months of training in preparation for the assault on Merville battery. However, only a few things would go according to the plan on D-Day: paratroopers drowned in the marshes or had been scattered over several kilometers. Yet the "Red Devils" improvised on the assault of the battery and finally managed to seize the German in a mission successfully completed right before dawn.
Ranville British Cemetery - Ranville was the first village to be liberated by British paratroopers and its churchyard was used as burial ground for the men fallen on D-Day. A little bit later, adjacent to the church a graveyard was created. When the war ended, the site was chosen to regroup
burials from this part of the battlefield. Graves were moved from
Amfreville, Colleville-sur-Orne, Houlgate, Colombelles and
Villers-sur-Mer. The Cemetery contains today 2,235 Commonwealth WWII
burials, 97 of them unidentified, as well as 330 German
graves.
Pegasus Bridge (photo 1) - The delicate task of capturing the bridges over Orne River and Caen Canal fell to a
selected group of men, members of D Company, 2nd Oxfordshire and
Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, and the Royal Engineers. Six gliders were to
land very close to the bridges in order to allow Maj. John Howard and his "chaps" to seize them quickly and intact.
It came to be known as the most outstanding flying achievement of the war and, upon landing, the bridges were taken in less than 15 minutes! Nowadays, one of the original bridges captured on D-Day and baptized Pegasus is displayed in the courtyard of the homonyms museum inaugurated in 2004 by HRH Prince of Wales.
Sword Beach and Ouistreham Bunker - "Sword"
represented the easternmost sector of the landing beaches as well as the narrowest of them. Nevertheless, this beach was the key
of the Normandy landings in so many respects. Being the closest to Caen, region's administrative capital
and gateway to Paris, the Allies knew that getting a foothold in this area was indispensable for the success of the whole operation. At Ouistreham, the "Grand Bunker" (photo 2) which used to overlook the German positions of "Riva Bella" has been rebuilt after the war and is today a museum. This 52ft tall
concrete blockhouse reflects the German strategy at that point in the war but also shows how much work the former invested in building the fortifications deemed necessary to stop an imminent invasion.
Colleville-Montgomery and "Hillman" - This
German strongpoint was part of a series of defenses located just inland from "Sword Beach", the same beach
on which the British 3rd Infantry Div. assaulted on D-Day. The attack on this
objective was launched around 01.00 p.m by the
1st Suffolk Regiment. Despite the determination of the assailant, "Hillman" fell only after two subsequent offensives in which the
British forces would suffer heavy casualties.