We caught the 9:21am train into Caen, then walked five blocks to our hotel. Our room is not ready but we leave our bags there. We take the tram into downtown and transfer to the correct bus going the wrong way! I couldn't find the chart on the bus wall telling us the stops so we go all the way to the end of the line and have to go all the way back past where we got on and then to the other end of the line where our museum sits. Heavy sigh.
Finally made it to the Caen Museum about 11:15. This museum covers conflict in the 20th century with emphasis on WWII. It had so much information and was very full of school groups all day.
It is a difficult museum to rate highly. It is full of great information and some of the story telling elements are unusual but in places the telling was out of order. You'd be going along in 1943 and then panels for 1941 about Japan would show up. Very confusing.
Most of the exhibits were below the entrance level, so the explanation of how World War II starts is show by mentally and physically "spiraling" you down to the lower level. This is the entrance level.
Many of the historic video areas did not have sound probably because there would be so many nationalities viewing the exhibit.
They showed two movies in different theaters that were just poorly done. Each time I was just dumbfounded at how bad the movie I just saw really was.
It did have some cool maps showing where the various troops started and where they went from England to the Normandy area of France. All of the unit numbers were on the maps so if you knew someone in a certain unit you could follow them from England across the Channel to Europe.
Here is a fairly clear map showing most of the elements of D-Day. The water is WHITE (not your standard map/water color. What were they thinking). The top of the map is North. England is north as well. You can see where this museum is in Caen. Bayeux, where we started yesterday's tour is close to the center. The American Cemetery is in Colleville-sur-Mer. Isigny-sur-Mer, Walt Disney's namesake, is just down the road to the left of Bayeux. The paratrooper caught on the church steeple was in Ste-Mere-Eglise. If memory serves me this map showed how much ground we had captured (in orange) by the end of the day on D-Day.
They also showed the items the soldiers and medics carried with them.
Some areas of France had been occupied for four years by the time England, United States and Canada came to help. Amazing to think about what their lives were like during that time and it's easy to see why they were so happy to see us. Of course, it probably didn't hurt that we were giving out these goodies.
Outside they had memorial gardens dedicated to each of the three countries. At the USA one there was a plaque representing each state that sent troops. All 50 states sent men to fight in the war.
It should be telling that we have more pictures of the outside of the museum than of the inside.
One thing that WAS really cool was that they had an actual Bailey Bridge to the elevator that took you to the outside gardens. These British-designed bridges were used extensively in WWII by the Allies. What made them important was that you could use available manpower and not a crane to build the bridge and they could support the weight of a tank. These bridges kept the armies moving even after the Germans had destroyed existing bridges over rivers.
In looking back through the few pictures that we took I came across one that I took because it summed up the entire war to me in just one sentence:
"The Allies fought for a world vision totally opposed to that which the Axis wished to impose by force."
On the way home we tried dinner at "Quick Drive" the French version of McDs. Had a Long Bacon Burger and an Oreo milk shake. Karen was not impressed. McDs burgers are better and the Oreo shake was just a vanilla shake with crushed Oreos on top. Got back to the room about 7pm.
Tonight's dance floor
Again I am impressed that my daughter and her husband devoted so much of their trip to World War II. NOT COMPLAINING the photos and words
ReplyDeletespeak for themselves....dad