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Remember D-Day Tours' Normandy Blog
In this blog, I provide background on key protagonists of the Battle of Normandy and highlight lesser known facts.
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T he Château de Vouilly is one of the lesser known but very interesting sites in Normandy. It is located 4 km south of La Cambe, where the largest German military cemetery in Normandy is located. The château, which is now a beautiful small hotel, housed the headquarters of the American press camp of the 1st U.S. Army from June 10 to August 2, 1944. Famous war reporters and photographers such as Walter Cronkite, Andy Rooney, Ernie Pyle, Robert Capa, Robert Dempsey and Ernest Hemingway covered the Battle of Normandy from here. For two months, General Omar Bradley, 42 journalists and their technicians stayed in this chateau with the owners, the Hamel family. Being a former PR professional myself, this is one of my favorite places in Normandy. 16 months before they reported from Normandy, two of the aforementioned war correspondents, Walter Cronkite (United Press) and Andy Rooney (Stars and Stripes), were part of a group of eight war correspondents who called themselves "Writing 69th" and were given a unique opportunity to report on a bombing raid on the Reich. After three weeks of intensive training, six of the eight men were selected to cover a bombing raid on Bremen carried out by 65 four-engine American B-17 "Flying Fortress" and B-24 Liberator bombers on February 26, 1943. This raid was only the second attack on the Reich by the 8th U.S. Air Force. As the sky over Bremen was overcast, the bombers changed course and flew towards their secondary target, the U-boat pens at Wilhelmshaven. One of the B-24 Liberators was shot down by a German fighter plane over Wilhelmshaven, killing Robert P. Post, war correspondent for the New York Times, and all but two of the crew. Robert P. Post found his final resting place in the Ardennes American Cemetery at Henry Chapel, Belgium. I visited Robert's grave in the summer of 2021 to pay my respect to this brave war correspondent, see photo below. If you want to read more about the Writing 69th, please visit the web site of my friend Jim Hamilton who has done a lot of research and published a book about the Writing 69th.
As described here , my tours do not include visits to military museums. A museum visit easily lasts 45-60 minutes, valuable time that we lack for visiting other sights. Nevertheless, visiting one or more museums is an exciting and interesting affair, but interested tourists can do it on their own. In this article, I give a brief overview of the ten military museums that are located on the Cotentin Peninsula.
On June 8, 2013, a life-size bronze statue of bagpiper Bill Millin was unveiled to commemorate his heroic actions during the D-Day landings at Sword Beach. Bill Millin's son John (left) attended the ceremony and gave a moving tribute to his father, who died Aug. 18, 2010, at the age of 88. Several bagpipe bands played that sunny day in honor of Bill Millin. Later, a Spitfire flew several flyovers to the cheers of the crowd. Bill Millin was Lord Lovat's personal piper and led the British commandos to the French coast. Except for the ceremonial dagger in his stocking, he was unarmed and played fearlessly as the men fell around him. As the brigade moved away from the beach, Piper Millin played on, leading the Commandos across Pegasus Bridge. The Germans said they did not shoot him because they thought he had "gone crazy."
Born on July 9, 1911, Scotsman Simon Christopher Joseph Fraser, 5th McShimidh, 15th Lord Lovat, 4th Baron Lovat, who was usually only called "Shimi" by his friends, was quite a colorful character. After attending Ampleforth College and Magdalene College in Oxford, he joined the Scots Guards in 1931. When his father died in 1933, 22-year-old Simon followed him as the 15th Lord Lovat and 25th Chief of the Fraser Clan. Lord Lovat, promoted to lieutenant in 1934, was discharged from active duty as a reserve officer in 1937 but was recalled to active duty as a captain when the war broke out. In 1940, the British Army was looking for volunteers for the newly formed elite Commando unit. The adventurous Lord Lovat, one of the first volunteers, was accepted into the ranks of No. 4 Commando and saw his first action on March 4, 1941, when he took part in the very successful raid on the Lofoten islands (Operation CLAYMORE). On April 21/22, 1942, Lovat, now a major, commanded a section of No. 4 Commando (about 170 men) during the equally successful ABERCROMBIE Commando raid on the French coast south of Boulogne. For the prudent and cool leadership of his men in this operation, Lord Lovat was awarded the Military Cross, the third-highest military award in the British armed forces. Four months later, on August 19, 1942, Lord Lovat’s luck ran out. Lovat, by now promoted to lieutenant colonel, took part in the disastrous landing at Dieppe, Operation JUBILEE, with No. 4 Commando now under his command. Lovat’s men, reinforced by 50 U.S. Army Rangers, succeeded in destroying the German artillery battery HKB 813 "Hess" near Varengeville (6 x 150-mm guns), but the destruction of the battery was the only notable success of Operation JUBILEE. Lovat even managed to get most of his men safely back to England, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. When it became evident during the planning of Operation NEPTUNE, the amphibious landing phase in Normandy, that a larger number of command units would have to be deployed under a single command, Lovat was promoted to brigadier general and given command of the newly formed 1st Special Service Brigade, comprising No. 3, No. 4, No. 6 Army Commandos, and No. 45 Royal Marine Commando. Lovat, who landed with his brigade in the second landing wave on SWORD Beach in sector QUEEN RED at about 8:40 a.m., then advanced with his men under the sound of bagpiper, Bill Millin, to Pegasus Bridge, which had been seized the night before by airborne troops of the British 6th Airborne Division. Lord Lovat was badly wounded by shell fragments during the fighting for Bréville on June 12, 1944, and had to be evacuated. Although Lovat fully recovered after prolonged treatment, he retired from military service after his recovery and subsequently served as a politician in the House of Lords for many years. Lovat passed away on March 16, 1995, in Beauly, Invernessshire. The impressive bronze statue of Lord Lovat was inaugurated at the behest of the Mayor of Ouistreham on May 8, 2014. The statue, which cost around €125,000 to make, was financed exclusively by the Lovat family.
Historical background Philippe Kieffer was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1899. He was a bank director who made his career in London and New York. In the spring of 1939, he left his quite well-off life and moved to France, where he volunteered for the army before the outbreak of war. After the French defeat in June 1940, he fled to England and joined General de Gaulle’s "France Libre" movement in London. Kieffer became a naval officer at Free French Headquarters in Portsmouth, but soon became bored with his purely administrative duties. The resounding success of Operation CLAYMORE, the British Commando raid on the Norwegian Lofoten on March 4, 1941, intrigued Kieffer, who was then able to convince his French superiors and the British Admiralty to form a French Naval Commando unit. By the spring of 1942, Kieffer had gathered about twenty Frenchmen, who shortly thereafter experienced their baptism of fire during the attack on Dieppe in August 1942. Night Commando raids on the French coast in the winter of 1943-1944 completed the training of his unit, now officially known as the 1er Bataillon de Fusilier Marins Commandos (BMFC), which was then integrated into British No. 4 Commando in mid-April 1944. The 177-man BMFC was the only French unit to land in Normandy on D-Day, a fact that to this day establishes the legendary reputation of the unit and Kieffer himself. Already wounded during the landing and again in the attack on the casino in Riva-Bella (Ouistreham), Kieffer was evacuated to England on June 8. Only one month later, however, he returned to his unit, which he led until the end of the Normandy campaign. Kieffer’s Commando unit then participated in the amphibious landing on the Dutch peninsula of Walcheren on November 1, 1944, and was subsequently deployed to the Dutch theater of war. Invited to represent the "France Combattante" movement in the French Provisional Consultative Assembly, Kieffer resigned his command in April 1945. He was demobilized in 1946 and began a political career in Normandy that was not very successful. In the late 1950s, Kieffer was interviewed by Cornelius Ryan for his book "The Longest Day", which described events during the Normandy landings. Shortly afterward, Kieffer acted as a consultant in the production of the film of the same name. Philippe Kieffer died on November 20, 1962, at the age of only 63, in Cormeilles-en-Parisis in the Val-d’Oise department. He rests in the cemetery of Grandcamp-Maisy in the department of Calvados. On May 8, 2008, French President Sarkozy announced the creation of a "Commando Kieffer" within the special forces of the Marines, which is unmistakable proof of Philippe Kieffer’s high reputation in the public consciousness of the French, even decades after the war had ended. On June 6, 2019, the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, a life-size statue of Commandant Philippe Kieffer was inaugurated opposite the statue of Lord Lovat.