6th June- D-Day visit to Normandy American Cemetary for the memorial service

04.30!!! Bloody hell what again. Anyway we rushed around for showers and a light breakfast before meeting the others in the car park for a drive in Gilles car to Caen. The party consisted of Jen and me, Gilles and Marie who work on the site and Gerhard a nice german chap who lives near Cologne.
We arrived at the centralised parking at around 06.30 where you go to pick up the coach to be taken to Colleville sur mer together with a police escort as many of the roads were closed for the day. We then had to go through a small security check by showing the letters of invitation and also passports before joining a queue for the coach. We left Caen around 07.45 and with blue flashing lights from the police outriders we eventually joined the traffic jam near the Cemetery. Finally we got to the car park and the place was really humming with so many people waiting holding their invitations etc. Here we lost Gerhard after he went to the Loo and we gave up looking but then he turned up the other side of the body and electronic search before entering the cemetery. If you have never been here its really worth a visit being placed next to one of the landing beaches and with about 10000 graves.
We were able to find seats in the shade of a tree, as against sitting in the direct hot son for an hour and a half however this means we could not see the stage directly but on a large screen with a loudspeaker nearby and so the photos of the stage were taken using their large screen, not the best reproduction but the best we could do under the circamstances

This photo says it all

The service started a little later than planned, but hey this is France, and it was most moving with both Francois Hollande and Barack Obama both making excellent speeches except the English translation used on the big screens got screwed up ans stopped whilst Hollande continued only then for it to wizz through and missing a considerable chunk, but hey as mentioned this is France.
Following the service we had to wait for the coaches to take us back to Caen when we informed that would not start until at least 14.00, what!!! and why?? as it now 12.45, did they not expect that people would want to go back to Caen immediately or shortly after. So along with many others we waited in the Car park and at 13.30 one coach turned up with the driver on the phone having an argument with somebody it looked like, and several policeman asking him to move or stop, depending which policeman you looked at so Gilles wandered over and started chatting to the driver only to find the driver had just been told he was going to Caen and not where he was planned to go and so Gilles waived us over and we were on the first coach back to Caen, brilliant.
Arriving back in Caen we collected the car only to find with so many roads closed that we could not find a way out of town and all the policement we stopped and asked did not know either as they been brought in from all over the country and so we spoke to police from Clermont Ferrand, Bordeaux and other places but finally we found one who came from Honfleur and he thought he knew how we could leave for Liseaux without going on the motorway and he was right. We dropped off Marie at her home which is a large farm on the outskirts of Moyaux and had tea with her mum before heading back to site.
We were both dead tired and went to the creperie on site and Gilles and Ingrid and Gerhard and finally William who also works on the site joined us for a drink. .
And so we had a really memorable
day.