Utah Beach
- John
- Jul 28, 2019
- 2 min read
You can’t visit Normandy and not visit one of the D Day landing beaches. We’d visited Gold beach at Arromanche a number of times where the remnants of the mulberry harbour are still clear to see. Being in Carentan we decided to visit the American landing Utah beach at nearby St Madeleine. Apart from the pill boxes dotted along the dunes there is little to give away what happened here on 6 June 1944.
The Utah Beach museum is however very informative. The Utah beach invasion was destined to secure Cherbourg harbour. The invasion force were pushed off target by tidal drift and strong winds a mile and a half south of the planned landing, and with the heavy sea and aerial bombardment it was difficult for the troops to place themselves when they moved ashore. That said the 4th Infantry Division landed 21,000 troops on Utah at the cost of 197 casualties. Despite heavy artillery from the german troops they were successful in pushing ashore and obtaining surrender from the Germans defending that part of the Atlantic wall - a series of pill box and other defences including flooding of lowland determined by the Germans to keep invading forces out. The wall was constructed by local conscription and forced labour of prisoners of war. Treatment was harsh and non compliance was usually met with a bullet.
The museum has been built incorporating a number of the original pill boxes which form part of the exhibit and there is a plethora of artifacts some of which have been donated and others found in the dunes as they were digging the footings for the building. The first part of the exhibition is a harrowing video showing footage taken of the invasion on 6 June 1944. These men who had been overnight on ships from Dartmouth were landed in 2 - 3 foot of water and then waded ashore under enemy fire.
Necessity is the mother of invention and the Utah landing resulted in the development of technology that we still see in some form today - landing craft (Higgins boats), DUKW 6 wheeled amphibious craft, temporary landing strips constructed from intermeshing steel plates and portable aircraft hangers which were erected at Utah beach until Cherbourg was secured. They were then moved east as the invasion progressed.
As you stand on the beach today looking at the beautiful landscape there is a real sense of calm, and for that we must thank those men in 1944 for ensuring that we can stand there in peace. There is much we still have to learn from the past to prevent history repeating itself.
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