Europe Trip: Chapter 4
At the end of our last episode, our heroes had arrived in the ancient town of Caen, which was levelled during World War II. What will happen next as they tour historic Canadian battlegrounds?
We arrived at the Caen train station, and walked across the street to the Etap hotel where we were staying. We found the Etaps to be a fantastic deal - they were about 36 Euro for a room for a night, and they had a comfortable bed, an in-room bathroom with shower, a T.V. (not that we watched it), and a sink. All we wanted was a place to sleep, shower and put our things, and the Etaps served fantastically for that.
As soon as we got our stuff dropped off at the hotel, we raced back to the train station (which also serves as a bus station) and caught a regional bus to Courselles-sur-Mer, which is where the Juno Beach Centre is located. Courselles-sur-mer is a little town which is right on the English Channel, and it's quite pleasant. It's hard to imagine thousands of soldiers streaming through there on a rainy June morning, but that's what happened.
The centre was quite interesting - they offered guided tours, and we went on one. They took us around the beach, and showed us several German bunkers and observation posts which were preserved. One of them had a large shell hole in the side, a testament to the destructive power of even small-caliber naval guns (if that bunker had been hit by a large-caliber shell e.g. a battleship's main armament, there wouldn't have been a bunker left). There were tunnels that they used to offer tours through, however they had been closed when a section of one of the tunnels collapsed.
After visiting the centre, we walked back into town to catch the bus back to Caen. We had over an hour before the bus was scheduled to arrive, so we went to a restaurant to get some supper. It was a little restaurant right beside the docks, and it was run by someone who definitely had the feel of a kind aunt. We looked at the menu, and I asked her what she recommended. She described a very nice whitefish dish with a cream sauce, so we both ordered it and it was absolutely fantastic - the fish must have been caught that morning. Very full and contented, we walked back to the bus stop and caught the bus back to Caen. We strolled around the city a little bit, but it didn't feel like the kind of city it was safe to stroll in, so we went back to the hotel for the night.
The next morning, we hopped on another train to Rouen, which was our midpoint on the journey to Dieppe, an infamous name in Canadian military history. While in Rouen, we caught lunch and shipped a puzzle to my parents' house in Thunder Bay - I had picked it up at the Louvre for my mom, and I didn't feel like carrying it around for the rest of the trip. After lunch, we caught a train from Rouen to Dieppe - it was an interesting and uneventful ride through very beautiful countryside. We arrived in Dieppe, and it was a bit of a walk to our hotel, which was another Etap. Just as before, we were impressed with the Etap, and we dropped off our luggage and started to stroll around town.
We first went to the beach, which was quite unlike Juno Beach - the beach at Juno was sand, whereas the beach at Dieppe was made of palm-sized rocks. As you can imagine, the sand beach caused way less problems for both people and machines than the rock beach did. In addition to the poor terrain, the second thing I noticed was the commanding cliffs on the ends of the beach, which provided a perfect view of everything going on. Standing on that beach, I realized that, when the defences on those cliffs were not neutralized, the Dieppe raid was doomed to a very costly failure.
We then walked past the site of the casino to the west end of the beach, at the base of a cliff which has a castle on top. There was a garden there, with several plaques commemorating the hundreds of people that died at the base of that cliff. They had tried to find some shelter from the enemy fire, and were unsuccessful. We spent a while there, reading the plaques and the pillar which described Dieppe's history, and then walked up the southern slope of that cliff to the castle.
There were several slots which had been cut into the castle for machine guns, and it had been turned into a formidable defensive position by the Germans. It was a very beautiful structure, but the fact that it remains standing indicates a massive failure on the Allied side before the Dieppe raid - that castle is an obvious and commanding strongpoint, and it should have been turned into rubble before the raid was launched. In addition, there was a gun emplacement cut into the cliffside beside the castle, and other bunkers on top of a nearby cliff. The magnitude of the errors committed on that day, and the number of people that died as a result, continues to anger me.
We walked back into the centre of town, and went to a restaurant which was along the central dock. We ate at a small restaurant there, and had another delicious meal. We went back to the hotel and went to sleep, and got up in the morning to head out again. We caught a train back to Rouen, and then got on a train to Arras. Our hotel in Arras was right across from the train station, and it was called the Hotel Moderne Arras. It was a decent hotel, and we dropped our things off and caught a taxi out to Vimy Ridge.
Vimy Ridge and the area immediately around it has been turned over to the Canadian government, although it is not technically Canadian territory like it would be if the Canadian Embassy was located there. After the battle at Vimy Ridge, it was preserved in the condition that it was in, and it remains like that today. The surface of the earth all around Vimy Ridge is pockmarked with craters, and there is almost no level ground except for where the roads are. It's quite a sight, and it really brings home how much a concentrated artillery barrage, even with World War I technology, can devastate and destroy things. There are signs all over the place which warn of unexploded munitions beyond a certain point, and they also reminded one that a very large and pivotal battle took place there.
There is a large white memorial at the top of the ridge which commemorates the Canadian casualties of World War I. The memorial was covered by a large tarp because it is being restored, but there was a large pile of white stone which appeared to have been shaved off of the original memorial durng the restoration process. Since it apeared to be destined for the garbage heap, I took a small piece and brought it with me - my own little piece of history. We walked around the memorial, and also walked around the preserved bunker system at Vimy. We were there until closing time, and we caught a cab back to Arras and called it a night. The next morning was a big day - we were heading to Berlin! We boarded a TGV at Arras...
...and voyaged off into the sunset (sunrise?) for another chapter.
Interesting factoid of the day: We got a firsthand look at the way the French system works while we were in Paris. I watched from our hotel balcony as three hotel employees collected several bags of garbage (well above the limit for a customer) and waited by the side of the curb. When the garbage truck pulled up, one of the hotel employees gave the garbagemen 6 beers - he put 4 into a bin on the side of the truck, opened one, and gave one to the driver who also opened his. They sat back and drank their beer while the hotel employees loaded up the garbage truck. Once they were done, the garbagemen thanked them and continued on their merry way. The lesson of the day: a six-pack trumps local by-laws in France.
We arrived at the Caen train station, and walked across the street to the Etap hotel where we were staying. We found the Etaps to be a fantastic deal - they were about 36 Euro for a room for a night, and they had a comfortable bed, an in-room bathroom with shower, a T.V. (not that we watched it), and a sink. All we wanted was a place to sleep, shower and put our things, and the Etaps served fantastically for that.
As soon as we got our stuff dropped off at the hotel, we raced back to the train station (which also serves as a bus station) and caught a regional bus to Courselles-sur-Mer, which is where the Juno Beach Centre is located. Courselles-sur-mer is a little town which is right on the English Channel, and it's quite pleasant. It's hard to imagine thousands of soldiers streaming through there on a rainy June morning, but that's what happened.
The centre was quite interesting - they offered guided tours, and we went on one. They took us around the beach, and showed us several German bunkers and observation posts which were preserved. One of them had a large shell hole in the side, a testament to the destructive power of even small-caliber naval guns (if that bunker had been hit by a large-caliber shell e.g. a battleship's main armament, there wouldn't have been a bunker left). There were tunnels that they used to offer tours through, however they had been closed when a section of one of the tunnels collapsed.
After visiting the centre, we walked back into town to catch the bus back to Caen. We had over an hour before the bus was scheduled to arrive, so we went to a restaurant to get some supper. It was a little restaurant right beside the docks, and it was run by someone who definitely had the feel of a kind aunt. We looked at the menu, and I asked her what she recommended. She described a very nice whitefish dish with a cream sauce, so we both ordered it and it was absolutely fantastic - the fish must have been caught that morning. Very full and contented, we walked back to the bus stop and caught the bus back to Caen. We strolled around the city a little bit, but it didn't feel like the kind of city it was safe to stroll in, so we went back to the hotel for the night.
The next morning, we hopped on another train to Rouen, which was our midpoint on the journey to Dieppe, an infamous name in Canadian military history. While in Rouen, we caught lunch and shipped a puzzle to my parents' house in Thunder Bay - I had picked it up at the Louvre for my mom, and I didn't feel like carrying it around for the rest of the trip. After lunch, we caught a train from Rouen to Dieppe - it was an interesting and uneventful ride through very beautiful countryside. We arrived in Dieppe, and it was a bit of a walk to our hotel, which was another Etap. Just as before, we were impressed with the Etap, and we dropped off our luggage and started to stroll around town.
We first went to the beach, which was quite unlike Juno Beach - the beach at Juno was sand, whereas the beach at Dieppe was made of palm-sized rocks. As you can imagine, the sand beach caused way less problems for both people and machines than the rock beach did. In addition to the poor terrain, the second thing I noticed was the commanding cliffs on the ends of the beach, which provided a perfect view of everything going on. Standing on that beach, I realized that, when the defences on those cliffs were not neutralized, the Dieppe raid was doomed to a very costly failure.
We then walked past the site of the casino to the west end of the beach, at the base of a cliff which has a castle on top. There was a garden there, with several plaques commemorating the hundreds of people that died at the base of that cliff. They had tried to find some shelter from the enemy fire, and were unsuccessful. We spent a while there, reading the plaques and the pillar which described Dieppe's history, and then walked up the southern slope of that cliff to the castle.
There were several slots which had been cut into the castle for machine guns, and it had been turned into a formidable defensive position by the Germans. It was a very beautiful structure, but the fact that it remains standing indicates a massive failure on the Allied side before the Dieppe raid - that castle is an obvious and commanding strongpoint, and it should have been turned into rubble before the raid was launched. In addition, there was a gun emplacement cut into the cliffside beside the castle, and other bunkers on top of a nearby cliff. The magnitude of the errors committed on that day, and the number of people that died as a result, continues to anger me.
We walked back into the centre of town, and went to a restaurant which was along the central dock. We ate at a small restaurant there, and had another delicious meal. We went back to the hotel and went to sleep, and got up in the morning to head out again. We caught a train back to Rouen, and then got on a train to Arras. Our hotel in Arras was right across from the train station, and it was called the Hotel Moderne Arras. It was a decent hotel, and we dropped our things off and caught a taxi out to Vimy Ridge.
Vimy Ridge and the area immediately around it has been turned over to the Canadian government, although it is not technically Canadian territory like it would be if the Canadian Embassy was located there. After the battle at Vimy Ridge, it was preserved in the condition that it was in, and it remains like that today. The surface of the earth all around Vimy Ridge is pockmarked with craters, and there is almost no level ground except for where the roads are. It's quite a sight, and it really brings home how much a concentrated artillery barrage, even with World War I technology, can devastate and destroy things. There are signs all over the place which warn of unexploded munitions beyond a certain point, and they also reminded one that a very large and pivotal battle took place there.
There is a large white memorial at the top of the ridge which commemorates the Canadian casualties of World War I. The memorial was covered by a large tarp because it is being restored, but there was a large pile of white stone which appeared to have been shaved off of the original memorial durng the restoration process. Since it apeared to be destined for the garbage heap, I took a small piece and brought it with me - my own little piece of history. We walked around the memorial, and also walked around the preserved bunker system at Vimy. We were there until closing time, and we caught a cab back to Arras and called it a night. The next morning was a big day - we were heading to Berlin! We boarded a TGV at Arras...
...and voyaged off into the sunset (sunrise?) for another chapter.
Interesting factoid of the day: We got a firsthand look at the way the French system works while we were in Paris. I watched from our hotel balcony as three hotel employees collected several bags of garbage (well above the limit for a customer) and waited by the side of the curb. When the garbage truck pulled up, one of the hotel employees gave the garbagemen 6 beers - he put 4 into a bin on the side of the truck, opened one, and gave one to the driver who also opened his. They sat back and drank their beer while the hotel employees loaded up the garbage truck. Once they were done, the garbagemen thanked them and continued on their merry way. The lesson of the day: a six-pack trumps local by-laws in France.
posted by Ryan Slobojan at 19:57
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