Caen War Memorial

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

On Tuesday, February 20, after we finished with the Bayeux tapestry we headed to Caen to check out the museum there. 

On our way out of town we stopped for a few minutes at a British Museum. It was a beautiful cemetery and I loved how each of the tombstones had some sort of emblem on them. I was a bit disappointing that all the Canadian soldiers got a maple leaf, which was beautiful, but they didn’t get the insignia from their group like all the others did.

The museum in Caen was amazing. We arrived somewhere around noon and stayed there until they kicked us out. We probably didn’t see half of the museum.

The coolest thing about the museum was that it was built on top of the Nazi headquarters for that area. The German leader dug one huge tunnel in the rock and set up business. His job was to fortify the Atlantic Coast against an allied invasion but lucky for us, it was too little too late. He had barely settled in when D Day happened, and he was driven out. I love that his headquarters is now a museum. It seems fitting.

When they finally booted us out of the museum we checked out what they had going on outside the museum. One side of the courtyard in front of the museum was a row of stone monuments from many of the countries involved. They were all beautiful much like the Canadian one shown here and they had well thought out and thoughtful words engraved on them.

We then came to the last one from Norway. 

It was a simple uncut boulder and it simply said, “Son, defend the freedom that your father won.” I loved it. It was by far my favorite memorial.

From there we headed up to the city of Arres and stayed in a beautiful B&B right on the Great Market. The only thing that would have made it better is if we had a window overlooking the market. It was still wonderful, and it had a separate bathroom.