Gold Beach

Friday, February 19, 2024

Once we got to Gold Beach, we were a little disappointed that we had no access to the beach. The memorial was very well done however and had a beautiful view of the beach. The troops landing here were given the goal of taking the town of Bayeux, which is where we were staying. None of the beaches actually achieved their objectives on the first day. They were all just lucky they were all able to take their beach.

Gold Beach was taken by the British and they had it much better than the poor guys at Omaha Beach. Their aerial bombardments hit their targets, so they had less artillery fire and their machine gun nests were easier to reach since they didn’t have the cliffs that they had at Omaha. The biggest difference was strong on shore winds that pushed the tides farther inland and the troops and tanks floated right over the traps and mines that the Germans had set out in the water.

Out of the 25,000 troops that assaulted this beach, only 350 died on that first day. It sounds horrible to say that ONLY 350 died, each death is a tragedy to someone but when you compare it to the 2,000 that died on Omaha beach it is a blessing.

The unique task given to Gold Beach was to set up a temporary harbor here where the allies could bring ashore tanks and other supplies to support the invasion. You can see the remains of these piers in this picture I took. This temporary harbor was quite successful and was intended to be used only until the allies took the nearby port city of La Havre. La Havre was taken in September but the temporary harbor on Gold Beach was used long after that. You can still see remnants of the pylons from those docks in this picture that I took.

The best part of Gold beach was the road into and out of the memorial. The road in was a paved but very narrow single file road. The road out was a single but very muddy road. It truly felt like we were off roading and mom was very nervous. It was exciting, but if we’d gotten stuck it would have put a big cramp in our schedule.