"Next to the Pointe du Hoc" Saint-Pierre-du-Mont by hquittner

We were traveling by rental car and had come from near Mont St.-Michel, first stopping at St.-Lo. We had a 10 yr. old grandson in tow and showed him a heavily damaged Cathedral in that town. By D6.N13>D514, we shortly arrived at the turn-off toward the coast, just before the village of St.-Pierre just as it began to rain. We did not know what we would encounter but walked ahead from the car park toward the sea. The rain abated and it turned out to be ideal for our charge. The terrain has grown up over the 5 decades with grassland giving a deeply pitted green and brown landscape. There was a scattering of barbed-wire and concrete remains of walls, pillboxes, stone trenches and bunkers or gun emplacements in varying states of damage and rust. Our child charged into them with the fury of a commando, going down the crater-pits and crawling up the sides, into one end of a bunker and out the other further off, until fatigue finally set in! It meant little to him at the time, but over 10 years later he saw the Private Ryan movie (3 times?) and there was complete recall. The area is a plateau the reaches the water's edge as a 30 ft. cliff at the edge of which is a memorial stele and plaques.

Attack!

The area is a plateau that reaches the water's edge as a 30 m cliff. At the edge of the cliff are a memorial stele and plaques. To the east sticking up above the hedges is the church steeple of St. Pierre du Mont. We subsequently toured the American Cemetery but as it turns out, this was the best show of actual in situ remnants of the war in the entire area.

• Pros:The Nearest Thing to a Battle Site on the Coast
• Cons:Exposed to the Weather
• In a nutshell:Do not miss it!