We made record time on the way back to Caen this afternoon so had about an hour to spare. This inevitably resulted in a detour, this time to the HILLMAN bunker complex above Colleville-Montgomery, which I had read about in various books and have always wanted to visit.
It's an impressive site with a panoramic view of SWORD beach, so well worth a visit if you find yourself in a similar 'what can we do to keep the kids from whacking the bejesus out of each other in the back of the heavily overloaded and rather pungent people carrier' type predicament.
Anyway, an evocative and windswept place which gave me pause for thought once again.
It's also a good distance and height from the beach, which makes the efforts of the Suffolks even more extraordinary, when you consider that they'd been kept on their landing craft for a couple of days in rough weather then fought their way uphill under heavy fire before assaulting a massive bunker complex that had been missed entirely be the pre-landing bombardment.
I'm very glad and extremely grateful that it wasn't me.
I was fortunate enough to see this a number of years ago. I was touring the battlefields with my sons and on the way back to our room in Caen ran across this strongpoint. We stopped and toured the place. I could not appreciate the reason the Germans would have sited it where they did until I walked around and could actually see the line of sight they had to the beaches. It was a really interesting. Thanks for posting your pictures.
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