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In June Kate had her annual KBS conference in Paris. We crossed the English Channel and arrived in Calais on a ferry from Dover having had a short visit with Jean and Chuck — our honorary second parents in England. It's a short ride across the English Channel and we got away early. Our plan was to see a bit of the country, explore some war sites and see the Champagne region before the conference.There was some confusion at the port of Calais with our car rental. We were there noonish but they weren't expecting us until later in the afternoon. There was nobody at the car rental! After some awkward running about and the kind assistance from some locals at the port we finally had our car and were on our way — did I mention how poor our French is? We quickly got lost on the back lanes of the nearby countryside (do all roads wander like that?) but did make it to our hotel in the nearby country town of Bollezeele. Originally, we had intentions of visiting Vimy Ridge, the Canadian WWI memorial, but that was way too far for the limited time we had that day.
Our hotel, the Saint Louis, was more of a country inn than a city hotel. Bollezeele is quite a small village. But the hotel was quite nice and catered to an upscale crowd. The parking lot was full of Rolls Royce sedans, there was some car rally event. I recall we had a nice dinner at the hotel and this was the first time I'd ever had white asparagus with hollandaise. In our part of the world asparagus is green!
The next day we headed westward along the coast to Dieppe. Dieppe is a smallish town along the coast with a deep water sheltered port. While the coast is quite flat around Calais here there are the towering white chalk cliffs that match the white cliffs of Dover. On August 19, 1942 during WWII there was an aborted invasion by Allied troops, mostly Canadian, who had hoped to gain a foothold and a valuable port on the continent at Dieppe. When you see what the coast has to offer — high cliffs, a wide stoney beach with no cover, a very narrow harbor and likewise narrow streets of the town — you would rightly guess that it was doomed to be a fiasco, a fool's errand. In Wikipedia I read "Within ten hours, of the 6,086 men who landed, 3,623 had been killed, wounded or became prisoners of war." Nevertheless in Dieppe they remember the attempt — there are celebrations every year on August 19.
We stayed in the first coastal village to the west, Pourville-sur-Mer on a street aptly named "Rue du 19 Août 1942". Our hotel fronted the beach with a row of those little beach cabins used as change houses. The weather was cool and grey, the water would have been very cold. They do go swimming in the channel as the season progresses — evidenced by the little beach cabins. We wandered the shore and stoney beach a bit and found some ruins of some fortified WWII bunkers/pillboxes that had fallen to the sea from the high cliffs above. We tried to imagine what it would have been like on the beach during the landing of 1942. It would have been a terrifying day for the green soldiers who had never seen battle before, and the many who were lost that day.
The successful D-Day landing was in Normandy on June 6, 1944 many miles to the west on the sandy shores. The next day we visited Juno Beach, where the Canadians landed, at the village of Courseulles-sur-Mer. The other landings, by various Allied forces along this 50mile stretch of Normandy, were code named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword Beach.
The picture above is me with uncle Mac's tank the "Bold/Audacieux" at Quai des Alliés, 14470 Courseulles-sur-Mer, France. It's right by the harbor and, at the time, there was a modest tourist information center. Since then they've build a huge Juno Beach Centre on the other side of the harbor. It will be confusing if you're looking for this memorial as it's not at the Canadian Juno Beach Center where you might expect to find it.
When we visited it was still a pretty modest affair. In front of the Tourist Information Centere there stands a green duplex-drive Sherman tank that was recovered from the sea in 1970 — the debris from D-day had been fouling fishermen's nets for years. This was one of the tanks that had sunk during the D-day landing and it is well documented as the "Bold/Audacieux" commanded by the First Hussars out of London, Ontario. We're there reading about the history and I'm choking back tears when Kate says to me, "So, this is like the tank that uncle Mac drove?". Through my tears I replied, "No, this is the tank uncle Mac drove".
William (Mac) Dixon survived D-day and WWII to return to safely to Canada. His brother Walter, who died in a training accident flying a plane, wasn't so lucky. He's buried in Formby outside of Liverpool.
We ought to have visited the nearby war graves but the Juno Beach Centre was emotional enough. In retrospect I'm sort of ashamed of how ill prepared we were, how little of the history we knew and how little time we gave to these visits. We really knew very little about any of the wars or battle sites. It would be good to go back some day and spend more time. Our second dad, Chuck Fry, made many treks to the fields of Flanders to visit WWI battle sites. There were incredible losses during those battles. So to here on the beaches of Normandy.
From Normandy, our brief tour of war sites over, we headed inland and to the east to the Champagne Region.
Ps. these notes and photo album were prepared during the COVID-19 lockdown of January 2021.
