FRANCE
Scenes from
The Longest Day
were filmed in these locations
Sainte-Mere-Eglise
Normandy, France
Sainte-Mère-Église is a commune in the Manche department
in Normandy in north-western France.
The town's main claim to fame is that it played a significant part
in the World War II Normandy landings because this village stood right
in the middle of route N13, which the Germans would have most likely
used on any significant counterattack on the troops landing
on Utah and Omaha Beaches.
In the early morning of 6 June 1944
mixed units of the U.S. 82nd Airborne and U.S. 101st Airborne Divisions
occupied the town in Operation Boston, giving it the claim
to be one of the first towns liberated in the invasion.
D-Day battle
The early landings, at about 0140 directly on the town,
resulted in heavy casualties for the paratroopers.
Some buildings in town were on fire that night, and they illuminated the sky,
making easy targets of the descending men.
Some were sucked into the fire.
Many hanging from trees and utility poles were shot before they could cut loose.
The German defenders were alerted.
.
A famous incident involved paratrooper John Steele of the 505th PIR,
whose parachute caught on the spire of the town church,
and could only observe the fighting going on below.
He hung there limply for two hours, pretending to be dead,
before the Germans took him prisoner.
Steele later escaped from the Germans and rejoined his division
when US troops of the 3rd Battalion, 505 Parachute Infantry Regiment
attacked the village capturing thirty Germans and killing another eleven.
The incident was portrayed in the movie The Longest Day by actor Red Buttons.
Later that morning, about 0500, a force led by Lt. Colonel Edward C. Krause
of the 505th PIR took the town with little resistance.
Apparently the German garrison was confused and had retired
for the rest of the night.
However, heavy German counterattacks began later in the day and into the next.
The lightly-armed troops held the town until reinforced by tanks from nearby
Utah Beach in the afternoon of 7 June.
Other notable soldiers in the Allied assault on the town:
* Lt. Colonel Benjamin H. Vandervoort (played by John Wayne)
* Lt. Turner B. Turnbull
* Capt. Ben Schwartzwalder
* Cpl. Edward A. Slavin, Sr.
* Sgt. George Bowler Tullidge III.
Krause and Vandervoort both received the Distinguished Service Cross
for their actions in the capture of the town.
Tullidge received the Bronze Star, and it is noted that a collection
of Bible verses and of his letters home, A Paratrooper's Faith,
was distributed throughout the 82nd Airborne by his parents
following his death until the 1990s.
Henry Langrehr was also involved in the capture of Sainte-Mère-Église.
He crashed through a greenhouse roof, as retold in the movie The Longest Day.
On 6 November 2007 he received, along with five other men, the Legion of Honor medal from the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy.
This village is depicted in the game Call of Duty,
the first battle is fought in this village by the player's character
For more information:-
Sainte-Mère-Église-Wikipedia
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La Pointe of Hoc
Normandy, France
Point du Hoc is a small step on the Normandy coast in the English Channel ,
situated in the Calvados .
It overlooks a cliff 25 to 30 meters high with a pebble beach
of about ten meters wide at its feet.
The tip is on the Common Cricqueville-en-Bessin .
It was the scene of one of the Allied landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944 .
Located between the beaches of Utah Beach (west) and Omaha Beach (east),
the tip had been fortified by the Nazis and, according to Allied air reconnaissance
was equipped with heavy artillery whose scope threatened the two nearby beaches.
It was considered essential for the successful landing, artillery pieces
that are put out of service as quickly as possible.
This mission was entrusted to the 2nd battalion of U.S. Rangers
who managed to take control of the site with heavy losses.
Subsequently, the artillery will prove to have been displaced
by the Germans shortly before and installed 1.5 kilometers back to the inland.
For more information:-
Pointof Hoc-Wikipedia
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Ile-De-Re
La Rochelle, France
Île de Ré is an island off the west coast of France near La Rochelle,
on the northern side of the Pertuis d'Antioche strait.
This island is completely flat; it is 30 km long and 5 km wide.
A 2.9 km bridge, completed in 1988, connects it to La Rochelle on the mainland.
During World War II, the beaches of the Île de Ré were fortified by German forces
with bunkers, in order to block a possible seaward invasion.
Many of the bunkers are still visible, in a more or less derelict state.
Several scenes of the 1962 movie The Longest Day were filmed
on the beaches of the island.
For more information:-
Ile-De-Re-Wikipedia
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Plage de Saleccia
Corsica, France
One of the beaches used for location
Plage de Saleccia, off the Désert des Agriates on the north coast
and west of Saint-Florent.
Bastia is the nearest large town and ferry port.
Saleccia has perfect soft sand, clear azure water and a natural backdrop
For more information:-
Plage de Saleccia- Wikipedia