When planning a battlefield tour there are known unknowns. Like whether the mini-bus – guaranteed by Enterprise Car Hire – will be there. It wasn’t. Whether the train will be on time. It wasn’t. Whether the antique clients will all make it through the five days. One was iffy. Whether the rain will descend. It did. Whether the untested accommodation will be up to snuff. It was.
And particularly the Chateau de Tocqueville of illustrious name, a jewel near Barfleur. It is out of the way but worth the detour. The charming chatelaine, the Countess, is the perfect hostess and you will be happy to sit in front of her welcoming log fire after an afternoon traipsing round the craters of Pointe du Hoc (fortified admittedly by Barnard Lussac’s calvados at his nearby pommerie). The chateau (and original Count) survived the revolution, probably because Alexis de Tocqueville was as enlightened as his heirs.
The new museum at Arromanches is inoffensive as architecture, and a vast improvement as exhibition space. Mulberry is explained lucidly and we anoraks can enjoy peering at things that go bang. Other anoraks on the trip discussed for several hours how the wheels of a Horsa glider were jettisoned. We spent a delightful morning with the owner of the field where Dick Winters (of Band of Brothers) fame destroyed 4 guns ranging on Utah beach. ‘In the end,’ said one punter, ‘we are standing in a muddy field staring at a hedge.’ This is the attitude of my brother who once said, when inspecting the cellar where Wilfred Owen spent his last night – ‘It is a cellar, damp and musty. Just a cellar.’ But touring is conceptual, you are looking at not just any old bridge but Pegasus Bridge, captured by Major Howard’s coup de main; or La Fière bridge, where Gavin’s 82nd Airborne lost 270 men killed taking it (and the causeway).
Some things never disappoint. I explained that Arlette Gondrée, who runs the famous café at Pegasus, and recalls the events of June 6 1944 with startling clarity, is formidable. Terrifying even. And that it is unwise to photograph her little museum which is verboten. My brother-in-law ignored my advice – and got properly and instantly bollocked. All part of the tradition of an Overlord tour.
