Hal Jespersen’s Normandy DUKE Tour, October 2026 [Part 2]

These are my (Hal’s) notes from a specialized World War II tour of Normandy, hosted by Paul (Woody) Woodadge and Magali (Mag) Desquesne of the WW2TV YouTube Channel. “DUKE” (Dominion, United Kingdom, and Empire, a term coined by comedian/historian Al Murray) represents its focus primarily on British and Canadian actions in the Normandy Campaign. This is my second tour with Woody, the first a smaller-group tour in 2024. I also visited the area in conjunction with the 75th anniversary of D-Day. The notes that follow have been supplemented with some internet research on my part, such as unit designations; Woody’s narrative was not as geeky as this may seem.

Since this is a lengthy report with lots of photos (iPhone 17 Pro Max), I have broken it into three parts:

Sunday, October 4 — Sword Beach, Caen

Timeline and summary of Normandy operation namesAnother beautiful cool day. Today it’s back to the Brits. We drove 40 minutes to Hermanville-sur-Mer to examine the Sword Beach landings. Sword, from Ouistreham toward Lion-sur-Mer, was the landing area of the British 3rd Infantry Division and 27th Armoured Brigade, with 1st Special Service Brigade (Commandos) on the left to join 6th Airborne at the Orne. Queen White and Queen Red, in front of Hermanville and La Brèche, were the main assault beaches. The village’s importance was less about fighting than about traffic: with so few roads leading off the beach, Hermanville quickly became a bottleneck as the follow-on waves tried to push through.

The 3rd Division’s D-Day objective was Caen, and it was not achieved, partly because of congestion on the narrow beach exits and partly because of the one serious German armored counterattack of D-Day. The 21st Panzer Division launched it through the gap between Sword and Juno near Lion-sur-Mer, and it briefly reached the coast before being turned back. (The heavy fighting that we saw the rest of the morning certainly hurt as well.) Woody said the Overlord orders were to “mask” Caen and prevent the Germans from threatening the beaches from there. This was actually accomplished more by the Air Force and the Commandos to the east than by the troops coming in from the beach. He also said that General Dempsey recalled the depth of the inland advance of the British Husky landings in Sicily, which established in his mind a similar distance to Caen as a goal.

We stopped at a restored Centaur IV of the Royal Marine Armoured Support Group, the same type that came in with the first infantry but wasn’t used farther inland. Woody described the urgency of landing to avoid heavy artillery east of the Orne, and he said the landings went well, with lower casualties than at the other beaches. We made a minor stop in Cresserons, where Woody talked about the 22nd Dragoon Guards and their use of Sherman flail tanks to neutralize minefields. Square Ian Hammerton memorializes the regiment. Mag observed that the dairy farms in the American sectors made it easier to find areas in which mines were clear, by watching where the cows walked.

Near Colleville-Montgomery we stopped at Hillman, the codename for German strongpoint WN 17, which was the buried headquarters of Grenadier-Regiment 736 (Colonel Ludwig Krug). The position measured about 600 by 400 meters, with twelve-plus concrete works, some walls 3.5 meters thick, steel observation cupolas that Sherman 75s could not penetrate, mines and wire, and about 150 men. Allied intelligence underestimated its strength. The 1st Battalion, Suffolk Regiment, attacked it on D-Day with tank, artillery, and engineer support; the first infantry assaults were beaten back, and it took a combined arms effort to break in. Most of the position fell that evening, but the last bunker didn’t surrender until the following morning, and the Suffolks lost seven killed and 24 wounded taking it. We were not able to go deep underground because the bunkers are seldom opened to visitors, but we got a good view and understanding of the terrain between here and the beach, which is still visible from this point. A British Mark IV A22 Churchill tank is on display, even though all of the tanks in this action were Shermans. Hunters in the area provided a very minor flavor of gunfire from the battle.

Jumping forward in time, we made a brief stop in a field outside Château de la Londe, which we couldn’t see until we passed by in the bus afterward. On June 27–28, during Operation Mitten, the 1st Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment and other Allied units assaulted the heavily defended site. The fierce, costly hand-to-hand combat and heavy shelling left the château severely damaged and resulted in massive casualties, over 160 men killed, wounded, or missing from the Suffolks alone, earning the surrounding area the nickname “the bloodiest square mile of Normandy.” At Cambes-en-Plaine, the 2nd Battalion, Royal Ulster Rifles of the 3rd Infantry Division attacked the village on June 9, when it was held by the 12th SS Panzer Division. Crossing the start line south of Anisy, the battalion advanced over open cornfields under German artillery, mortar, and machine-gun fire, supported by East Riding Yeomanry tanks, engineers, mortars, and divisional artillery. By late afternoon they had broken into the northern edge of the village and the château wood, and the King’s Own Scottish Borderers helped clear and hold the ground while German shelling continued for hours. The Rifles lost about 200 men, including 44 killed, and the front then froze there for a month. Woody read a poignant personal account of the battle by his great-uncle Cyril, who was the only platoon commander in his company to survive.

We had a delicious baguette sandwich lunch from a boulangerie in Épron. We didn’t discuss it, but Épron was a fortified village on the 59th (Staffordshire) Division’s Charnwood axis. British troops entered it more than once in June and were thrown out, and on July 8–9 the Staffordshires finally cleared it after house-to-house fighting and heavy bombardment. We then drove to an unidentified point on Boulevard du 18 Juin 1940 (D60) to hear more from Cyril about Operation Charnwood, I Corps’s frontal attack against Caen. The 3rd Canadian Division was on the right, the 59th Division in the center, and the 3rd British Division on the left, after a Bomber Command area attack on the northern part of the city. More than 2,500 tons of bombs were dropped in under an hour, much of it falling on French civilian districts rather than the German defenses, which had largely been pulled back out of the bombed zone, and artillery hit the city with 600,000 shells.

Caen had also been bombed on June 6, targeting the bridges the German reinforcements could have used to reach the beaches. By the evening of July 9, the Allies held Caen north of the Orne, but German heavy weapons had already gone south. The river, running through the city, marked the effective limit of the advance, and the industrial suburbs and the southern half of the city remained in German hands until the Canadian Operation Atlantic, launched alongside Goodwood on July 18. We drove to Église Saint-Jean de Caen. Despite severe damage during the heavy Allied bombing, it was the only major building left standing in its immediate quarter and was fully restored by the mid-1960s. Outside, we heard another of Cyril’s accounts, this one of his entry into the ruined city. Mag, who went to college in Caen, said the city currently has 100,000 residents and that 25 percent of them are college students. The city was 70 percent destroyed in June and July, but the reconstruction adhered so closely to the architecture of the time that you might never know it was rebuilt in the 1950s and ’60s. We compared 1944 photographs of destroyed streets with the modern views, and they look pretty similar, minus the rubble.

Our walking tour began at City Hall and Église Saint-Étienne de Caen, an imposing conjoined pair of buildings. A hospital garden there had been marked with a large cross of sheets soaked in blood to warn aircraft. Most residents fled to the countryside, the nearby quarries, or the Men’s Abbey (Abbaye aux Hommes), and more than 1,400 people lived in the abbey with blankets and worn mattresses, having come on their own in the hope that Allied planes would spare the church where William the Conqueror is buried. William’s small tomb sits right in front of the altar. Mag said that his wife, Mrs. Conqueror, is buried elsewhere, which struck me as a cold way to treat her. We also saw a statue of Louis XIV and the modest 3rd British Infantry Division Memorial.

Château de Caen, begun around 1060 by William the Conqueror, is one of Europe’s largest medieval fortresses, enclosing roughly 12 acres on a rocky spur above the city. It later served as a royal residence and then as a military garrison for centuries. The castle area was heavily damaged by Allied bombing and by the fighting for Operation Charnwood. Its walls survived the war largely intact, though interior buildings were damaged. It now houses the Musée de Normandie and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen. From the top of a rampart, Woody pointed out some of the relevant geological positions south of the city, and there was a nice view of Église Saint-Pierre de Caen.

We had two hours of free time, and some of the group went to the art museum while others went drinking. After lounging around for an hour on a comfortable reclining bench in the shade of the castle grounds, I visited the Musée de Normandie. I found it compact and partially interesting, although it has no military content whatsoever. (There is a museum with WWII content, Le Mémorial de Caen, but it’s quite a long walk away.) I liked a map of the Viking conquests of Northern Europe, which indicates that this area was settled by my ancestors, the Danish Vikings. (I later learned that the name Normandy derives from “Norse men” and that William the Conqueror was the fifth-generation grandson of a Viking chief named Rollo.) There was also a paysages (landscapes) map that showed where the bocage areas were. Down in town, I stopped in at Église Saint-Pierre de Caen and heard a rehearsal of organ and choral music. Beautiful. Dinner was at a restaurant in Caen called Les Touristes. We returned to Bayeux at 9 p.m.

Monday, October 5 — Epsom and Goodwood

Timeline and summary of Normandy operation namesAnother beautiful morning, but with some light fog in places. Today covers two operations with which I have little on-the-ground experience, starting with Operation Epsom. The day is going to be confusing because some of the places we will visit had actions in both June and July, and they compete for our attention. Launched on June 26, Epsom was Montgomery’s first major attempt to outflank Caen from the west. The U.S. took Cherbourg the day before, so Monty might have been feeling some competitive pressure. VIII Corps under Lieutenant-General Richard O’Connor—the 15th (Scottish), 43rd (Wessex), and 11th Armoured Divisions—attacked south across the River Odon, aiming to establish a bridgehead and then swing east behind Caen. The attack ran straight into the newly arrived II SS Panzer Corps (9th SS “Hohenstaufen” and 10th SS “Frundsberg,” fresh from the Eastern Front), along with elements of three other panzer divisions. Rommel had been ordered by Hitler to attack north with these five divisions toward Bayeux in hopes of splitting the U.S. and DUKE forces, so two armies were colliding in a mass of confusion.

We drove 25 minutes to Cheux and stopped at the Église Saint-Vigor, where Woody gave an overview of Epsom and its run-up. Cheux was the Scottish Division’s first-day objective and one of Epsom’s harder fights. The 2nd Glasgow Highlanders fought through it house by house against 12th SS remnants and had it by late morning. The village then became a traffic jam of armor, guns, and infantry trying to squeeze south toward the Odon bridges while German fire came in from both flanks. As the 11th Armoured Division tried to push through later that afternoon, some twenty German tanks counterattacked, and fighting for the approaches continued for days, with the Wessex Division taking over the sector on June 27 and beating off a further push by Panther tanks into the village outskirts. Cheux was the start of the congested “Scottish Corridor” bridgehead, with armor, infantry, and supply columns all funneling through a handful of shattered villages under constant fire. We visited a modest Epsom monument in Cheux with plaques to the 15th Scottish, 43rd Wessex, 11th Armoured, and 7th RTR.

We then drove to a farm and walked to a hedgerow, where Woody read an account of a fight between a German panzer platoon and a British patrol. Our route continued through the Odon valley, which has a difficult, narrow road with small bridges. We stopped at Évrecy, the German position that stalled the farthest Epsom advance. It was part of the defensive belt on the high ground south of the Odon, held by elements of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich, with the 9th SS Hohenstaufen and 10th SS Frundsberg arriving to counterattack. It came under pressure and shelling as British forces pushed toward the Odon and Hill 112, and the area saw German armored assembly and counterattack preparations. There is a monument to the Royal Welch Fusiliers, who were at the head of the Scottish advance. Mag said that Évrecy lost a third of its civilian population in June and July and was not liberated until August, as the Falaise pocket collapsed.

Woody said that Epsom is hard to understand, although we did get a hands-on appreciation of the difficulty of traversing the narrow corridor of the Odon valley. The operation fell short of its territorial objectives, but it nonetheless succeeded in drawing the bulk of Germany’s mobile reserves—including, critically, most of the SS panzer divisions—onto the British front at exactly the moment the Americans were trying to break out of the Cotentin peninsula in the west. Nearby is Hill 112, which Rommel called the key to Normandy. It is a low rise south of Baron-sur-Odon, but it looks over Caen, the Odon valley, and the routes south. We stopped at a view from below up the hill and talked about the terrible losses to come in assaulting it. The 11th Armoured Division brushed the crest during Epsom on June 28 and was pulled off. Operation Jupiter put the 43rd Division on the northern slope on July 10, and Cornish and Hampshire infantry and Churchills spent the day subjected to fire by 88s, Nebelwerfers, Panthers, and Tigers. The summit became no-man’s-land. Operation Greenline in mid-July pinned the Germans here again during Goodwood, and the 53rd (Welsh) Division finally occupied the hill on August 4 after the Germans started to leave. On the hill we saw another Churchill and a Wessex Division monument with their Wyvern logo. There is also a Maltese cross arrangement of 112 trees, each honoring a fallen soldier, and an elaborate series of maps showing the progress of the battles in this entire area day by day: Martlet, Epsom, Jupiter, and Greenline.

We swung around south-southeast of Caen to the town of Bourguébus, where Woody gave us a Goodwood overview with an excellent campaign map. This was the German defensive line that Monty failed to break. We also discussed how Rommel was shot up by a Spitfire and replaced as Army Group B commander by von Kluge. Operation Goodwood, July 18–20, was the largest British armored operation of the Normandy campaign. It involved three armored divisions of VIII Corps (the 11th Armoured, Guards Armoured, and 7th Armoured) attacking east and south of Caen, preceded by an enormous heavy bomber strike. The tanks advanced across open, rolling country toward the Bourguébus Ridge, ideal tank country but also ideal antitank gun country. German 88mm guns and the Tigers of the 503rd Heavy Panzer Battalion, dug in on the reverse slopes, inflicted very heavy losses, with several hundred British tanks destroyed or damaged over the three days. We had lunch at a giant buffet restaurant, Au Tour du Monde. It was much larger and had a wider selection than the Golden Corral chain I have visited on American Civil War trips, and it was so big that they had robots rolling around carrying plates. I had a rather unhealthy meal.

Grentheville was the high-water mark of the 11th Armoured Division’s advance on July 18, the first day of Goodwood. The 3rd Royal Tank Regiment, supported by infantry of the 8th Rifle Brigade, reached Grentheville in the afternoon. From there, the ridge villages of Bourguébus, Hubert-Folie, and Soliers were the next objectives. The Germans had a deep antitank belt on the ridge, including 88mm guns and tanks from the 1st SS Panzer Division (Leibstandarte) and 21st Panzer Division. Other 88s near Cagny, which the Guards had not yet cleared, fired into the division’s flank. The 3rd RTR took heavy tank losses around the village, reportedly several dozen, and could not advance up the slope, and the brigade’s other regiments also took losses in the same area. The British held Grentheville, but the ridge stayed in German hands. We climbed onto an abandoned railroad embankment on the path of the 11th Armoured Division’s advance to Bras, where we heard an account of the 3rd RTR feeding tanks through a narrow opening under the railroad while subjected to antitank fire.

Due east of Caen, we arrived just beyond the starting line for Goodwood at the Église de la Nativité-de-Notre-Dame in Sannerville for more commentary from Cyril. The village was on the eastern side of the Goodwood corridor, near Banneville-la-Campagne, Touffréville, and Cagny. The armor went down the center toward Bourguébus Ridge, while Sannerville and its neighbors lay on the east flank, and taking or covering those villages kept German fire from enfilading the advance. The 3rd Infantry Division and 51st Highland Division fought on the eastern side, through Touffréville and Sannerville. The Guards Armoured Division and the 7th Armoured Division were drawn into the Cagny, Sannerville, and Banneville area on July 18–19. The 7th Armoured, following behind, was delayed by the traffic jam at the Orne crossings and fought in this sector rather than reaching the ridge. This area was also where German 88s and Panther and Tiger tanks of the 21st Panzer Division and 503rd Heavy Tank Battalion were active on the flank.

We stopped on the road to Cagny in Émiéville for a memorial to the Guards Division and heard a story about an Irish Guards Sherman crew under John Gorman ramming a Tiger II at 40 mph, the first disabling of that mighty tank in the theater. Gorman was personally decorated by Montgomery for this action. As a bonus stop, we visited the civilian cemetery on Rue Troan in Cagny, which holds the graves of six British flight crew who were carrying paratroopers on June 6.

Cagny was the site of Goodwood’s single most costly ambush. The 11th Armoured Division was to bypass the town and drive for Bourguébus Ridge while the Guards Armoured Division, following behind, cleared it, but the Guards were held up by the traffic jam at the Orne crossings, so Cagny was still in German hands during the critical hours of July 18. German 88mm guns in and around the village, including some Luftwaffe flak guns used in the antitank role, along with tanks of the 21st Panzer Division, fired into the 11th Armoured’s flank as it moved south. German 88s and a Panther hit 16 British tanks in a few minutes. Hans von Luck of the 21st Panzer Division counted at least 40 burning or disabled in the corn north of the village, although Woody says he tended to exaggerate on battlefield tours after the war. The 11th Armoured Division lost 126 tanks that day (about 40 write-offs), many of them from the 29th Armoured Brigade, and the Guards lost 15 destroyed and 45 damaged around Cagny. Those losses stalled the advance short of the ridge, and the Guards cleared the village that evening. The armored divisions lost 521 men on July 18, 336 of them in the 11th Armoured. German losses in the Goodwood fighting were about 75–100 tanks and 2,000 prisoners, but most of the Tigers lost at Cagny and Manneville were destroyed by the morning bombardment, not in the tank fight.

We had a thirty-minute coffee break and returned to Bayeux by 5:15 p.m. We ate dinner at the same pizza restaurant I visited earlier in the week, Patanella, but instead of pizza, we had a delicious lasagna.

Go to Part 3.