Short Core Course Study Tour: Normandy and the D-Day Landings

By Joshua Shevlin

Howdy!
I wanted to cover the Normandy trip that I took with my World War II (change) class earlier last month. It was a truly life changing experience for me and I really want to talk about the Short Study Tours and how they could be a great option if you want to travel around Europe without a lot of added cost to your budget.

We left for Paris on an early Tuesday morning and ended up driving towards the city of Caen which took about three hours. The D-Day Musuem that they had on display was great and I learned a lot of the history I previously hadn’t covered in high school. I think the coolest part of this particular museum that the others didn’t really provide was a good glimpse at the models, uniforms and other necessities that were so integral to the details of that day. 

We ended up staying in the town of Bayuex, a smaller medieval-esque town with a beautiful cathedral and a lot of Norman history. The second and third days saw us visit sites like Omaha Beach, Utah Beach, the American Cemetery at Normandy, Juno Beach, and the Bayuex tapestry. I think what made seeing all of the sites so special was that there was such an underlying beauty to each and every site we saw. Each of the stories held so much weight and learning about what Americans, along with people from other allied nations did at these places was absolutely awe-inspiring and incredible. Personally, my favorite site we saw was the cathedral at Sainte-Mère-Église and the man stuck on the parachute at the top. The story behind the funny monument dates back from a paratrooper named John Steele who got stuck on the steeple of the church after he jumped out of an airplane during the invasion of the town in the early hours of June 6th, 1944. 

Another great site I really enjoyed was seeing the bunkers at Pointe du Hoc which were extremely well-preserved and easy to access. Although the bunkers had a lot of blank walls, I found it interesting that there was a plaque placed within the monument by the state of Texas commemorating one of the soldiers who helped storm the point during the invasion of Normandy. 

Along with seeing the sites there were plenty of good restaurants, things to eat and everything with the like. The great thing with DIS is that they will pay for your food and drink whenever there is a group dinner or when you are given free time to go to lunch. I think it’s always an added benefit because a lot of the rest stops throughout the European Union (and especially France in this case) have much better quality food than what you would be used to back in the United States. 

I really enjoyed not only the trip we took but the course itself. Our tour guides Torben and Stefan who both had amazing knowledge of the topic. I thought it was amazing that we got to visit Paris at the end of the trip, a task that I had always wanted to do since i was a little kid.