Visiting Normandy around D-Day is a surreal experience, much more so than I can express in a short post. It’s like the Fourth of July, Memorial Day and Veteran’s/Remembrance Day combined and translated into French and for now I’ll leave it at that.

A little back story on this video…

I arrived in Normandy a few days before the big day and spent a few hours visiting the beaches, Pointe du Hoc, SainteMarie du Mont and Sainte Mer Eglise. Except for the American paratroopers, crowds had yet to start showing up at the beaches and Pointe du Hoc.Seeing the point, its shattered bunkers and still scarred yet green moonscape surprised me, but more so was that all the bunkers could be visited. The packs of Soldiers mainly kept to the cliff side bunkers so wandering around the more desolate parts that comprise the majority of these photographs, it was almost like being alone in this long abandoned place. Other bunkers were a bit more popular and it took patience and careful shooting to get an empty shot of the place as it is without people. I prefer to shoot places like this without people because they are transient. The place will (hopefully) be here long after us, but we pass through just briefly.

I’m not prone to telling ghost stories but my one and only was from Pointe du Hoc and it wasn’t in one of the ‘abandoned’ bunkers. I was standing on top of a bunker near the cliff looking out to sea, thinking how this was the last sight some men here ever saw. The weather was garbage, like it had been 71 years ago. Initially I’d been up with a group of Soldiers and a sergeant I was travelling with. They all moved onto the next bunker except the sergeant, leaving me almost alone. I got the feeling someone was standing beside me, slightly behind me and to the right, looking over my shoulder. I assumed it was the sergeant so I turned to say something to her but no one was there. She was with the group and I was alone on the bunker. Not a scary experience nor even unsettling, just odd.