Day 4 - Friday, May 16, 2014

Friday morning, we left our hotel in Bayeux and decided to visit Pegasus Bridge, which was the first capture of the invasion, and included the freeing of the first French home. British gliders flew in and landed by the bridge before dawn and were told to hold the bridge until they were relieved. They were successful.

We travelled north to the small town of Azincourt, which is the location of the Battle of Azicourt, between the British & the French in 1415. This battle was made famous by Shakespeare’s Henry V. The British were outnumbered anywhere from 2-to-1 to 6-to-1, depending on who you believe.

After that, we drove to Boulogne-Sur-Mer, on the northern coast, in order ot visit the last residence of Jose de San Martin, the liberator of Argentina, Chile & Peru. The house is currently owned by the government of Argentina. Since my father and I are Argentine, this visit had meaning to us. More so to my father, who emigrated from Argentina nearly 60 years ago.

Most intriguing was a list maxims that San Martin gave to his daughter, which show him to have been an honorable man with strong character. After that visit, we headed to Abbeville for the evening. When we parked in a lot near the hotel, we were stopped by a elderly French lady, who spoke to us in French and pointed at our license plate. We had no idea what she was saying. It wasn’t until she called her husband over, who spoke some English, that we learned she had seen the license plate, which evidently indicated it was registered near where she was from. It was an amusing encounter that made me realize how little I could communicate with people when I had no idea what the conversation was supposed to be about.