Airborne & Drop Zones

Four places where the invasion began, several hours before anyone came ashore.

Pegasus Bridge is the first and the most complete. Six gliders came down beside the Caen canal in the dark of 6 June and took the bridge in ten minutes, which is the reason the eastern flank held. The original bridge now stands in the grounds of the museum beside the crossing, the café at the end of it claims to be the first house liberated in France, and the whole thing is small enough to see properly in an hour or two. If you visit one airborne site, visit this one.

The other three are in the Cotentin, inland of Utah, and they are quieter in every sense. La Fière is a causeway across flooded marshland that the 82nd Airborne had to hold and then cross, and the fight for it ran for three days. Standing at the bridge and looking along the causeway does the explaining: it is narrow, exposed and utterly without cover.

Brécourt Manor is a field. There is no visitor centre and nothing to walk around, but the assault on the German battery here on the morning of 6 June is one of the most studied small-unit actions of the war. It is private farmland, so it is a place to look at from the road rather than wander over.

Chef-du-Pont is the other causeway, less visited than La Fière and part of the same problem: the drop zones lay behind flooded ground, and every route inland was a bridge that had to be taken.

All four are outdoors and free except the museum at Pegasus Bridge. Together they are a half day, and they make more sense driven in the order the fighting happened.