Port-en-Bessin
A fishing harbour set in a gap in the cliffs between Gold and Omaha beaches, captured by No. 47 (Royal Marine) Commando after a hard two-day assault on its flanking strongpoints. It became a key Allied fuel port, the terminal of the PLUTO undersea pipeline.
Wedged into a break in the chalk cliffs, Port-en-Bessin sits almost exactly on the seam between the British landings at Gold and the American landings at Omaha. That geography made it precious in 1944: a real harbour, sheltered and deep enough to work, in a coastline of open beaches. The Allies wanted it intact and quickly, and the job of taking it fell not to the troops who stormed the beaches head-on, but to a single Royal Marine commando that came at the town from behind.
The battle for the port
No. 47 (Royal Marine) Commando landed on Gold Beach near Le Hamel on the morning of D-Day, then slipped inland and marched a long, looping route through enemy-held country to reach the high ground behind Port-en-Bessin. By the evening of 6 June they had dug in near Escures, on a rise known from its height in metres as Point 72. The assault on the port itself came the next day, 7 June.
The town's defences were built around two cliff-top strongpoints, east and west, perched roughly two hundred feet above the harbour, with a strongpoint guarding the road into town below. After a naval bombardment and rocket-firing Typhoons had worked over the positions, the Marines fought their way into the streets and up toward the cliffs. The attack on the eastern feature nearly broke: as a troop pushed up the open, mined slope, two German flak ships still moored in the harbour swung their guns inland and cut down a large part of it in minutes.
The position was saved by a piece of quiet initiative. Captain Cousins, scouting the eastern feature, found a zig-zag path up the cliff that the defenders had left unwatched. In the failing light he led a small party of a few officers and around twenty-five men up it unseen and fell on the fortifications from an unexpected angle. Cousins was killed by a grenade in the final rush on a bunker, but the eastern feature was taken. With it lost, the German garrison's will collapsed; before dawn on 8 June the commander and some three hundred men surrendered. The commando had won, but at a brutal price, losing roughly a third of its strength across the operation.
From fishing port to fuel port
The prize was worth the cost. Within days engineers turned the little harbour into one of the invasion's vital arteries. It became a terminal for PLUTO, the pipeline system laid across the Channel bed, and tankers offshore pumped fuel through pipes run into the port and onward to the armies inland. At its peak the harbour handled enormous daily tonnages of petrol, keeping the tanks and trucks of the breakout supplied through the summer of 1944.
What to see today
Port-en-Bessin is still a working fishing harbour, and the best way to read the battlefield is to walk the quays and then look up. The two cliff features that decided the fight rise on either side of the harbour mouth; the memorial to No. 47 (Royal Marine) Commando stands on the eastern side, built on top of a German bunker (Wn 57). Climb to it and you get exactly the defenders' field of fire over the harbour and the beach beyond, which makes the cost of the open-slope assault immediately clear.
In the middle of the harbour stands a stout round tower, built in the 1690s to Vauban's designs to guard the anchorage against Anglo-Dutch raids - a reminder that this gap in the cliffs was worth fighting over long before 1944. A small dedicated museum sits a few kilometres up the Bayeux road at Commes. Film buffs may recognise the harbour itself: it stood in for Ouistreham in the 1962 epic The Longest Day. Spend an hour on the Quai Félix Faure, watch the boats, and the strategic logic of the place explains itself.
Practical notes
The town is an easy drive north from Bayeux on the D6, or along the D514 coast road if you are working your way between the beaches. Follow the signs for the port and use the car parks and quayside spaces around the basins; they fill up on market days and through the summer, in which case the streets above the harbour usually have room. The quays, the cliff paths and the commando memorial are all open access and free.
An hour covers the harbour and the Vauban tower at a gentle pace. Allow two if you want to climb to the memorial on the eastern cliff and take in the view properly, which is the part that actually explains the battle.
The quaysides are flat, paved and well suited to a wheelchair or a pushchair, and you can see the tower, the basins and both cliff features without leaving level ground. The climb to the eastern feature is another matter: a steep path with steps and uneven, sometimes muddy sections near the top, and unfenced cliff edges once you are up there, so keep children close. Solid shoes are worth it. From here Longues-sur-Mer Battery is a few minutes west along the coast, and the Mulberry Harbour at Arromanches sits the same distance east, which makes a natural half-day loop out of the three.