What a story this place holds. Cover-up, US Rangers once again called upon to silence the guns, buried under meters of dirt. The site is quite large and still a work in progress. I have visited all the other field gun emplacements on the Normandy coast and this is the most intriguing. Please do yourself a favor and spend some time here.
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Last year a friend and I visited the Maisy Battery and were intrigued by the shear scale of what until then had been a covered up piece of WW11 history, in both senses. I have since purchased the incredibly informative book written by Gary Stern and I cannot stress highly enough the need for all WW11 buffs to do the same. To have rewritten history is some sort of feat in itself, but to have written it in such a way that it is an absorbing read. Detailing first hand experiences of the action has given future historians something to think about.
This site is well worth a visit. It is not as developed as say, the Merville battery, or as "tidy" as the Longues battery but that is part of the attraction. Yes, it could do with a tidy up and work is constantly underway but it is fascinating to wander through the maze of clearly marked paths and trenches and discover all of the buildings and gun emplacements of this key artillery position. It also brings home the scale of these defensive sites and the land area that they covered - and it wasn't taken until 9th June 1944! Definitely worth putting on your D-Day tour itinerary!
My wife and I visited this site in September after a chance conversation with a Dutch tourist the day before. We were very pleased to have visited the site, and found the story fascinating and wondered why I had not heard of it before.
It certainly seems this is an important part of D-Day history and one that any of we amateur historians should be aware.
I have begun and will continue to do more reading about this site and it's place in the action on and after D-Day. I truly hope that Gary Stern (site owner) will indeed publish the book about Maisy Battery on which he has been working. I'm on his email list to be notified when it comes out.
Seeing Point du hoc is a must, and this battery really must be part of that experience. The area is vast and ever growing as they unearth a long forgotten German battery. Its not finished, its a dig in progress that stretches out over the field. Read up, learn the history, then go to this site and 'feel' what life was like. Take the chance to talk to the father/son team that own this land and run it. Their enthusiasm is infectious. They are living and breathing this site and its hard not to get excited as you wander into the trenches. It has a long way to go to be be a super museum, but year on year this should get better and better. I look forward to going back in a year's time and see what else they have found! Note: amenities are scarce. It is just a hut in a field.
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