I just spent a week in Normandy and visited some new museums. Well, new for me anyway. Dead Man’s Corner in Sainte Côme du Mont (near Carentan) is really new, and the Musée Aout 1944 at Falaise is actually quite old, but new to me. I can recommend the first one. It hosts a nice part of Michel De Trez’s personal collection. This is the place to go if you want to see a real PPN-1 Eureka beacon set and a BUPS beacon (click on the picture below to go to the museum web site).

The museum also hosts the paratrooper.fr shop, which has a large assortment of original and repro paratrooper items.

The museum at Falaise was quite a let-down, to be honest. If you are into vehicles, it may be OK, but uniform and equipment-wise there’s nothing of interest at all. To me it was not worth the 5 euros entrance and the long detour from the landing sites. I was in-and-out in 20 minutes. The building is derelict and ill-lit. See web site for more info. On the upside though, Falaise also boasts the castle where William the Conqueror was born, or rather, the castle that was built on top of the remains of the original one. This castle has been beautifully restored and is well worth the visit, so if you can combine this with the museum, it may be worth the detour.