Saint-Lô under the bombs
Like most French people very early on that Sunday morning of the 4th June 1944, I was listening to the BBC, hoping to learn that they had landed at last.
Nothing… but at least the news was good. Rome was liberated; Badoglio2 was resigning; Churchill, Eisenhower and de Gaulle held a conference in London3. The Russians were making headway in Poland and Romania. The end seemed to be unavoidable and imminent.
The weather is splendid. Everything’s fine.
There has been a feeling for several weeks that something is going to happen, that THE Big Event is going to happen. The bombing of France has been intensifying. The Soviets demand more and more forcefully that the Allies make more effort. In Italy and everywhere, the Germans are on the defensive. There are more and more private, mysterious messages4 on the BBC. The landing is the subject of all conversations and the Germans who had at first made fun of it are now making it their first concern.
It seemed to be imminent.
My friends and I made predictions, and changed them constantly, on where the landing was going to take place. We were poor strategists as none of us predicted that our immediate surroundings would be chosen!
Otherwise, things were getting tenser. Friends got arrested by the Gestapo every day. It was Junger, aka Dufour5, who conducted the operations.
in a superbly staged tragedy, the tension kept increasing. It would have been just right for the denouement to come now. People were on edge.
I was going to be 23 on the 2nd August. I was a minor member of the Résistance (O.C.M.)6 and waiting to receive orders to take a more active part in the war effort. Just then, I had not totally recovered from a really frightful experience. My network had been dealt a serious blow only a few days before. Dufour had come into my office to arrest my chief, Mr Deffes. Things had not settled yet and I was still worried. So it was –for me as well as for many others– one more reason to be eager for the landing to take place, as it would be liberating in more senses than one.
The following day
The morning was uneventful: I reappeared at my office, place du Champ de Mars, after a few days on the run following a series of arrests in my network.
In the afternoon I was with three friends, playing cards in a house standing where the La Laitière Normande restaurant now stands, behind the post office. At about 4 pm our attention was caught by violent, sustained anti-aircraft shooting. The anti-aircraft batteries were set up in watchtowers on roofs somewhere around the railway station and on the girls’ E.P.S. school7 along the road to Carentan. The Germans were shooting on sight at American airplanes whose stars we could clearly make out as they were going into a dive over the railway station.
Leaning on the window’s guardrail, we attended the show. We watched these fighter-bombers swoop down on the station, straighten up at the last second, perform a chandelle, fly away to the distance and then return towards their target. It was just like at the cinema. We could almost have applauded our Friends for being so plucky and cool-headed, while we would have booed those clumsy Germans! These airmen comforted us as they confirmed the idea that the Allied did not bomb their targets blindly if this meant civilians could be put at risk. This rodeo corroborated the idea that newspapers and the radio lied when they said that Allied airmen did not care about civilians during such events. Obviously, “Radio Paris lies, Radio Paris is German” 8. This feeling of total safety and absolute trust was to almost cost us our lives 48 hours later.
11 pm: I was at home when an enormous racket drew us to the window. There was a plane; it seemed to be in trouble, barely missing the roofs and heading towards Tessy. We were told soon after that this bomber had indeed crashed close to the bridge in Gourfaleur. Several airmen, all Canadians, were found the next day burnt to a cinder. Awful. Before going to sleep, I listened to the latest news from London. There were still more private messages.
June6
At about 5 am, I was woken up by a formidable noise in the distance: a sort of continuous cannonade or an endless storm with lights that seemed to come from the Eastern coast. My parents were awake. Our diagnosis was quickly established: THEY were coming! We spent the rest of the night on the lookout; our wildest hopes were taking shape. The first news bulletin broadcast the messages recorded by Roosevelt, Eisenhower and de Gaulle9. I was overwhelmed by a feeling of intense joy made even keener by the waiting. In a few hours, a few days at most, all the Dufours were going to pay. Our universal humiliation was coming to an end. Yes, this was the most beautiful day of my life. Prisoners, ration cards, collaborators, alarm sirens, bombardments, the Gestapo, Hitler and his team of gangsters: everything was soon going to be back in order. The hour of revenge was striking.
At that time, it never occurred to me that the landing might fail.
From the window of our flat on the third floor of 3 rue de la Poterie, I cast a glance towards Feldkommandantur 722, installed about 80 metres away at the other end of a little square, facing the rue Dame Denise. Everything was confirmed. There was already a lot of hustle and bustle. Many military vehicles were coming and going; luggage was being squeezed into cars. This emergency removal filled me with joy. I went downstairs so as to better see what was going on. Suddenly a German car appeared at the Kommandantur filled with soldiers dressed in khaki and their faces smeared with black boot polish. They were guarded by very strict German soldiers and we guessed they were the first American parachutists who had been taken prisoner and were to be interrogated. I tried as discreetly as possible to wink at them to let them know we were supporting them at that very difficult time. They looked exhausted and absent. All day long my friends and I went all over the city to try and get the latest scraps of information; we listened to the news from London on the radio and tried to see if the Germans were getting ready to go soon or not. It was advisable to watch without looking provocative, as the occupants’ anger might be dangerous. Wild animals are dangerous when hurt. During our “patrols” we walked past the prison. Had our imprisoned friends heard the big news? They must have rejoiced even more than we did, and at the same time have been anxious about their immediate future.
No German plane in sight. When are the Allies coming? We had a feeling that the day and the hour were open to discussion, but not the idea itself. People were already devising plans to welcome them… provided that everything would go well.
This was the end of a day of joy, curiosity, anguish, waiting, eagerness and the exhilarating idea that we were at the centre of everything. The latest news seemed good. At ten to seven I went up to our flat. The weather was still splendid. I shaved while waiting for dinner. My mother had just put a dish of egg custard into the oven. We were waiting for my father who was back from work. He was talking with some neighbours down on the pavement and watching the comings and goings around the Kommandantur.
Suddenly I heard the noise of a squadron of planes in the distance, another one. I was in the kitchen but ran into the dining room to try and see them through the window, as this was where the sound seemed to come from. Flying from the direction of Caen and apparently heading to Coutances, standing out against the blue sky, I saw several planes in formation flying at great height. Simultaneously I saw many little objects coming from the planes and gently swaying down. I immediately thought of those silver paper streamers that Allied airmen had recently had the brilliant idea to jettison to fool anti-aircraft batteries. No need to worry.
I was still busy thinking about the power of the American Air force and drawing swift and admiring conclusions when a terrible din broke loose. I had the impression that every single windowpane had broken and that the shop window of the Restaurant Paul had just flown up to the third floor. All at once I realized that the war had come directly into our lives.
- They are bombing us!
- My God, with your father downstairs!
- Quick, let’s go down.
My mother and I hurtled down the three floors and joined my father.
He was unharmed, dumbstruck and stamping on a whole mass of windowpanes broken by the explosion while talking with a few neighbours, all as pallid as each other.
The whole family was together again. Our aim: a shelter.
We had access to a superb, rock solid, vaulted cellar below our building... But in the afternoon, my father had used it otherwise, and a fine idea it turned out to be too.
So we opted to go to one of his friends’, Mr A. Lemasson. That way, if there was a long alert we could … play cards! So we ran to his shelter on the rue du Château, about 80 metres from our place. Our little group was joined by two female neighbours we had met in the staircase when we had run downstairs.
A few minutes later we were in our shelter. It did look solid and relatively comfortable: 10 metres wide and 15 metres long, with electric lighting, a reserve of candles in case of rotten luck and bundles of sticks all around. As far as cellars go, it was rather nice. We were going to like it. To reach this cellar from the narrow rue du Château, you had to walk down a long corridor whose floor was made of wooden planks set over a hatch used to take barrels of cider down to the cellar; you then came to a little spiral staircase that opened onto the shelter. About twenty people had already settled in when we arrived. None of them had had direct contact with the places that had been bombed a few minutes before, so they were relatively serene.
Around 8.30 pm, everything being quiet as there were no more bombardments, I decided to quickly go to our flat to get two suitcases my mother had got ready in the afternoon, just in case, and which we had forgotten in our panic thirty minutes earlier. We also had to securely lock the doors! Our second-floor neighbour and I got there and back without a problem, but we ran all the way. The town was deserted and silent. About a quarter to nine M. Lemasson’s father-in-law, Henry, a chemist in Saint‑Lô, came to the shelter. He was a member of a Passive Defence team. Surprised in the street about a hundred yards away, as he was patrolling with some of his colleagues he showed us the first, very worrying signs of war.
Pale-faced, covered in dust, frantic, with bloodstains on his face, he was seriously shaken. At 8 pm a bomb had fallen near him and almost buried him alive. Having recovered a little, he told us some of our neighbours had been killed. His story distressed us all. We had entered right into the middle of war. It began to cross my mind that things could go less smoothly than we had hoped for. At the end of his story, a little comforted and glad to be alive and reunited with his family, M. Henry sat with us.
A long life began. We were waiting for… what? For bombardments to start again? To watch the night pass together?... For the arrival of the Allied Forces? I imagine that each had their own reflections. After an hour spent on comments and predictions, little by little and helped by exhaustion, silence fell over our small group. Several people fell asleep. Around midnight, a voice could be heard:
“Nothing more will happen now, surely. We would be better off in our beds. We should go to bed to…”.
A formidable noise was heard: a warm wind, enormous, swept across the cellar which started to shake. At once, everyone understood the bombardment had just begun again, and that we were in the heart of it. It was enormous, unimaginable; we had a feeling that little by little bombs were getting closer, surrounding us, and that the next one would be “the right one”. We could feel the air blowing through a cellar window. It was as if we were on a ship in a storm. We were heaved up from the ground by each explosion and fell back on our crates only to be thrown up again the following second, our stomachs getting tighter and tighter. The electric light had gone out with the very first bombs. A thick, heavy dust was spreading as a sinister reddish light gradually infiltrated the cellar. I was no longer strong enough to think or be frightened: I was drained, devastated. By the way, were we still alive? Were we dead? Was everything over? Were we about to be crushed, burnt, stifled to death? Some people were praying, few were crying and most were silent, waiting for the outcome.
Suddenly, someone near the window cried: “We have got to get out at once, or we will be asphyxiated”. I was sitting near the door to the exit flight of stairs. My neighbour and I immediately decided to prevent them from attempting such madness. To us, it seemed such an attempt was suicidal. Were we right or wrong? The unhappy people made uncomfortable by the dust started calling us names… then went quiet. Hell was still let loose. Our throats were drier and drier. I was thirsty. How long did this infernal dance last? No one was able to tell. Gradually an idea, becoming clearer with every second, came to my mind: what if the bombardment stopped… then perhaps… this killing could not last forever!
Miraculously and all of a sudden, one tremendous explosion was not followed by another. A few fractions of a second in silence, then one second, then two. The crazy dream was becoming reality… the bombardment was receding, stopping. Was this an illusion? No time was to be wasted. “Wait a few seconds” I said to my neighbours, “I will go and see if we are not walled in and I will come back immediately for you.”
Without waiting for an answer, I rushed up the stairs. In a few steps through a cloud of dust, my suitcase in my hand, I reached the ground floor. O happiness, the way was clear. From my end of the passage, I could see the street, or rather a reddish glow.
A slight problem arose though. To get out, we had to walk along the two-metre long passage from the cellar stairs to the door on the rue du Château. Unfortunately, the passage flooring had… vanished, blown apart by the bombs. Panic-stricken by the possibility that everything could start again any moment, and that our deliverance depended on how fast I acted, I finished unhinging a half-dismantled door which I found in the passage and set it down like a footbridge, fragile, narrow but useful. Before going back for my companions, I could not resist the urge to go into the street to… “SEE”. At the exact moment I reached the exit, I heard the horrible sound of bombs, falling freely. The noise got stronger and stronger [:] “Now it’s my turn!” I dived down and with my nose in the gutter I tried to recoil as much as I could and I waited, thinking: “Now it’s over”, and… nothing happened, no explosion! I stood up again at once to go for my companions. In spite of my extreme haste, I had time to glance at the town. It was awful, everything seemed to be on fire: a regular burning pyre. From every corner shouts could be heard: “Help, don’t leave me, I’m choking, I’m stuck under the rubble…”
Walking back over my footbridge, I reached the top of the stairs as the first people appeared. The bombardment had stopped, but getting out of the house was dangerous on my rickety door because of the “gap” of the passage. Reason and dignity coming back gradually, I helped the older people out. After the last one, I wanted to recover my suitcase and catch up with my parents whom I had just helped to cross my makeshift bridge. It had disappeared, inadvertently taken by one of the occupants running out. I helped Mme Henry to untangle herself from an electric wire coiled around her heel then with a few strides I caught up with my parents, running towards… safety.
“TO THE TUNNEL”: such was the current motto. We had known for some time that the Germans had dug a huge, probably indestructible shelter under the place des Beaux Regards, about 200 metres from the Lemasson house. We would be absolutely safe there. On our way, we ran past our house at 5 rue de la Poterie. There was no house any more, but only an 80-centimetre thick layer of smoking rubble; no survivor would be found. Bombs in full force had got the better of it. The whole street was in the same state. What a sight! Everywhere there was fire, ruins, dust, shouts, calls for help, electric wires, huge heaps of rubble. Streets were no longer there; debris from the houses filled them. There were holes, mounds, wires, and I was terribly, terribly thirsty. As we walked past the square in front of Notre-Dame, I saw a woman on the steps of the cathedral. She was almost naked, holding a child in her arms. She seemed to be waiting for something… what… who? I often think of them… what became of them?
How long did it take us to walk the two hundred metres from the rue du Château to the Tunnel entrance along a chaotic path, where every hole was a trap in the dark[?] Now several neighbours were emerging from the demolished houses like rats, all of them heading for the tunnel.
As we reached the entrance to the miraculous shelter, I heard someone saying: “It’s forbidden to go in, the Germans won’t allow it.”10 Because of the emergency, this was no time for arguing over it. M. Lemasson, whom we had followed, then told my father: “Come with us. We are going to Saint-Ébremont-de-Bonfossé, to a farmer’s I know. He’s a good man.”
Still fearing a renewal of the bombardment, we rushed as fast as we could down the Beaux‑Regards slope, across the footbridge, had a quick look at the station against the blaze of a fire, and shortly reached a towpath heading towards Candol. After about 300 metres, as we felt a little safer, we sat down on the grass and watched - short of breath - our poor, dying Saint-Lô.
Forty years later, I still remember perfectly the sight of our town “at the stake”.
I can’t find the right word: Dantesque, apocalyptic, a scene of the end of times. No director could ever recreate such a sight. The spires of Notre‑Dame stood out against a back light of reddish sky. Everywhere flames were dancing amid swirls of dust, lighting the town as if in full daylight. The bombardment began again. I remember wondering: “To think there must still be people there” 11.
We could see the planes very clearly. They came out of the darkness, dived into the fire, headed up again, disappeared and were immediately replaced by others. Their tenacity seemed to be endless. It was horrible. With almost all my companions, I began to cry.
- 1 Jean Roger had just turned 18 when the Second World War broke out. In 1944 he had started working in the tax office and lived in Saint-Lô. Forty years later he wrote down his memories of those times. This text was first published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of D-day and the Battle of Normandy. See J. ROGER, « Saint-Lô – La danse infernale », in M. Boivin, G. Bourdin, J. Quellien (dir.), Villes normandes sous les bombes, Caen, Presses Universitaires de Caen – Le Mémorial de Caen, 1994, p. 187-196. The title ‘Saint-Lô under the bombs’ was added by us as Jean Roger did not choose one.
- 2 President of the Council in Italy after Mussolini’s downfall in 1943. On the day after Rome was taken by the Allies, Italian political parties refused to renew their support for Badoglio who ended up resigning.
- 3 On the day before the Normandy Landing, de Gaulle met Churchill and Eisenhower in London. They discussed the administration of France and the “defeated countries” once they would be liberated, and not the issue of the impending landing.
- 4 Coded messages broadcast by the BBC to communicate with Resistance networks in France. Before D-Day, the number of messages increased dramatically in order to prepare for military operations, and in particular have communication and transmission means sabotaged.
- 5 Feldwebel Junger.
- 6 The Organisation civile et militaire (Civil and Military Organisation) was one of the best developed Resistance networks in Western France. It proved particularly effective, above all when it came to collect intelligence about the Germans’ defensive systems and to save airmen whose planes had been shot down.
- 7 Ecole primaire supérieure. These schools used to be part of the enseignement primaire supérieur but provided an education for children who had finished primary school.
- 8 “Radio-Paris lies, Radio-Paris is German”. This refrain, sung by Pierre Dac on the BBC, derided Radio Paris, a French radio broadcasting company run by collaborators during the war.
- 9 The BBC started broadcasting the recorded messages at 10 am. The first one was Eisenhower’s, followed by speeches by the King of Norway, the Belgian Prime Minister, etc. Because he was in conflict with the Allied Commandment over the administration of France once liberated, de Gaulle’s speech was broadcast late in the afternoon. “The supreme battle has started! … Of course, it is the battle of France and it is France's battle!” he said.
- 10 The tunnel, dug by the Germans, was to shelter about a thousand Saint‑Lô inhabitants who sought refuge from bombardments.
- 11 The 6 and 7 June 1944 bombardments on Saint-Lô resulted in 352 civilian casualties.
- Numéro: TE316
- Lieu: Mémorial de Caen
