Memories of the June 1944 Landing: Memoirs of a Young Norman Schoolteacher

The Occupation of Normandy 1940-44

It is on the 5^th April 1940 that I took charge of my class in Neuville; it was a class of all levels with thirty-two boys and girls aged 5 to 13. I might write about a thousand funny and charming stories about local peasants’ ways of thinking or about the type of teaching my nice pupils and their families led me to adopt. But this is not the place.

In April 1940 we still thought that our scrap iron was being melted into victorious steel. It did not take long before we regretted our patriotic cant. A verdigris1 avalanche swept us up before we even had time to realize what was happening. The Marshall2’s voice woke us out of that torpor, into despair. General De Gaulle3’s 'Appeal of 18 June' radio speech was like a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel. We knew not of the Exodus tragedy4. Under siege in our peninsula, where could we have gone? The sea had become a minefield and only the bravest of men would try to sail to England and freedom.

We had been defeated and now we had to prepare for survival until Victory Day. Us, living here in the lush pastures of the countryside, we were the privileged. We always had what was necessary - sometimes even more than that - and we enjoyed it with a clear conscience, thinking that if we got it then the Germans wouldn’t. The school lodgings were uncomfortable and rather decrepit, but my mother, who was living with me, did everything she could to make them cosy and pleasant to live in.

Every week we would go to Cherbourg to take food supplies to my maternal grandparents and to my great-aunt Rosalie who was staying in our house in Octeville so that it would not be requisitioned. Buses from Saint-Lô arrived so full in Neuville that we almost had to ambush them. We had to stand all the way to Cherbourg. Sometimes the bus was so overcrowded it did not stop, and we had to walk six kilometres to the station in Fresville with our loads. The local train we took was often several hours late. Things were not easier when we tried to get back home. If we did not manage to get on the bus, we had to take the “fugitives’ train” and then walk home from the station in Fresville, in the middle of the night and sometimes through the rain. What we called the “fugitives’ train” was the local train leaving Cherbourg every evening during the week and taking the inhabitants of Cherbourg to the countryside or little towns where they sought refuge from the bombardments; these people went to town only for the day, to work or take care of their affairs.

There were indeed many air strikes on Cherbourg at night. One night5 there was a terrible bombardment by a Royal Navy squadron that left many civilians dead and whole families buried under their houses when they were hit by a large shell. That night we had the feeling that it was no ordinary bombardment and that it would never come to an end. There is nothing more distressing than this danger threatening you for hours on end, when there is no way you can leave or find out about what is going on or what targets have been hit. People in Cherbourg were lucky enough not to experience the massive bombardments that destroyed Caen and Saint-Lô, but they were harassed throughout the war by air strikes, which each time caused some damage and victims6.

We went through a new ordeal in May 1943. The Germans ordered the evacuation of Cherbourg7 and its surroundings. We had to move my grandparents out of their little house where they had lived all their lives. We also had to take as many things as possible from our house in Octeville, where my aunt Rosalie had been staying, as the first floor had just been requisitioned to accommodate a German officer. These removals were a colossal enterprise for my mother and me, and we had to make do with what we had and with the help of just a few compassionate people. The most difficult task was to find means of transport, as everybody in Cherbourg was moving out at the same time. Fortunately the headmaster’s house in Neuville had a very large attic and we managed to store everything up there.

The five of us were now reunited in Neuville: my grandparents, my aunt, my mother and I. I was all the happier to have them close to me as one could feel (particularly since the evacuation of Cherbourg and the coastline8) that important developments were at hand.

May 1944: D-day Approaches

The famous tactic of ‘deep defence’ on the Russian front, the Allied landing in North Africa and Rommel’s defeat at El-Alamein9 had long since given us hope that we would soon see the beginning of the end, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps later, but surely before autumn.

Meanwhile the Germans are still here. However they are not specifically in Neuville. In the whole war we have only ever seen a few here, on their way to some other place. The same applies to the inland region where only second rate soldiers of all ages are stationed: young lads and old men, sometimes with frightening yellow-complexioned soldiers coming from God knows where, although they are said to be Georgians10. Contrastingly there are more Germans than ever along the coastline where they are busy reinforcing the network of blockhouses. They are expecting something to happen, too. They have requisitioned local civilians to speed up the building process. They are having anti-tank ditches and trenches dug and concrete slabs for cannons poured just about everywhere in the fields. The low prairies lying behind the coastal sand dune between Sainte-Marie-du-Mont and Quinéville have been partly flooded. And above all, wooden poles (the famous “Rommel's asparagus11”) are being set into the ground in all the flat, treeless areas that could be used as landing strips for aerial invasion. Progress is slow, as the French requisitioned for these tasks demonstrate a distinct lack of zeal.

We are in May and the weather is so fair it is almost like summer already. But we feel anguished, as if we are living at the foot of a volcano whose eruption is imminent. Every day there are flying fortresses humming overhead. One night, a heavy bombardment wakes us up: we get up and go outside to see what is happening. Over the sea, a fantastic display of fireworks draws snakes of fire in the sky which hiss and explode with a thundering noise against the background roar of aircraft squadrons. Little by little, the lights disappear and the engine noise dies away. Darkness and silence take back the night. I got back in, both relieved and disappointed. The next day I heard that the German defenses towards Saint-Martin-de-Varreville¹² had been bombarded and seriously damaged. Fortunately, there were no civilian casualties. It was the first time this part of the coast had been bombarded. We felt more than ever that the time for the landing was close, and were convinced it would take place nearby. As the Germans had made us hand over our radio sets at town halls13, it was on a crystal set that we heard on the BBC, on the morning of the 5^th June, that Rome had been taken. This became the talk of the day. We delighted in dreaming of the day when our towns and cities would welcome the Allies too. The idea that it would take much blood and many tears to get there hardly occurred to us.

The Night of the 5^th to 6^th June: a torrent of parachutes

In June, daylight lingers on and nights are but extended twilights as darkness is never quite absolute. It is about 10pm on Monday 5^th June and I have just gone to bed next to my mother. We share a sofa bed which we unfold every evening in the common room for, since the evacuation of Cherbourg, we give our room to my grandparents. The sofa bed is opposite a large window wide open to the night. Thus from my bed I can contemplate yet a little longer the end of that fine day. With a little sadness, I am thinking of a June evening just like this one yet in 1940, when my friend Jean left me to join La France Libre (Free France). I know he has landed in North Africa, perhaps he has already reached Italy? Soon, maybe… But let’s not dream, let’s try to sleep.

Suddenly the silence of the night is disturbed by the whirring sound of planes. But this is so common that we pay little attention, particularly as we are far from any military target and the railway track is five kilometres away. But the noise is getting louder, the sky lighter and redder. I arise and, soon, the whole family is up. We go out into the yard. Everything seems quiet there. Only the faint rumble of a bombardment near Quinéville can be heard. However, innumerable squadrons seem to hover mysteriously in a ceaseless whirring. Then it all diminishes, and only faraway and vague noises can be heard. “It is just like last time”, my mother says, “they must have bombed the blockhouses on the coast.” And we all go back to bed.

Mother immediately falls asleep. But I sit up in bed and go on watching the light night rectangle through the window. The need to sleep gradually dulls my mind, but I keep my eyes wide open on the night. In this sort of semi-consciousness I see fantastic shadows appearing from nowhere, dark against the chiaroscuro of the sky, like huge black parasols which seem to rain softly down onto the fields opposite and disappear behind the black line of the hedgerow.

No, I am not dreaming! My grandmother who was not asleep has seen them too, through her bedroom window. I wake up my mum and aunt. We dress quickly and go out into the yard. Once more, the sky is full of a continuous humming which is growing louder. The hedges become alive with mysterious snapping sounds. Father Dumont, a widower who lives with his three children across the road, has come outside too. He comes towards us and points to the material of a parachute which is hanging from the roof of the covered playground. The Dumont children have followed their father and joined us in the schoolyard. But we have yet to discover the secret of the night.

My impatient curiosity is stronger than the emotion overwhelming me. I go out of the schoolyard and walk a short distance on the pathway. At the neighbour’s fence, a man is sitting on the embankment. He is carrying heavy bags and is fully armed: a rifle, a gun, and a sort of cutlass. He beckons me over. In English, I ask him whether his plane was shot down. In a whisper he sets me straight and deals me, in an impeccable French, the astounding news: “It is the great invasion14… Thousands and thousands of paratroopers are descending here tonight. I am an American soldier but I speak your language well as my mother is French. She is from the Basses-Pyrenees.”15 I ask him: “What is happening on the shore? Is there a landing? What about the Germans?” My emotions confuse my thoughts and make me stutter. He doesn’t answer my questions but asks me about the strength and location of the enemy in the vicinity. I reassure him: “There are no Germans here; the nearest are stationed in Sainte-Mère-Église, about two kilometres away.”

The American tells me he would like to look at his map in a place where his electric torchlight can’t be seen. I tell him to come to our house. He is reluctant because he is afraid, he says, of compromising us in case some Germans come unexpectedly. This is a possibility I have not even thought of and which, unaware of danger as I am, still refuse to consider. I insist and reassure him: “Father Dumont and my old aunt will keep watch over the school, one in front, the other at the back.” The soldier follows us, limping slightly. He explains he sprained his ankle when landing and refuses to be taken care of. There are more important things. In the classroom, where my grandmother, mother and the Dumont children have come after him, he removes one of his three or four canvas bags, tears away the sticky bands sealing it and takes out some Ordnance Survey maps. He unfolds one on a desk. It is a map of the area. He asks me to show him our exact location. He is surprised to be so far from the railway track and from a river called “le Merderet” which runs west of Neuville marsh16. I show him the path to get there. It is where, theoretically, he is supposed to meet his comrades. He looks at his watch. Without thinking, I do the same. It is twenty past eleven. He folds his map up and hides every trace of his coming. He takes some chocolate from his pocket and gives it to the children, but they are so astonished that they forget to eat it. With that done, he gets ready to leave. He seems perfectly calm and in control of himself, but the hand I shake is sweaty and it contracts in mine. I wish him good luck in a tone which is supposed to be jolly. “Good night to you all!” he answers. And in English, so that no one but I will understand, he adds: “The coming days will be terrible. Good luck to you, Miss. Thank you, I will think of you all my life.” And he disappears as if he were but a vision in a dream.

The mystery of the night thickens again. We stay outside, waiting for we don’t know what, keeping our voices down. And suddenly we see an extraordinary blaze. The horizon, where the sea is, lights up as if from the reflections of an enormous fire burning on the ocean. The formidable pounding of naval gunfire reaches us, but muffled and somewhat overwhelmed but a multitude of undefinable noises.

The black planes’ silhouettes arrive in whirling swarms across the sky. One of them flies right over our little school, switches on its lights and drops… what? For a moment, we believe it is a chain of bombs. But hardly have we started to duck when the parachutes open and float like a swarm of black bubbles in the clear night. They then scatter before disappearing in the confusion of the night landscape. Another plane flies overhead and drops its cargo. The parachutes first seem to be drawn in the wake of the planes, then they start a vertiginous vertical descent and at last the silk domes open. Their descent slows as they near the ground. However the men, easily identifiable because of their hanging legs, fall faster than the food, equipment and ammunition supplies. Soon the sky above our heads is a huge flurry of parachutes.

On the ground, the spectacle is no less extraordinary. Everywhere in the countryside, sprays of multicoloured rockets shoot up as if thrown by invisible jugglers. In the fields around us large black aeroplanes glide noiselessly towards the ground like ghost ships and seem to land as if in a dream! They are the first glider squadrons. Our first paratrooper was part of a group of scouts who were to signal drop zones and landing areas. Hours pass. We stay outside in the schoolyard. Mixed with the sound of guns and explosions, we can hear the frightened thumping of galloping horses escaped from their paddocks. I would like to go out and see what is happening further away, but my mother persuades me not to.

Daytime, the 6^th June: joy flared up… followed by anxiety…

The dawn of the 6^th June starts to drive away the night. I shiver in the chilly early morning air. The Dumonts return home and we get in to warm up a little in the pleasant and reassuring atmosphere of the house.

Suddenly four or five soldiers with round helmets and handguns enter into the yard. The one who must be their leader violently knocks the door and shouts with a strong American accent: “Nous, soldats américains... Y a-t-il des Allemands ici?17” You would think from his triumphant and assertive manner that he has already won the war. We welcome them with open arms. Their self-confidence is so forthcoming that we already consider ourselves liberated, as if the German army had vanished overnight. It was a moment of euphoria. I can’t stay put anymore: I go out, go back in and walk from the front door to the yard gate and back. I see paratroopers keeping carefully to the hedges on their way to their meeting points. Most of them have their faces smeared and look at me, smiling amusedly under their strange make up. Several are limping; others have draped themselves in the green and brown silk of their parachutes. Their massive figure under the big round helmet and the long cutlass kept in their beautiful yellow leather shoes, their appearance, the way they walk: all this brings to mind stories of bandits and the Far West.

A young man who had been hired in a neighbouring farm and was in fact - as I later learned - in the Resistance, shows up at the gate with more American soldiers and asks me to act as an interpreter for them: I’m going to be useful at last! The one who must be the officer (although there is no braid on his uniform to distinguish him from the others) shows me his Ordnance Survey map and points to the Noires Terres farm, close to the village of La Fière along the Paris-Cherbourg railway line, between the stations of Fresville and Chef-du-Pont. He wants to know the best way to get there and asks me if there are any Germans in that direction. He would like somebody to guide them. “I’m going,” the young member of the Resistance says, “I know the way very well.” And he leaves with them.

Another group of soldiers stops outside the school and they try to orientate themselves too. The officer beckons me. He is glad to see I understand English. He points at « la Chasse des trois Ormes » on the map: his assembly point is close by. It is a narrow lane right at the bottom of the hill, on the outskirts of Sainte-Mère-Eglise. As the Americans want to avoid the main road, the route is fairly winding: you have to know the gaps in the hedges that will allow you to cut across the fields. I offer to be their guide but the officer, aware of the risks, is undecided. Nonetheless he does not have a choice and whilst still chewing gum he says “OK” and gives me a small pat on the back. And off we go. As we near Sainte-Mère, we hear a sudden burst of machine-gun fire. The soldiers stop. I have a lump in my throat. If alone, I would run back home, but my Americans are here. We have to walk along hedgerows to cross two more fields. And here is the path to Trois Ormes. Mission accomplished!

I then have to retrace the route in reverse yet this time, alone. It seems to me interminable. It is like in a nightmare where you walk but you don’t advance. In the fields I cross, there are silent groups of people busy doing strange things. At La Croix de Neuville, the Americans are setting up I don’t know what across the national road. Dérot’s three kids and the farmer next door with his farmhand are watching from the place where the lane that leads to the school gives onto the main road, precisely opposite La Croix. I join the little group of onlookers. A soldier comes towards us and motions us to go away. Another one, perched on top of the nearest electricity pole has just cut the wires. From his perch he shouts something I do not understand to his comrades who are busy on the road. The latter immediately move away from where they were working and make us move back with them up the school lane, while the other soldier swiftly descends the pole and joins us. We have no idea what is going to happen but that something is going to happen, we are certain.

It does not take long: before you could say Jack Robinson a German military lorry followed by a car and a motorbike arrive and drive past La Croix. There is a formidable explosion as smoke charged with debris is propelled into the air and then scatters with a metallic clang. And it is over. We understand then that the road had been mined by the Americans. But the little group of Germans speeding on their way to Sainte-Mère-Eglise on this 6^th June morning, they will never have understood anything.

Everyone in the village has now got out into the street to welcome the paratroopers and we are already celebrating D-day by inviting all the Americans to stop by for a drink. People burst out laughing and cry ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ at the sight of new, startling things such as a small car, one of the first Jeeps, which has descended from the sky in a glider.

But our happiness does not last long. The Americans set up a small cannon at La Croix and I think I can still hear the crackling of bullets. On the lane where I venture to walk there is a soldier huddled up behind a hedge. He is motionless, bending down, as if on the watch. As soon as he sees me, he puts his finger on his lips with a mysterious air and then shows me something to the left. I turn my eyes in that direction and immediately the words I was going to say die in my throat. Around the corner are German soldiers coming our way in single file, weapons in hand, bent and keeping to the hedge. I realise danger is imminent and flee towards home. Hardly have I arrived when several bursts of submachine gun fire rattle the windowpanes.

The Boches18 are still here! I can hardly believe it. I come to wonder if I have really seen them. Alas, my doubt disappears when I see through the window a group of verdigris uniforms coming out of old Dumont’s yard. My disappointment is brutal. I cling to the hope that it is only a group of isolated soldiers trying to get to Montebourg to join the main body of soldiers. Besides, I now see three Americans walking past, peering through the hedges, ready to react if anybody moves. It is about 4 in the afternoon. I cautiously return home and, stationed behind a window, I am going to spend the hours until night anxiously watching what is going on outside. To tell the truth, I do not see much. It’s only on the following day, picking up things here and there, that I learn a little more about the events of the evening.

At first the Germans were thrown into confusion, but they soon pulled themselves together and regrouped. This means that small groups from the two opposed camps meet and confront each other in the fields and lanes around the village. When the Germans have received reinforcements, they counter-attack and put the Americans in a rather critical situation. A cyclist tells the people at the town hall that a German column is coming from Emondeville to Neuville. Hardly have the Americans present been informed when the column arrives. There are Germans everywhere: around the château (which houses the town hall) and in the park, courtyard and garden. They appear suddenly from all quarters, surround and then occupy the château. They bring in the injured Americans that they made prisoner, as well as the body of one of the occupants of the German lorry that has gone up in the morning on the mines in La Croix de Neuville. It must be the driver because rigor mortis has frozen him with his arms as if still holding the steering wheel. They lay the body down on the long kitchen table where it attracts flies.

In short, on the evening of the 6^th June, the situation as we can assess it from Neuville is confused and far from brilliant. We have not lost confidence, but our joy of the morning has been replaced by an oppressive anxiety.

The Night of the 6^th to 7^th June: The Germans Make a Comeback

The night that has just started will be only a long and frightening vigil. We have closed our shutters and as the electricity has been cut off my mother has dug out the old paraffin (kerosene) lamp and the sinister light it gives off in the room is that of a funeral wake. I endeavour to remain optimistic although I become increasingly worried. I try to reassure the others and persuade them at the same time that we must prepare our suitcases in case we have to leave in a hurry. It passes time and gets our minds off things. Suddenly I think I can hear the noise of troops walking, then intelligible words, probably orders. This murmur comes from the main road. We go out into the garden and this time we clearly hear the stamp of feet together with the clatter of horses’ hooves and the heavy rumbling of cars. There is no longer any doubt: the Germans are making a comeback. We have to go back in and wait – what for? I don’t dare think of this.

The noises are closer. The Huns must be in our little lane now. I think they’ve even stopped outside the school. My God! I can hear cars driving into the yard; I’m terribly afraid. But I still want to know what is going on. I climb onto a stool to have a look into the yard through the fanlight. This is a rather dark night and I can only make out, without seeing them clearly, two long four-wheeler cars covered with a tarpaulin parked in a semi-circle. The outline of these old bangers has become familiar since the Germans’ fuel reserves have been exhausted. They call to mind the old waggons of the time of the conquest of the West. The yard is now full of soldiers and equipment. Planes, certainly American, fly very low: “They’re locating us of course”, says my mother, “and with all this equipment in the yard we’re in for the slaughter.” What I find reassuring with my mother is that she predicts catastrophes that never happen. She is a kind of anti-Cassandra, and this is precisely what I’m telling myself to restore my optimism. For we need to be optimistic with all the new troops constantly arriving and taking position in the trenches recently dug in the presbytery garden and the fields close by. They are also digging fresh trenches in the graveyard. Guns are being camouflaged under the tall trees in the park behind the château.

On this night from 6^th to 7^th June, most houses have been evacuated: as soon as the inhabitants saw the Germans come back, they tried to get away from the national road where the confrontation was probably to take place. It is a miracle that this exodus did not turn into a tragedy for some. I remember old Madame Poussard, the inn-keeper of “Au Bon Accueil”, who gave me her version of events a few days later in her usual placid tone: “I wanted to stay here, guard the shop so they won’t loot but the girls, they were scared and (her son) Michel’d gone already. I said them: Get under the billiard table for shelter and pray to li’l Sister Thérèse¹⁹. But they wouldn’t stay. So we went to the farm in Dancourt. When we walked across the presbytery field there were Germans one one side in the trench and Americans on th’other side behind th’hedge. They couldn’t see each other probably. So we walked right in the middle of the field with our arms up, yelling “Civilians, civilians20”. Oh, their splendid ignorance of danger.

7^th June: Neuville in the hellish heat of the battle

As far as can be determined, it now seems that the Americans were parachuted to occupy our peninsula between La Madeleine, Sainte-Mère-Église and Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte21. The Germans still occupy the northern parts22. This is the reason why those who are isolated try to go up to Montebourg and then, once regrouped, back in force to eliminate the Americans who have gathered around Sainte-Mère-Eglise. In Neuville, we are in an ideal position to witness the comings and goings and the confrontations between the two armies.

On the morning of the 7^th June, Neuville is in the Germans’ hands. But during the night, American airdrops continued. People had fled the village at night and are coming back, as if nothing had happened, to milk the cows. They see all sorts of things on their way: a glider has crashed not far from La Croix, across the lane to La Fière; the countryside is scattered with parachutes of all colours; some are still hanging from branches and are filled by the gently blowing wind. A sadder sight in Quertier’s field: an unfortunate man was killed on touching ground. The barrel of his gun went into his side and caused an enormous injury.

But he did not die on the spot, for he is lying on his back with his hands joined and close to him are spread letters and photos. A young peasant takes time to kneel near the dead man, put the papers and photos back into his uniform pocket and cover him with his parachute.

As for the Germans, they set up an anti-aircraft gun along the national road 13, aiming at Sainte-Mère-Eglise. Let’s hear old Mrs Poussard, who lives next door, tell us how she saw things: “You see, t’was a wee diminutive canon. There was mor’en twelve of them busy with it. Between two cannonades they’d come fetch glasses. T’was no good trying to get them to take th’empty glasses back but if not Agnès (from Montebourg) wouldn’t give me new uns. They didn’t even ‘ear me. They ran away like a shot and didn’t even pick up their change. T’was not as if they could of won the war with that wee cannon of theirs23.

Meanwhile the Americans, who were holding the outskirts of Sainte-Mère-Eglise, had located the German cannon and they despised less than Mrs Poussard did. They were trying to get it by bombarding the surrounding area; they were so thorough that the house across the street from the inn, which stood close to the cannon, had crumbled under the onslaught. When I asked whether the inhabitants had had the time to leave, Mrs Poussard reassured me: “They had the time because the other guys, they didn’t bring down the house first time.”24

But closer to our place, in the morning, a dull rumbling noise makes the ground quiver suddenly. Five tracked cannons – I have since learned that they were the Austrian 88 – riding on our little road, camouflaged under branches; one of them is even hidden under an American parachute. Vehicles drive past back and forth several times, in search of a strategic point. I hope they will not settle close to our place and I conclude that it is urgent to organise our protection, just in case!

At the school there is neither cellar, shelter nor trench. Fortunately the walls are thick and strong. To protect ourselves from bullets and shrapnel that could come through the windows, we put up our mattresses against them vertically, and make a vault of mattresses over the settee where my grandparents and aunt sit. Our suitcases are ready, with all valuables and essentials packed, in case of rapid evacuation.

During our preparations, the situation has worsened still. Bullets ring out and bursts of submachinegun fire tear through the air. I push the mattress aside to have a peep and all I can see is Germans everywhere firing and firing. A sure sign that the Americans are still there, I think to comfort myself. We have not eaten anything since the day before but only my grandfather is hungry. It would be impossible for me to swallow anything; I can feel no hunger, thirst or tiredness. Towards the end of the morning the people from the neighbouring farm, who have come back to milk their cows, get their farmhand to take some milk to us. He gives us some news of the battle: it is said that there are many Germans near Le Port (it is a hamlet part of Neuville, on the other side of the main road, just outside the marshes in the direction of Fresville) but that there are still swarms of gliders coming down from the sky. Whether it is true or not, as it is good news we want to believe it.

Early in the afternoon the bursts of gunfire start again, much more heavily than in the morning. To crown it all, one of the Austrian 88s stations right in front of the school gate. We get back under the mattress. That damn cannon goes into action and fires on Sainte-Mère-Eglise. I take a sidelong peep through the window: the shells are piled on the thing and there are a whole lot of them. One artillaryman hands them to another who loads them. I hear the clickety-clack of a new shell sliding into the breech and then the cannon fires. The German gunners are working like hell.

But now American planes join the dance. They are small planes called artillery surveillance planes. They fly right above the yard and so low that at one point I can make out clearly a man’s head in the cabin. Each time he comes back above the yard invisible machine guns open fire and send him a hail of bullets. But he seems invulnerable, straightens up the plane and flies away in the direction of Sainte-Mère-Eglise without shooting back. I admire him without understanding his little game or what he is trying to do. But it is not long before I do understand.

Miaoooow… Bang… Windowpanes break. A shell has just fallen close by. Not a German shell. It is the Americans who are retaliating now. Their small plane comes flying overhead again and again, and each time it goes miaoooow… Bang… It is that plane that locates the German gun and directs the shooting. Let us watch out.

I nestle up against my mother under the mattress and hold her hand tight in mine. Our little bitch is usually very unruly but she is now hugging close to me too, motionless and silent. There are more and more shells miaowing and they are getting closer. There is less and less time between their hissing and their explosion. Each time we bow our shoulders and tense our muscles as if to protect ourselves.

Bang! A deafening explosion. I cannot hear anything anymore. The shell has fallen so close that I did not hear it hiss. Once I have got over the first moment of shock I venture a glance through the window. Old Monsieur Dumont’s house has disappeared in a cloud of dust and smoke. A moment of silence… and I see Monsieur Dumont and his three kids running across the yard. They come in. They are deathly pale and shaking. We get out from under our mattresses to welcome them. A shell has just gone through their house.

Out little group is in panic. Mum is saying prayers to stave off her anxiety. Grandmother gets the kids to pray: “God, protect us! Lord, pity us!” As soon as the litany is suspended on their lips, I launch it again because, although I do not believe in it, it is the best way to stem the fears of the children and adults alike. “Saint Marguerite, patron saint of Neuville, protect us… O Mary, conceived without sin…” The Germans themselves seem to be a little panic-stricken. I hear them talk, walk or run. Some of them get into the corridor of our house, climb up to the attic and shoot through the skylight. They do not see us, casting us only a glance with their mad eyes. They know they have been located and move their cannon at last. Unfortunately, too late for us!

The window opens violently with a terrible crash in which the noise of broken panes is only a grace note in the dreadful tumult. The house cracks ominously and seems to yield to the effect of a hellish blast charged with dust and a smell of powder which grabs us by the nostrils. I am now beyond fear, in a trance. No sensations. A real blank. I have ceased to exist. When you are killed instantly, I imagine this to be the way you pass to eternity. The first thing I feel on my return to life is the warm and wet sensation of my dog’s tongue licking my nose.

We cannot immediately assess the extent of the damage. We stay under our mattresses for the shooting has resumed with a vengeance. When it quietens down in the evening and we start getting out of the chaos, we realise that the yard is covered with debris, that our doors and windows have been torn away, that our walls are still standing and that the Germans are still there.

Night of the 7^th to 8^th June: a soldier of the Wehrmacht lost

On the evening of that terrible day a strange meeting takes place that I will never forget. Suddenly the tall figure of a young German officer is standing in the doorway. His face is deathly pale and the few locks of his hair poking out of his helmet are stuck to his forehead. His teeth are chattering, he is shaking all over and he cannot manage to control his body. He comes in and sits down across from mum and me, facing the window. I try to get him to speak but he does not seem to understand a word of French. I insist, trying to remember the few words of German I know to strike up a conversation. I ask: “Americans kaput?” The German shakes his head. I try to hide my satisfaction and, assuming a casual expression I go on: “Américains Sainte-Mère-Église?” “Ja”, he answers. I go further: “Américains here?” The young man shrugs his shoulders as if to say that he has no idea.

Little by little he recovers from his fright. He takes off his helmet and shows me its bumps. He combs his hair and puts on his field cap. He also takes his gloves from his pocket, and a packet of cigarettes… American ones. He offers me one which I take and smoke; it is the first and one of the only I have ever smoked, but there are times when you really need to do something to calm down.

Now he stares intensely out the open window, with his eyes fixed and his ears strained. I can only hear the cracking of machine guns which seem to answer each other. Some fire real bursts with rapid shots: “Deutsch” says the officer. The others have a clearer tock, tock, tock sound with decidedly distinct tocks: “American”, he explains. I ask him:

“Wieviel Meters?25” He answers that the American machine-guns are approximately 300 ft away. I am jubilant and I translate for my mother what I have just heard. Two successive explosions stand out in the din of fire shots and shells. Then with a regular rhythm comes the cannon fire from the side of Beaudienville, a seaside village at the end of the byroad which starts at the church of Neuville and goes past the presbytery. I do not take my eyes off the German, and I see him start. I ask him: “Was is das?” ^{26 – “American tanks,” he whispers.}

As a result I am beside myself with joy despite the never-ending explosions. Hope has returned; the Americans are there, close by. The German, like us, is expecting to see them appear any minute. But what does he expect exactly? What does he intend to do when they arrive here? Since he arrived, we have not seen any Germans coming and going in the corridor. He seems to be the only one left. During a lull he stood up and walked around the house. We heard him move the pot and pans in the laundry room, as if looking for something to eat or drink. Then he climbed up to the attic and came back down with a light machine gun in his hands. But he was not holding it like a man who is going to use it. As soon as my old aunt saw the contraption, which he had at first put up against the wall in the corridor, she made signs to him to the effect that the thing should be thrown outside. He obediently went and threw it into the ditch by the garden hedge.

With the evening, a relative quietness has returned. The danger seems to have subsided so we leave the shelter of our mattresses. Nevertheless we rearrange one in front of the window to hide the light of the oil lamp, which is not as sinister as the paraffin (kerosene) lamp or the candles. The little Dumont girl has finally gone to sleep and my grandfather is snoring in the next room. We did try to eat, but we had a lump in our throat and did not manage to swallow anything solid, only to drink a little milk – the milk the farmhand had brought us in the morning.

Night has now come and the German has been here with us for more than three hours. Hours go by, almost unknown to the war that is outside, so close. It is strange but our German has become so close to us as humans that I do not see him as an enemy anymore. I know from the bottom of my heart that I wish him no malice and that if I had the opportunity to do something to save his life, I would do it. I manage to understand that he expects the Americans to arrive and take him prisoner. He is unarmed; he shows me his empty handgun magazine. He had taken out the bullets and left them in the pot in the laundry room when he went for his little walk around the house.

The sound of machine guns has died down; it can be heard only spasmodically now. The night is almost quiet. Suddenly the man seems to have reached a decision. He explains to me that he is going to try and join his side; he wants to take the lane through Houlbecq, Saussetour and Le Buisson to Emondeville (in the direction of Montebourg). It is indeed where the Germans are firing from now.

Our “guest” gives us a farewell handshake and, like the American the other night, he too disappears into the darkness, towards his fate.

The morning of the 8^th June: dawn is here!

At last! Never had a June night seemed so long. I cannot wait to go outside and see if the Americans are here and to know what has become of our neighbours and friends and what is left of our little village.

All I can see is devastation and horror. The schoolyard is strewn with an unlikely mixture of debris of every kind. A bicycle that had been hurled here is scattered everywhere: here its twisted wheels and tyres, torn to shreds; there mudguards; something that looks like its frame is on the roof of the covered playground. A bloody mass of flesh makes me step back with a shudder of revulsion; but I quickly pull myself together and draw nearer. It is not human flesh. In places I can see tufts of bay hairs: it must be one of the horses that pulled the Germans’ old car. Another horse, this one only hurt, walks past neighing in pain. Blood, run in long streams, has coagulated on his flanks.

This series of macabre sights is only the beginning. A German soldier is standing at the yard gate, bent slightly backward, as if falling towards his rear. He looks as if frozen in the middle of his fall, still holding his gun in hand. It is a strange sight. I walk nearer to him and talk to him. He does not answer; he just stays there, as if petrified. I have a closer look: his face is already green. Rigor mortis has seized him right in the middle of action, so quickly that he did not even have time to fall.

Close by, our Austrian 88 is now only a heap of scrap iron. A shell has fallen right on its ammunition cart. Most of the framework has slumped against the bank of the hedge, across the ditch. The ground all around is cluttered with debris: big caterpillar trucks torn apart, bent armour plating, weapons and helmets scattered everywhere. Lying in the middle of all this is about ten bodies, most of them horribly mutilated. Near one of them lay letters and photos: a small house with children playing and a young woman. Here and there, there are plasters and bandages stained with blood. I understand then the terror felt by the young officer who had sought refuge with us the night before.

The farm behind the school is half destroyed. Most houses have been damaged: roofs with holes in them like skimming ladles, broken windowpanes. Big branches and even trees are broken and lie across the lane. Yesterday the cannon had been put in position behind the tall beech trees and now rags are hanging from the branches, thrown up there somehow. They will stay there to rot all summer and all winter, until the last remnants have frayed in the wind of oblivion.

But it seems that the Germans are no longer here. I walk onto the school lane and see helmets emerge from behind the bordering hedges: big, round, American helmets. I try to strike up a conversation with them, but I see they are reluctant, sombre, hesitant. Shells are still meowing - in the distance, but dangerous still. A soldier tells me and signs to me to turn back and go home.

What happened that night in the chateau

Three villagers I meet then give me further details. There were no victims among the villagers. But the people in the chateau had a particularly turbulent night. The Germans, whose guns kept shelling Sainte-Mère-Eglise and receiving American retaliation, suffered many injuries. They had turned the chateau into an infirmary, laying out the dying, the injured and the maimed on sofas and in armchairs. The dining-room table, to which extension leaves had been added in anticipation of a wedding party on the following Saturday, had become an operation table. Blood was dripping on the parquet and on the beautiful blue and pink carpets of the drawing room. Curtains had been pulled down from the windows to be used as tourniquets. At one point, there were so many wounded on the table that it and its human load collapsed to the floor. The huge residence was full of cries and moans.

In the middle of all this bloody commotion, a not-so-ordinary wounded man drew the attention of some of the chateau servants. He was American, a paratrooper, not too severely “bashed up”. The Germans, busy with emergencies, left him on the grand staircase landing. Sitting right opposite the bay window, he could see everything that was happening outside. “He was listening,” they said, “attentive to the noises, as if he was trying to find out their origin and nature. His face showed both pleasure and pain. When we came near him again, after we had gone to the kitchen for food, he surreptitiously (so as not to be seen by the German watchman) signaled to show us something outside. Yet we did not have time to see it because the guard had turned round.” This “something” was the coming of American tanks, the arrival of which our own German had perceived.

They were indeed coming from the Beaudienville road. There were more than a dozen, in single file, shooting from every gun and destroying the remaining Austrian 88s. For the Germans in the chateau and in Neuville, this had been the signal of a hurried withdrawal towards Emondeville and Montebourg. On the morning of the 8th, in the chateau occupied by the Americans again, the German wounded were now the prisoners. Their army doctor stayed with them, treating with equal devotion people from both sides.

Afternoon of the 8^th June: exodus of the people from Neuville and Écoqueneauville

We believed the battle was over once and for all in our area. The Americans, becoming more numerous, were strengthening their positions on the recovered ground. We felt that our life was almost about to take its normal course again, that now war was other people’s business, away from us.

But suddenly in the early afternoon, two Americans come to tell us we have to leave the house for they have mined the fields all around in anticipation of a German counterattack. I tried to convince them that, with three children and three elderly people, it would be really difficult to leave. Where to, by the way? In English, the soldier explains they will not compel us to go, but it would be folly to stay. He tells me of a route to Sainte-Mère-Eglise: not on the trunk road still swept by German artillery, but across country, along hedges, not too close or too far. He explained where the mines are in the field opposite which we will have to cross first. He adds: “This is a military secret I am telling you now.”

So we have to go. We hurriedly gather some clothes; fortunately suitcases had been packed already, just in case. My big dog is frolicking, believing we are taking him for a walk: “Hold him tight,” the officer says, “so that he can’t explode a mine and blow you up at the same time. And walk in a single file, not too close to each other.”

My dog and I lead the way. Mother follows. Behind her come the Dumont children, first the little boy, then the big sister holding the smaller one’s hand. Then my old aunt with the small dog on a leash, then my grandmother. Finally, bringing up the rear were old Dumont and my eighty-four-year-old grandfather. Each one of us, even the very little girl, carries luggage according to their strength. The anguish and sadness overwhelming us and the desire to find a shelter as quickly as possible make us almost insensitive to the horrors around us.

Whole herds are lying in the fields, giving off a pestilential smell. Their bellies, bloated to bursting point, are prey to swarms of flies crawling on their torn flesh. A disembowelled horse is dying in the grass, soiled by its blood. A foal neighs sadly while trying to suck its dead mother. Cows which have not been milked moo ominously. I try to look away. I do not want to see this any more. We walk as if in a nightmare, as fast as the legs of the old grandfather and the little Dumont girl allow. Suddenly, jumping over a gap, I feel something soft under my feet and as I turn round to reach out to my mother I catch sight of two corpses in the ditch. I have just jumped over without seeing them.

We come to a small cluster of houses. Perhaps we can take a little rest. But the battle has raged there too. The houses are deserted. In one of them the table is still laid and this leads us to think that people have left from here hurriedly; it is not a comforting notion. A German is lying face down across a threshold. All around are corpses of soldiers, poultry, a small dog. From time to time, we still hear shots over our heads.

We sight Beauvais, another village. The walk there is arduous. The same desolate scenes: empty houses, dead animals. But human voices with a local accent dispel the nightmare. They are a group of peasants returning home to get useful or precious things, to milk the cows and tend to the cattle. As soon as the work is finished, they will go back to Écoqueneauville. “Over there,” they say, “there are a lot of Americans, and more keep coming. It is safer than here.” And they advise us to follow them. I do not know quite which way to take to Sainte-Mère, and I think it wiser and more comforting to stay with other people, so to my small troop I command: “All right. Let’s follow them.”

Following people is easily said, but most of them are relatively young and fright lends them wings. For us with the children and the elderly, it is somewhat different. We are soon left behind, and so much so that we cannot even see the others, which raises the question of the path to follow, for I am at pains to find the direction of Écoqueneauville. We advance with guesswork, increasingly slowly. My grandfather and the little Dumont girl often ask if we are to arrive soon. Eventually my poor, exhausted old man lets himself fall to the ground and tells us: “Go on without me, you’ll come back for me tomorrow.” Of course, there is no question of leaving him there on his own. I leave to have a look around the area, thinking of finding a wheelbarrow in a farm to carry him in. Luckily, I find much better than a wheelbarrow: a cart, that of Mrs Poussard’s nephew, who happens to be around. My wheelbarrow story makes him burst out laughing. He is quick to team up and we are shortly back with our companions who don’t expect us so soon and are amazed to see me back in the gang. The two little girls get in with the grandparents and the luggage. Mother and I begin back on the road to Écoqueneauville, with the rest of the troop and the two dogs.

9^th, 10^th and 11^th June: refugees

Écoqueneauville, a small village of about a hundred inhabitants, is now home to a lot of refugees from Sainte-Mère-Église and the surroundings. People receive us in an incredibly friendly way, and their warm welcome makes us forget about the sadness of our exodus. The teacher invites my mother and me to stay at her place. She even has a cellar for our dog. Old Dumont and his three children will stay with the farmer who so bravely drove us here. Grandfather and grandmother are to have a comfortable bed at a couple’s place at the other end of the village. My old aunt will stay close by with a lady who lives alone with her daughter. As we are in the country, we are not short of food supplies: in abundance we are given eggs, milk, pork meat and, in lieu of bread, buckwheat pancakes.

After a good meal, we are hoping for some rest, some sleep even. Wishful thinking. The village is full of Americans, and troops heading for the front line keep going down the road that comes from the shore. In the apple-tree fields, ammunition is heaped up, hidden under the trees. When night comes, hardly have we gone to bed when the humming of planes begins to disturb the silence. Immediately the American DCA27 stationed close to our place rages. Every part of the schoolhouse is shaking as if it will cave in on us.

Jumping up, the teacher and her two children and Mother and I leave our beds and get dressed hurriedly, any old way because panic makes things and gestures so confused. “Let’s try to go to the farm opposite,” my comrade says, “they have a strong shelter under their staircase.” As we are walking across the path leading there, horror seizes us at the sight of a burning plane going down over our heads. But no, it crashes down in a neighbouring field, explodes and comes to an end burning. All this happens in less time than you could say it. We walk across the farmyard. We should run but Mother, in her confusion, has put on the large slippers of the German who had been billeted in the school and she can hardly walk with them. The bursts are so violent that for a time we lie down under a cart in a farm shed. But this shelter is not safe. With a last bolt, we finally reach the door of the house. We knock wildly: “Open, open, quick!” The door opens at once. Phew! Safe, again!

In the large room, the farmers have put their mattresses on the floor. More than a dozen refugees from the neighbourhood are there, along with the people from the farm who have left their bedrooms upstairs. There is a cot too, in which a 90-year-old woman is lying. Her daughter, who is 70, is lying alongside her. The old lady has no notion of what is happening, or of the tragedy of the situation. When the shooting intensifies, everyone piles under the said staircase. When this happens the old lady is not happy at all to have to get up. And when people are speaking loudly she gets angry and says: “Shut up or they’ll hear you!28” In spite of our fright, it makes us laugh. Frightened, indeed, is what we are and we make ample use of the slop pail intended for the old lady. She protests: “And to say they all do it in my pail! It is going to stink… Well they could very well go outside for their business… Where am I going to do when my pail is full29?” How can we not laugh, in spite of the arsenal close by under the apple-trees which can explode with the first German bomb?

Every night during our stay in Ecoqueneauville things are roughly the same; German planes are a continuous threat. Luckily, the days are quieter. There are plenty of Americans and I am called up to be their interpreter. There are those in charge of looking for corpses, which some others will take away in trucks to carry them to the military cemetery they have opened in Sainte-Mère-Eglise. The peasants tell me where they are and I lead the Americans. Every day new corpses are found in the countryside. Often the smell leads us to them. Some have died from horrible wounds. Sometimes the dead man seems to be sleeping. In one spot, close to an isolated cottage, an American and a German have died opposite one another; they are leaning back against the hedge bank, on either side of the road. They are still holding their weapons. They must have killed one another simultaneously.

When the Americans arrive they search the dead man; they turn him round and round again, take away his watch, rings, money and papers, gather the whole lot into a small bag, read the ID tag and write his name on this parcel of remains. A little later, over in America, his wife, parents and children will learn that they will never see their GI30 again. This is what death is; this is war.

And for us, in the midst of all this, it’s a bit like being on holiday. The weather is wonderful and nature in full bloom seems to make light of the massacre. At this time of year the whole countryside is an abundance of greenery and flowers and birds are a joyful crowd in the fresh branches. The village people, and above all the refugees who are idle, are going to and fro in the incredible setting. Relaxed, we loiter and chat, each telling what they have heard or seen, what they know, or think they know. We go on pilgrimage to places where fighting took place, everyone expressing their ideas on strategy.

12^th June and the following days: back to Neuville

The battle is now far enough for us to consider going back to Neuville, home. Yet it is true that the nerve-racking question remains: do we still have “a home”?

Mrs Poussard’s nephew, who has already been so nice, helps us again to drive our old people in his cart. Mr Dumont, a day labourer, has found work in Écoqueneauville and stays there with his three children. At the moment it is the best for him as his house is in a sorry state. Mother and I leave on foot for Sainte-Mère-Eglise with some other refugees. Past Sainte-Mère, we are the only two civilians left on the side of the highway where military convoys keep going up and down. Although some soldiers hail us in a friendly way, we still feel the anguish of solitude. It comes to an end when we arrive in Neuville and are immensely relieved to see the school intact and to find ourselves together there.

Now it is Neuville where refugees keep arriving, particularly those fleeing burnt down Montebourg31. We learn Valognes32 too is almost entirely destroyed and that there are a great many civilian casualties. In the days after our return, life is being reorganised in the midst of American troops, through a network of true and false news. On the highway we often see trucks loaded with dead bodies wrapped in bloodstained shrouds and with macabre parcels jolted about in a sinister way on the potholed road.

The battle is still raging a little further on. Through Utah-Beach33, the Americans continuously receive reinforcement in men and supplies. They are strengthening and widening their stronghold in Sainte-Mère-Eglise towards Jourbesville, Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte, la Haye-du-Puits. From the 19^th June they attack in the area of Montebourg to increase their pressure towards Cherbourg, which will fall into their hands on the 24^th June. ³⁴

We often go down to Mrs Poussard’s inn. It is indeed a real newspaper office, where sometimes pieces of news are even posted up. At her place I have to take on again my activity as occasional nurse. Her stepdaughter was hit in the thigh by a small piece of shrapnel during a bombing that killed her mother and brother. I mention the fact to an American officer who is stopping at the inn. He gives me a small packet of white powder to be applied on the wound. A wonder drug we have never heard of: penicillin. “Put compresses on it”, he says, “until the shrapnel is ready to come out.” I apply compresses. I take out some bits of flesh with tweezers. But the shrapnel refuses to move. I can feel it right under her skin. So, with a very sharp knife carefully sterilized in a flame, like a first time surgeon, I make a cross-shaped incision. And at last the shrapnel comes out, with some blood and pus. I just have to disinfect with alcohol then, without paying attention to the patient’s moans, to sprinkle some of the American’s white powder. On the following day the young woman is able to walk and the wound is already healing.

So as time goes by and as the war becomes distant, days are shedding some of their historical intensity and we are losing some of our feverish heroism born from the nearness of danger and the necessity to face it. For a few months we settle into a slightly peculiar way of life, a sort of Occupation again, no longer by our enemies but by our allies, our liberators. It is not uninteresting to mention this new type of “cohabitation”.

Some “side effects” from the American troops’ stay in our countryside

The presence of American troops in our area is going to disturb somewhat the minds of our Norman country folk. All the more so as the “occupying forces” are friends, liberators, and we do not have to keep our distance from them.

The tents of a field hospital are set up in the field opposite the school. Most of the American doctors’ patients are victims of road accidents and both civilians and military personnel wounded by explosives. The villagers occasionally take advantage of the free medical care, which creates friendly links. More than once I send to the Americans people from the neighbouring countryside whom I discover during my rounds of injections at home. As we are still on holiday, I often go to the hospital to help as an interpreter, or simply to chat, which allows me to become accustomed to English and the American accent. Often one of the doctors, a congenial fellow of Italian descent and a violinist moreover, comes to spend the evening at our place.

Je viens d’évoquer les victimes civiles des explosifs. Une des originalités du moment, ce fut en effet 1’abondance des « objets trouvés » d’un genre un peu spécial : fusils, pistolets, mitraillettes, grenades, petites bombes à ailettes etc. Il y avait de tout dans les champs, les haies, les fossés. Que de tentations pour nos gamins, et même pour les adultes. Je me rappelle un voisin rentrant chez lui avec un chapelet de grosses cartouches jaune-pâle ressemblant à s’y méprendre à celles qui servent à soufrer les barriques. C’est d’ailleurs ce qu’il comptait en faire, tout fier de sa découverte. « Imbécile ! lui criai-je, vous ne voyez donc pas que c’est de la dynamite ».

I have just mentioned the civilian victims of explosives. One of the novelties of the time was indeed the abundance of a very particular kind of “lost property”: rifles, pistols, machine-guns, hand-grenades, winged bombs etc. Everything could be found in fields, hedges and ditches. Such temptations for our children and even for adults. I remember a neighbour coming home with a string of big pale-yellow cartridges which could be mistaken for the ones used to have barrels sulphurated. This is indeed what he, very proud of his discovery, intended to use them for. “You fool!” I cried. “Can’t you see this is dynamite?”

Another very particular effect of the situation is how death, or more precisely corpses, was rendered banal. We had seen so many and there were so many left on the first days, scattered here and there, that a sort of familiarization was making us insensitive. I remember a 14-year-old boy of a kind and sensitive nature who, going with me to Ecoqueneauville, showed a kind of morbid excitement before these macabre discoveries, calling to draw my attention to the particular expression that was fixed on some dead man’s face.

Close to our place, along the field that forms a corner with the trunk road and our path, I had noticed a strong stench coming from a particular place. I quite easily guessed what it could be but was not brave enough to go and see on the other side of the hedge. One day I saw two of my pupils there, who called me as I was getting closer: “Miss, there is a Hun in the ditch!” One of them had already taken his purse and they were trying to get his wallet. They told me a third one had taken the dead man’s shoes and had gone to wash them, for they were full of maggots.

I also remember Pecata, the gravedigger, whom I heard one day “swearing” behind a hedge near the church. Intrigued, I approached and saw him with his foot on the belly of a German corpse, straining on the other leg. With both hands, he was trying to take the shoe off. He was not in the least bothered by my presence and as he was making efforts to this end, he told me: “The bastard’s foot is stiff! I can’t take his shoe off35.”

As you see, getting accustomed to death brings on a rather disgusting by-product: corpse pilfering. One of my neighbours, though a rich man, was summoned to dig graves and he comes back one evening with two pairs of shoes hanging from their laces around his neck. With a satisfied air, he shows me how beautiful they are, made of genuine leather and almost new. Cynicism or madness, cupidity or stupidity, it is hard to tell.

Bartering is a common corollary of this sort of pilfering. Various “black” markets went on during these months. Even my pupils, when school had started again, sometimes played truant to hang around the military quarters. Out of curiosity, but also to try and get this or that. Well, the soldiers from wealthy America offered so many things that were unknown or which we had been deprived of because of war restrictions. In exchange for them we had a liquid gold whose effects were disastrous more than once: calvados, our apple brandy.

The greatest shock to our austere or at least decorous habits in the matter of sex was the discovery of indiscreet, unbridled sexual ways.

In brutal forms. There were rapes and aggressions: with assault troops billeted and moving about everywhere, it was imprudent for a woman or a girl to go to isolated places on her own36. One day I had such an experience, rather comical in retrospect. On the path from the church to the chateau, I can see an American in flying uniform, leather jacket with a sheepskin lining. He seems intent on a bicycle leaning against a tree. He hails me and, without looking back, beckons me to come near. Holding my dog on the leash, for she can be aggressive at times, I go nearer, thinking the man needs some information. He immediately turns round and flashes his genitalia at me. At that very moment, my devil of a dog leaps forward, fangs at the ready, barking furiously, like a true Fury! I barely have time to pull the leash back to keep her from biting on the “bait”, which she almost snatches at in her passion. I run away as fast as I can, in spite of my darned dog who goes on barking, indeed quite excited at the thing the man hurriedly sheathed.

And then another kind of discovery! One morning a neighbour, old Hortense, comes to our place quite upset. She has just seen her goat, her poor goat, being raped several times running by a group of soldiers: “The poor beast was all drunk and stupid with it”37, Hortense says, and she adds, quite angrily: “And they’re not even black!” These were terrible words revealing some unconscious racism yet I could observe it quite often: only blacks could do things like that. They were blamed for all the wrongdoings of the troop. This racism could indeed be strengthened by the brutally wilful racism of some white G.I.s, such as from those who one day from their Jeep copiously insulted two black nurses I was chatting with at the school gate.

Licentiousness sometimes took on less brutal, more habitual forms, if I may say so. While waiting for “professionals” to come from big cities, these good men are hunting in our countryside. One day, an American ambulance stops in front of Mrs Poussard’s café. As she does not understand what they want, she motions them to ask me as I am outside talking with one of her daughters. They explain they are looking for “women for pleasure”. Apart from two women who were good friends to the Germans, I cannot think of anything to satisfy them in Neuville. They insist: they do not mind coming after the Germans! So they make me sketch a map to direct them and as I dawdle a little, one of them stamps his foot and says: “Hurry up, it can’t wait!” I think I went as red as a beetroot.

Needless to say, these “liberties” taken by our at first likeable liberators, couldn’t but arouse the interest and curiosity of the local big boys. I did notice it when, after the holidays, I saw my pupils again (at least those who came back, for many of them had found the chocolates, cigarettes, coffee and cinema provided by the Americans a lot more fascinating than the rule of three or spelling lessons). Around the countryside some were quick to notice isolated sheep barns and wooden plank cabins with corrugated iron roofs that, for want of anything better, made do for field brothels. And my class clowns stealthily took a look through plank slits to… see. A conversation between two of them, overheard in the toilet, revealed to me that they had seen many things and that their sex education, so to speak, had been greatly enhanced.

On another occasion at playtime I see children blowing as best they can into some sorts of balloons. They were condoms. Many were lying about in the fields, as well as various “prophylactic” devices. I order them to throw their balloons away and tell them they can burst into their faces and make them blind. The little ones listen to my spiel and believe me. But I see big Lucas who takes on a smiling face. To avoid contradiction and the risk of embarassment I send him away with a good slap in the face.

Thus, as time went by the enthusiasm with which I had welcomed Liberation was waning. And thus my personal code of moral values, a little naïve to tell the truth - a little romantic - was crumbling. At times, everything seemed to me rotten, perverted. But this was without doubt my passage to maturity. The war and its trail of disorder and fright, made me discover humanity as it is, worse or better than it appears. I saw a village tough guy, a big talker, abandoning his wife and children under the bombs and running like a cowardly hare, so fast that he lost his clogs. But I also saw my old aunt Rosalie who had spent her life frightened of everything and nothing, and who could not even bear to see a pointed knife, standing bravely in front of me to protect me with her own body at a moment when the shooting on the school was particularly disquieting. There are situations where the most repressed instincts come unbridled and [situations] where the best hidden qualities are unveiled: in people who appear quite ordinary, both incredible acts of generosity and the lowliest cupidity and cowardliness [are unveiled]. [There are] situations which unmask deserters and reveal heroes.