Sainte-Mere-Eglise: A memory

[Janet McElroy <jmcelro7@UA1IX.UA.EDU>]

This is a long message and not directly related to libraries.  It is,
however, the eve of the D-Day celebrations and might be of interest to
some of your world history students who are still in school this week.
                ..............................

One of the highlights of my Paris summer of 1963, as a participant in a
seminar on modern French history for American teachers, was the visit to
the town of Sainte-Mere-Eglise in Normandy.  Mme Simone Renaud, laureate
of the Academie Francaise, invited us to her home, described her memories
of D-Day and read to us the remarks she had prepared for an interview with
an American television reporter for a documentary to be shown in
1964 on the 20th anniversary of the invasion.  She gave us mimeographed
copies of her prepared remarks, which I should like to share with you.
                ............................
(Spacing and uppercase letters are, as far as possible, faithful to the
copy as distributed by Mme Renaud, August 1, 1963. Her underlining is
represented by " " .)
                .............................

"THINKING ABOUT GENERAL Dwight EISENHOWER's coming to SAINTE-MERE-EGLISE"

        I think that General EISENHOWER's coming here on the original
points of landing to relive his memories and to meet the French witnesses
of these tremendous events of nearly Twenty years ago is A GREAT LESSON TO
ALL PEOPLE:
        lesson of perseverance,
        of determination in maintaining, at any price, what was won so
dearly at that time:  LIBERATION AND PEACE
        lesson of THANKFULNESS
        -for all WHAT THE "AMERICA BOYS DID" at that time!
        -for so many of them who gave their all:  "THE FALLEN"
        -for what the  "FRENCH CIVILIANS DID" to help the Paratroopers to the
utmost,
        -for those who died, side by side wih the Combattants.

        I can "assure General EISENHOWER" that we, the Normans, less than
any, we shall NOT FORGET this GREAT LESSON, and we'll maintain at any
price, the tightest bonds between American and French.

        I can REMEMBER, as if it was yesterday, this memorable night from
5th to 6th of JUNE 1944.............
        The night was warm, with a bright moon-light, and the wind blew
violently at times...

        I still HEAR the burst of the explosions shaking the earth...
        I SEE, as if it was yesterday, the red and green lights of the
flaming bombs and tracing-bullets which went up from the earth towards the
sky .....
        the fires raging in and out SAINTE-MERE-EGLISE (barns and houses
burning, after being hit by grenades of the markers, most likely)

        And chiefly, "I SEE" the gigantic waves of the heavy planes C-47
which passed slowly and continuously over our heads, for hours.......Many
of them flew very low, at the height of the treetops, all lights on, from
west to east .....
        The machine-guns were cross-firing over our heads, and hundreds
and hundreds of big luminous flies whistled and yelled in the air, while
enormous gliders attached to the aircraft by cables, all lights on also,
would suddenly detach themselves and described large circles before
alighting.
        The heavy planes were so numerous that they flew wing against
wing.., Wave by wave, they projected their enlarged shadows all over:  on
the square, on the houses, on the streets, on the meadows, and they made
the scene so dark that we were at every moment, plunged into a deep night..

        IT WAS AN IMPRESSIVE SIGHT. ..... "WE DID NOT KNOW YET" WHAT WAS
GOING ON.......
        BUT SUDDENLY, we realized that it was the big assault FOR
LIBERATION that started !

        While a good part of the population of SAINTE-MERE-EGLISE was out
on the farther side of the square, striving to extinguish the fire in a
burning villa, and while the fire-alarm sounded in sad and hurried notes
from the steeple of our old church, and in the old times, ....... we gazed
up and WHAT DID WE SEE ? ......
        WE SAW CLEARLY in the moon-light, something like ENORMOUS CONFETTI
come out by hundreds and hundreds, of the bellies of the C-47, and drop
rapidly to earth.....

        We could SEE THE PARATROOPERS FALL EVERYWHERE AROUND US:  on the
square, on the steeple, one of them hanging from the top of the steeple,
entangled in his cables .... and being swung by the wind, and being full
in the firing zone from the steeple and from all sides,  .... THANKS GOD,
he is still alive, and a very jolly fellow, he is called JOHN STEELE ! ....
We saw them fall on the big trees of the square, - on the roofs, on the
meadows, in the orchards, in the trees, with their green and white
parachutes, silvery in the moon-light.

                "IT WAS AN EXTRAORDINARY SCENE."

IT WAS THE AERIAL INVASION which we hardly DARED BELIEVE !

                which we HARDLY DARED HOPE !

        There was a strange contrast between the Airborne troops who just
landed, so calm, masters of themselves, and so silent (except the hundreds
of "clicks" of their "crickets"), and the shouting going on the terrified
Germans !  They were Flaks and they decided to take flight ... in creaming
and insulting each other !....

        I COULD NOT HELP THINKING, before the TREMENDOUS HAPPENINGS OF
THIS "LONGEST NIGHT" of, WHAT WERE THE THOUGHTS of those Paratroopers
jumping into the void, in the middle of the night, on a foreign land
stuffed with enemies, before the "fearful unknown, and the immensity of
the job to be done", ...

                and I ADMIRED THEM IMMENSELY .......!
        And I FELT SO IMPETUOUSLY that we, all the NORMANS and ALL MEN to
the scope of Humanity
        "WE ALL HAVE, SINCE THAT UNFORGETTABLE, THIS IMMORTAL NIGHT,
"AND FOREVER, A SACRED DEBT TOWARDS THESE SONS OF AMERICA !"






Janet McElroy      jmcelro7@ua1ix.ua.edu -or- jmcelroy@uahcs2.uah.edu
Librarian...CHS-W, Tuscaloosa, AL 35401