SAINTE-MERE-EGLISE, France (AP) — Andree Auvray, nine
months pregnant, was hiding from German bombings in a Normandy ditch
with her husband one night in June 1944 when their dogs started barking.
The shadows of three soldiers appeared.
"We both came out to see
what was going on," she recalls. She initially thought the men were the
Nazi occupiers who had upended life in her quiet farming village. "And
then I said ‘No, it’s not the Germans!’
The soldiers were Americans. D-Day had begun.
Auvray
relives that wrenching time with clarity and a growing sense of
urgency. Seventy years have passed since the Allied invasion of Normandy
helped turn the tide against Hitler. With their numbers rapidly
diminishing, she and other French women and men who owe their freedom to
D-Day’s fighters are more determined than ever to keep alive the memory
of the battle and its meaning.
As President Barack Obama and
other world leaders prepare to gather in Normandy next week to mark the
70th anniversary of the battle, French survivors are speaking to
schools, conferences, tourists, filmmakers about their experiences, and
their gratitude.
That’s especially important to Auvray’s hometown of Sainte-Mere-Eglise, the first village liberated by
the Allies after D-Day.
About
15,000 paratroopers landed in and around the town not long after
midnight on June 6, 1944, and seized it from the Germans at 4:30 a.m. An
American flag was raised in front of the town hall.
During the
drop, American paratrooper John Steele’s parachute got caught on the
church spire. For two hours, Steele hung there, feigning death before
being taken prisoner by the Germans. Today, a dummy paratrooper hangs
from the spire in his honor.
Henri-Jean Renaud was an excitable 10-year-old the night the Americans landed, and his father was the
town mayor.
"Waves
of planes came, paratroopers landed, and one hour later — after various
events and fighting on the square between Germans and Americans — (my
father) came back home," Renaud recounts. "He was all excited, saying
‘There you go, it’s the (D-Day) landing, it has finally happened!’"
While the population was grateful to the Americans, cohabitation was not easy that first day.
"The
civilians were trying to make friends with them (the Americans), were
showing gestures of sympathy, but at the very beginning it wasn’t the
hugging and kissing that one like to bring to mind, at least in
Sainte-Mere-Eglise," he says.
"You have to put yourself in the
shoes of these guys. They had been up for thirty-six hours, they had
been parachuted by night in a hostile environment, and I also think that
even the bravest ones were scared," Renaud explains.
Renaud’s
mother, who spoke fluent English, dedicated her life to honoring the
American soldiers who gave their lives to free Sainte-Mere-Eglise, and
stayed in touch with their families until her death.
After Life
Magazine published a photo of her laying flowers on the Normandy grave
of Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt Jr., eldest son of President Theodore
Roosevelt, in August 1944, she received hundreds of letters from
American families who had lost a relative during Operation Overlord, the
code name for Allied invasion.
She would take a picture of a
grave of an American soldier buried in Normandy, then write a letter,
her son says. She would mail the photo, letter, and in summertime, a
rose petal, to the soldier’s family.
She wanted to send them
"something that people could touch," Renaud said. "There is nothing more
distressing than knowing that someone died somewhere, anywhere, without
being able to tie it to an image."
Auvray also works to carry on the memory of World War II, by doing conferences in schools.
Now
88, she describes sleeping in a trench at her farm night after night as
a very pregnant 18-year-old, hoping that would keep her and her new
husband safe from bombings. The night of June 6, she had a small
suitcase holding baby clothes and essentials, in case she had to give
birth out in the ditch.
"I saw three shadows, three soldiers who were not making any noise," she remembers.
German
Gen. Rommel had requisitioned their farm in March 1944 for a secret
meeting with officers, and she thought they had come back. Then she
realized that the rumors circulating about a possible Allied arrival
were true.
In the days following the landing, Auvray’s farm was
transformed into a makeshift hospital for wounded civilians, and though
untrained for it, she took on nursing duties.
She gave birth 13 days later, in her dining room.
Uncertainty and fear continued to haunt the village in the days following D-Day, for the civilians and
the American soldiers.
"We
didn’t know if it would succeed," Auvray explains. "I also think that
what contributed to our sincere friendship with the Americans is that we
spent nearly a week where their only gained piece of land was here with
us.
"So we lived and shared with them the anxiety of saying ‘my
God, let’s hope they (the Germans) don’t take us back. Let’s hope it
works out.’"