Read Online The Bitter Road to Freedom: The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe by William I. Hitchcock - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: William I. Hitchcock
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it away liberally to the troops. This appears to be the true spirit of France.” Major Edward Elliot vividly recalled the rapturous wel- come:
Wherever we stopped crowds ran forward to shake our hands and clamor for autographs. Fruit and flowers were thrown into jeeps and carriers as we drove past dense and enthusiastic people; in return we threw out cigarettes and sweets onto the pavements where they were immediately seized upon by an arguing swarm of townsfolk. The windows and shops were bedecked with colors and flags and patriotic slogans hung across the main street of every town and hamlet…. This was Victory indeed. Now for the first time we understood why the British Western Expeditionary Force had been renamed the British Army of Liberation! At first, it
had sounded a little cynical to us, toiling and fighting amongst the frigid Normans who only half seemed to appreciate our presence among them. Now we under- stood full; it was as if a veil draping the inner soul of France and hiding her true visage had suddenly been lifted to reveal a shining and cheerful countenance; a menace which had hung over her life for four long wea- ry years was gone—gone they hoped for ever. 47
N
ORMANDY ’S COUNTENANCE, HOWEVER,
could not have been described as cheerful or shining during and after the summer of 1944.
An initial assessment of Caen found that, in this city that had once housed 60,000 people, there was habita- tion left for a mere 8,000 and that returning refugees would have to be evacuated again. Meanwhile, the area between Tilly, Falaise, Argentan, and Vire had only one- fifth of its previous houses left standing. As one somber report by a British official put it on August 30, “there will be no greater war problem in the whole of France than exists in Calvados at the moment.” 48 About 125,000 people in this department alone were designated sin- istrés, or war victims; of those, 76,000 had lost every- thing they owned, including their homes. By the end of August, over one thousand civilians had been hurt or killed by stepping on buried mines. Allied military au- thorities set up temporary refugee camps to try to limit
civilian movement in the wartorn areas, but refugees avoided them, only desiring to be allowed to return to their towns and assess the scale of the damage. They did so “regardless of whether their homes still existed, of the danger of booby traps, and of the availability of food.”
Normandy, a region of ancient traditions and habits, had not changed much in the previous century; yet in the summer of 1944, two million foreign soldiers laid waste to its once-placid precincts. Caen and Lisieux and Vire and Falaise were permanently altered; the fa- miliar markings of an ancient countryside—the church spires, the schoolhouses and civic halls, the roads, the trees, the parks and the extensive farmland—all had been ground into dust, and were literally unrecogniz- able. One survey of the damage to the cultural heritage of Lower Normandy connected the loss of these famil- iar buildings with a loss of communal orientation, as if some sort of cultural compass had been knocked off course: “ The church spires which sprang from the midst of our gray houses and rose straight up to the heavens, like prayers rising from the dried lips of our ancient ancestors, have disappeared by the dozens.” A “return to normal” in such circumstances was quite ob- viously impossible, for large parts of Normandy could never be recovered. 49
The task that French and American authorities set themselves was to restore order as quickly as possible. The Anglo-American military authorities had made the restoration of political order a principal aim of the lib- eration, and it had occupied a good deal of the preinva- sion planning. An entire military echelon was created and labeled G-5, or Civil Affairs; within each division, Civil Affairs officers were tasked with the work of im- posing order: that is, finding
Wherever we stopped crowds ran forward to shake our hands and clamor for autographs. Fruit and flowers were thrown into jeeps and carriers as we drove past dense and enthusiastic people; in return we threw out cigarettes and sweets onto the pavements where they were immediately seized upon by an arguing swarm of townsfolk. The windows and shops were bedecked with colors and flags and patriotic slogans hung across the main street of every town and hamlet…. This was Victory indeed. Now for the first time we understood why the British Western Expeditionary Force had been renamed the British Army of Liberation! At first, it
had sounded a little cynical to us, toiling and fighting amongst the frigid Normans who only half seemed to appreciate our presence among them. Now we under- stood full; it was as if a veil draping the inner soul of France and hiding her true visage had suddenly been lifted to reveal a shining and cheerful countenance; a menace which had hung over her life for four long wea- ry years was gone—gone they hoped for ever. 47
N
ORMANDY ’S COUNTENANCE, HOWEVER,
could not have been described as cheerful or shining during and after the summer of 1944.
An initial assessment of Caen found that, in this city that had once housed 60,000 people, there was habita- tion left for a mere 8,000 and that returning refugees would have to be evacuated again. Meanwhile, the area between Tilly, Falaise, Argentan, and Vire had only one- fifth of its previous houses left standing. As one somber report by a British official put it on August 30, “there will be no greater war problem in the whole of France than exists in Calvados at the moment.” 48 About 125,000 people in this department alone were designated sin- istrés, or war victims; of those, 76,000 had lost every- thing they owned, including their homes. By the end of August, over one thousand civilians had been hurt or killed by stepping on buried mines. Allied military au- thorities set up temporary refugee camps to try to limit
civilian movement in the wartorn areas, but refugees avoided them, only desiring to be allowed to return to their towns and assess the scale of the damage. They did so “regardless of whether their homes still existed, of the danger of booby traps, and of the availability of food.”
Normandy, a region of ancient traditions and habits, had not changed much in the previous century; yet in the summer of 1944, two million foreign soldiers laid waste to its once-placid precincts. Caen and Lisieux and Vire and Falaise were permanently altered; the fa- miliar markings of an ancient countryside—the church spires, the schoolhouses and civic halls, the roads, the trees, the parks and the extensive farmland—all had been ground into dust, and were literally unrecogniz- able. One survey of the damage to the cultural heritage of Lower Normandy connected the loss of these famil- iar buildings with a loss of communal orientation, as if some sort of cultural compass had been knocked off course: “ The church spires which sprang from the midst of our gray houses and rose straight up to the heavens, like prayers rising from the dried lips of our ancient ancestors, have disappeared by the dozens.” A “return to normal” in such circumstances was quite ob- viously impossible, for large parts of Normandy could never be recovered. 49
The task that French and American authorities set themselves was to restore order as quickly as possible. The Anglo-American military authorities had made the restoration of political order a principal aim of the lib- eration, and it had occupied a good deal of the preinva- sion planning. An entire military echelon was created and labeled G-5, or Civil Affairs; within each division, Civil Affairs officers were tasked with the work of im- posing order: that is, finding
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