3065 -
We had to house a German officer and we had been awakened around 5am on 6 June by a large movement of troops on the road, and by the order that came to awaken his leader. I immediately thought of the landing we were waiting for without believing that it would take place in part in Vierville. I raised my two children, 8 and 10 years old, the third being in Caen, and we went to the bottom of our garden, where a brief shelter had been made a few days before in a ditch. We were there because there were also my mother-in-law and the staff -- and the little dogs. Few things with me, thinking since we were staying home that I could go home a few hours later. Unfortunately, an hour later there were already no more tiles in the windows, and the house was already in a state of disaster.
We stayed all day and night (June 6-7) in our shelter with the shells passing over us. No lulls in the night, except for the felted steps of Americans who were in scouts, and here's a grenade thrown near us, forced us out. There was the Germans on one side, the Americans on the other. We went to a herbage where there was a fagotier, but we were in the middle of the battle. Americans at the foot of every apple tree.
A shot made me understand to leave the place. My children were very brave and my little boy told me that since we have to die, let it be right now. By a small way we left. There were soldiers everywhere. I noticed one calmly shaving. He'd put his toiletries in place. By crossing a field, a paratrooper descended with a bent motorcycle. At a fence we found ourselves with an American who had dressed a German condom, he spoke to us in French, after saying yes, yes, ... to reassure us and to indicate the direction to take, that we knew better than he.
We arrived in a small hamlet (Vacqueville ??) of 4 or 5 houses where we breathed a bit, but not long. The battle quickly caught up with us, my husband helped people take out their furniture because the house was burning. Here we are again in a small way in the midst of the soldiers in Indian line, one with peccari gloves wanting us to stay close to them without a doubt to protect them. That was not the case. Here are my (?) neighbors, or Germans or Americans, were fighting in the courtyard. I made the decision to turn back because how far we would have gone if we had kept ahead of the battle.
We went back to the village of Vierville and we knew that our house was partly destroyed by fire. Gathering of the population in the schoolyard. We learned later that it was a question of embarking because the Americans were not sure they had managed to get on foot. So we stayed in this yard, forming a small pile, my husband, my two children and I; my mother-in-law wanted to go back to her house and get a suitcase that she had left in the morning in the ditch. An American soldier had accompanied her. Meanwhile an officer came to show us a place along the wall where we would be more sheltered. This courtyard (of the school) was near a crossroads where men and ammunition were mounted. As some exploded our lips were yellow by the gas. There were three deaths in this yard. The German battery that was 4 or 5 km away was destroyed, so we could disperse and we took the road to Saint-Laurent. There were already many dead, to bury us again in a ditch where we spent the night (June 7-8) not without having said a few more dozens of rosary. Is that why we're still alive? When we could two days later see from a window what was the sea, we saw only boats piled together near each other.
Little anecdote: a gentleman went to get bread for his wife, (this one) finding that he had been for a very long time and did not bring bread, she did not want to believe in the landing, only after her husband had shown him 2 packs of American cigarettes.