Chanoine Bertreux , a former missionary in China, was parish priest of Trevières from 1934 to 1952. He left an account of the events, reproduced below.
...Before June 5th, many aircraft reconnaissances announce upcoming events.
5 June
Bombings on the coast towards Maisy and Saint Laurent. Aircraft battles towards Longueville - Englesqueville.
At the beginning of the night, rockets and projectors on the Vierville-Saint-Laurent-Colleville coast.
6 June German troops from Trevières were alerted at 2 a.m. It's the Disembarkation. At dawn, first naval shells on Trevières. A victim in L'Etard, wounded. We're fighting on the coast, very active aviation. The news is contradictory: nothing precise throughout the day
From 6 to 7 June quiet night
7 June At 9 a.m., large explosions that shake the village.
At 9:30 a.m. a shell crashed a building on Octave Mirbeau Street.
The naval parts intensify their firing, controlled by the aviation that continues to crisscross the skies of Trevières. Dead people, wounded people everywhere. Many people leave the city, take refuge in pre-prepared trenches, or go to the countryside to find shelter in the ditches. Fires are on. The whole of Rue des Bretons, the town hall, the post office and the girls’ schools are on fire. The streets are cluttered with debris, threaded metal: lamentable appearance. We pick up the dead, we heal the wounded. Volunteer stretchers do their duty under the machine gun.
We now know that the Americans are fighting in Vierville, Saint-Laurent, Colleville.
In the evening, around 10 p.m., the artillery calmed down, but resumed at the dawn of Thursday morning.
8 June
Intense bombardment which will not cease until Friday evening 9 June.
The American troops are approaching. It is believed that in the distance, on the hills that dominate the valley of the Aure, there are commandments, orders, which are not in German. Fusillade between Surrain and Trevières. The Americans are progressing, crossing the river to the east and infiltrating the countryside towards Mandeville.
Still dead among our inhabitants. Some are temporarily buried in a trench in the Presbyterus. Civilians are struck in their shelters by shrapnel. Four deaths and several serious injuries in one location, most of which belong to the same family.
The Germans arranged in tirailleurs, still hold the road from Trevières to Bayeux. Intense shooting through the Aure Valley, continuous bursts of marine shells. Aircraft squadrons, in a continuous round, machine-gun everything that moves. We pray in trenches, shelters or ruins.
The church, already damaged, is hit. The bell tower and the nave collapse around 6 o'clock in the evening. Reinforcements are brought by the Germans. Their tanks keep firing. The night of 8th to 9th is very hard. The ships draw from the coast; the Americans draw from nearby hills to the north, and , as the encirclement movement has begun, still draw from Mandeville to the west. The Germans have artillery in Dungy, south, and respond. The fires continue and their flames rise into the darkness. The hours are distressing, and those who still remain in Trevières, the few inhabitants who have remained in the shelters, feel that they have little chance of escaping from the machine gun that constantly, shakes, tears, kills houses, roofs, trees, ruins. Under this flood of shells and bullets, which screams and whistles and shakes the ground, each bows his head and prepares himself to appear before God.
9 June
At the dawn of this day, we wonder what will remain of Trevières, and what the number of victims will be.
At 7 a.m., Canon Bertreux and retired Captain Turbert will visit the trenches together. In the night the Germans dug new defenses. Near these works, Canon Bertreux, who has just given the sacrament to a wounded man, is arrested as a spy, soon joined by Captain Turbert, who discovered two new deaths, and who is also arrested.
Put in secret, while a council of war sits, they decide to shoot them both in front of the church. However the execution is delayed, and the soldiers bring them through fields. The countryside is riddled with shell holes; the trees of the slopes are broken, torn, shredded, within a radius of one kilometre south of Trevières. At every moment, the two prisoners expect, and say, to be shot and thrown into the bushes.
In a command post, hidden under the trees, the captives finally appeared before a senior officer, who told them that they would be shot on the front of the assembled regiment. The hours pass, rather long, but the battle is getting closer. The Americans advanced by Aignerville, will encircle Trevières. Long shot. The two prisoners are ordered to disappear, in the opposite direction to the American advance: they disappear!
It's 5:00. We're fighting in the Pont de la Barre street. German tanks arrive in reinforcement, with columns of infantrymen, Bernsq and Bricqueville. House by house, Americans move forward. Germans cut into the rubble still hold. In the trenches covered with civilians, it turns out that if the entrance is occupied by the Americans, the Germans keep the exit, and all shoot each other over the landed refugees.
Navy artillery shells are now looking for German positions south of Trevières, towards Rubercy, towards the Tourailles, where shrapnells burst to cut the reinforcement roads.
German troops are tired, seem less disciplined. Two civilians, Mr Planchon and Mr Frémont, were killed coldly at Camp-Martin, for no reason, without provocation; a third, Mr Jules Martin barely escaped the same fate.
In the direction of Beau-Moulin, at 7 p.m., the Germans retreated, and were chased through the marshes. They're still in Dungy, from where they'll radiate all night with their tank, but the Americans are virtually masters in the city. Before night, they collect the French who come out of shelters or rubble, and head towards the trenches in the North, where the survivors spend the night in the custody of the liberators.
However, the battle continues in the houses where German soldiers are still cut off, and the aviation machine-guns constantly. On the Place du Marché, in the streets of the Gendarmerie, of the Halle, on the road to Bayeux, buildings, with fire grenades are on fire.
We organize the rescue with a few brave inhabitants who held during the battle, and it is the fight against fire with means of fortunes. Women, young girls make the chain, bring the water drawn from the shell holes. Men, in defiance of the danger, make the part of the fire, turn off fireworks that turn on all sides and manage to save the village from an almost total disaster. The wounded were bandaged; the most seriously affected were taken to Bayeux Hospital. The dead are gathered. How wonderful devotions have been revealed in these tragic times!
Trévières, one of the first cities in France taken by the Americans, lost its usual appearance as a pretty and peaceful village of Normandy, but it covers freedom!
10 June and subsequent days
Disembarkation troops flock; tanks, motorized artillery, convoys, begin their endless race. Hundreds of thousands of men examine by passing our ruins, for much first vision of war in France; ruins that for a long time still German aviation will strike in its night attacks, and that will tremble under the gusts of D.C.A.... In these ruins of the French people, they are again living.
Let us keep in our prayers the memory of our dead.
Miss Marguerite CROSVILLE
Mr. and Ms. Arthur PROUTEAU
Mr. Georges VASSEUR
Ms. Laetitia LECUYER
Mrs. JORET
Miss Lucienne DURAND
Miss Madeleine DURAND
Mr. Jacques DURAND
Miss Nicole DURAND
Mr. Georges FENAND
Mr. Jack THE SIDE
Mr. Daniel Lemarquend
Mr. Leon PLANCHON
Mr. Emile Fremont
Mr. Albert ANCELIN
Mr. Norbert ELIE
Ms EGASSE
Oh, my God! Give them eternal rest