JUNE 7, 1944, VU D'ENGLESQUEVILLE-LA-PERCEE
(extract from " The Renaissance of Bessin " )
"The night of the 6th to the 7th is pretty quiet. A few shells fall again. I think these are the German batteries of La Cambe."
"At 7:30 a.m., we look at the tanks heading towards Grandcamp between two hedges of infantrymen throwing candy at the children."
"(...) (Later, 7 afternoon or maybe 8 June) I'm going to Vierville looking for an American doctor. But in Vierville, I'm arrested, kept on sight, interrogated. I'm driven to a camp in Saint-Laurent. This incident gives me the opportunity to admire the grandeur of the Disembarkation in all its reality. The artificators in a frightening vacarm, blow up the beach mines by tens at a time. A powerful material comes out of the ships and appears waves under a waterproof shell climbing on the beach like crabs to get on the road to Vierville (these were probably amphibious trucks, type DUKW), and the track that has just been built in the cliff and that joins the road to Port-en-Bessin."
"(...) (Later), soldiers accompany us to the entrance of this village where I find my family and some of the inhabitants of the High Road evacuated early in the morning following an enemy fire which had caused the death of the only American soldier who was to fall into Englesqueville. We all return at night to our homes, which are unharmed, where we resume our normal life, quickly familiarizing in the following days with the landing troops among whom we find some who speak in French, and even in Norman patois. It is easy for us to recognize that there are French origins in them."
"( ... ) We see for several weeks new material. Although we still hear the sound of the distant cannon, we have absolute certainty that the "boche " is gone forever and that the dawn of its annihilation and victory appears."