In front of the house 'Les Herondelles'
on the ferry...There was industrial action (a strike) by ferry workers and so our intended ferry by way of Portsmouth to Cherbourg, France was cancelled. Thankfully we were able to use a different ferry service that was not striking and would still leave via Portsmouth. However, it would now take us to Caen. It was the difference of a 30km drive to an hour and 45 minute drive (whatever that would breaks down to in km.) The drive was nice though and short of a few scares on the roadway (of course now that we’re in France we’re back on the right hand side of the road but John and Jessie’s car still has the driver on the right. I had to close my eyes for part of the drive because I was so confused and scared myself while trying to backseat drive/navigate.)
We checked into our house (I mistakenly called it châteaux but soon was corrected that it wasn’t. The Châteaux was down the road. I thought it just meant ‘nice house’. Apparently, not. A chateau has 50 bedrooms or so. A Chateaux ours is not, with a mere 7 bedrooms.)
Our house is an old farm house dating back to the 18th century. The owner Diana, a Brit, showed us around and got us set for our touring for the week. We will be visiting all of the beaches (or as many as we can squeeze in) and museums relating to the D Day invasion. My grandfather and 3 of my uncles were involved in the invasion. We asked if the house (being so big and old) had been used at all during WWII and indeed it had. German soldiers (37 of them I think she said) had occupied it and the officers stayed down the road at the Châteaux. Since the occupation of Normandy had mostly ‘new’ (just recruited soldiers b/c the German forces were stretched so far and so thin and most didn’t want to be there any more than they had to) most were pleasant and well regarded by the townspeople of Hemavez (the town we’re in). However one of the officers, the townspeople say, was ‘mad’. And when some American paratroopers got lost on D Day b/c of a plane malfunction and didn’t hit their landing site, a few (7, I think) were captured by the German and instead of taking them as POWs, this officer executed them and then mutilated their bodies. The other paratroopers that weren’t caught lived to tell the story. The town was so ashamed because it had happened on their territory that no one really ever talked about it until getting ready for the 60th anniversary when someone said he had been doing some research to find out who those men were. They did some more research and found the only still living survivor of that night. He gave them the names of the men, but died shortly before the memorial was made apparently. (Side note I forgot to mention: After the massacre the dog tags were taken by the German, but once they moved on, the townspeople came and at least buried the men. They were moved years later into the American cemetery but no names had been on the graves until recently.)
We checked into our house (I mistakenly called it châteaux but soon was corrected that it wasn’t. The Châteaux was down the road. I thought it just meant ‘nice house’. Apparently, not. A chateau has 50 bedrooms or so. A Chateaux ours is not, with a mere 7 bedrooms.)
Our house is an old farm house dating back to the 18th century. The owner Diana, a Brit, showed us around and got us set for our touring for the week. We will be visiting all of the beaches (or as many as we can squeeze in) and museums relating to the D Day invasion. My grandfather and 3 of my uncles were involved in the invasion. We asked if the house (being so big and old) had been used at all during WWII and indeed it had. German soldiers (37 of them I think she said) had occupied it and the officers stayed down the road at the Châteaux. Since the occupation of Normandy had mostly ‘new’ (just recruited soldiers b/c the German forces were stretched so far and so thin and most didn’t want to be there any more than they had to) most were pleasant and well regarded by the townspeople of Hemavez (the town we’re in). However one of the officers, the townspeople say, was ‘mad’. And when some American paratroopers got lost on D Day b/c of a plane malfunction and didn’t hit their landing site, a few (7, I think) were captured by the German and instead of taking them as POWs, this officer executed them and then mutilated their bodies. The other paratroopers that weren’t caught lived to tell the story. The town was so ashamed because it had happened on their territory that no one really ever talked about it until getting ready for the 60th anniversary when someone said he had been doing some research to find out who those men were. They did some more research and found the only still living survivor of that night. He gave them the names of the men, but died shortly before the memorial was made apparently. (Side note I forgot to mention: After the massacre the dog tags were taken by the German, but once they moved on, the townspeople came and at least buried the men. They were moved years later into the American cemetery but no names had been on the graves until recently.)
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