D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

Omaha, the need for determined leadership in battle.

The ugly side of Liberation reared up almost immediately, with denunciations and revenge on women who had had liaisons with German soldiers. Marshall and Westover saw one woman scream ‘collaboratrice! ’ at another. The crowd turned on the accused woman and started to rip her clothes. Marshall and Westover, with a couple of American journalists, managed to save her. In Paris too the head-shaving began. On the balcony of a local mairie, barbers attacked the hair of women rounded up for ‘collaboration horizontale’ with Germans. The crowd below yelled its approval and applauded. A young woman who had been present recorded afterwards how much she despised herself for having been part of that crowd. And a young officer with the 2eme DB wrote, ‘We are sickened by these dregs who mistreat women with shaved heads for having slept with Germans.’ Altogether some 20,000 Frenchwomen are estimated to have had their heads shaved in the summer of 1944.

Disillusionment between liberated and liberators also increased. Americans and British saw Paris not just as a symbol of Europe’s freedom from Nazi oppression, but as a playground for their amusement. ‘As we neared the city we were seized by a wild sort of excitement, ’ wrote Forrest Pogue. ‘We began to giggle, to sing, yell and otherwise show exuberance.’ American supply services, to Eisenhower’s irritation, commandeered all the best hotels to lodge their senior officers in style. No French people were allowed to enter without an invitation. They were naturally jealous of the food. Simone de Beauvoir described the Hotel Scribe, reserved for foreign journalists, as ‘an American enclave in the heart of Paris: white bread, fresh eggs, jam, sugar and Spam’. In the centre of the city, US military police assumed full powers, often treating the local gendarmerie as auxiliaries. Soon the French Communist Party labelled the Americans ‘the new occupying power’.

Pogue himself was shaken to find that the Petit Palais had been taken over, with a large sign announcing the distribution of free condoms to US troops. In Pigalle, rapidly dubbed ‘Pig Alley’ by GIs, prostitutes were coping with over 10,000 men a day. The French were also deeply shocked to see US Army soldiers lying drunk on the pavements of the Place Vendome. The contrast with off-duty German troops, who had been forbidden even to smoke in the street, could hardly have been greater.

The problem was that many American soldiers, loaded with dollars of back-pay, believed that hardship at the front gave them the right to behave as they liked in the rear. And American deserters in Paris, combined with a few Milo Mindbenders in the supply services, fuelled a rampant black market. The capital of France became known as ‘Chicago-sur-Seine’.

Sadly, the behaviour of a fairly unrepresentative minority soured Franco-American relations more profoundly and permanently than was understood at the time. It distorted the huge sacrifice of Allied soldiers and French civilians in the battle for Normandy, which had freed the country from the suffering and humiliation of the German Occupation. It also diverted attention away from the massive American aid. While combat engineers deactivated mines and booby traps, over 3,000 tons of supplies per day were rushed to Paris, bringing much of the Allied advance on Germany to a virtual halt.

‘Paris had fallen very suddenly,’ the Central Base Section reported. ‘People thought that we had an inexhaustible supply of food and lots of clothing and plenty of gasoline for their cars. Our offices were as crowded as the Paris Metro.’ There was an overwhelming demand for penicillin as well as morphine for civilian use. Major General Kenner, SHAEF’s chief medical officer, organized a monthly allocation to be made to the French government. Meanwhile, the medical services of the American, British and Canadian armies did whatever they could for injured and sick civilians in their area.

The success of the Allied double invasion, first in Normandy and then on the Mediterranean coast, had at least spared most of France from a long-drawn-out battle of attrition.

30. Aftermath

News of the liberation of Paris had provoked almost as much emotion in the rest of France as in the capital itself. In Caen, Major Massey with the British civil affairs team wrote, ‘I saw Frenchmen in the streets crying with joy as they took off their hats to the playing of the “Marseillaise”.’ But the citizens of Caen and other stricken towns and villages feared, with justification, that amidst the jubilation in Paris their suffering would be forgotten. This proved even more true as the war moved towards the German border. De Gaulle finally visited Caen in October and promised his support, but two months later the minister of reconstruction warned the region that it would be ‘many years’ before Calvados could be rebuilt.

The cruel martyrdom of Normandy had indeed saved the rest of France. Yet the debate about the overkill of Allied bombing and artillery is bound to continue. Altogether 19,890 French civilians were killed during the liberation of Normandy and an even larger number seriously injured. This was on top of the 15,000 French killed and 19,000 injured during the preparatory bombing for Overlord in the first five months of 1944. It is a sobering thought that 70,000 French civilians were killed by Allied action during the course of the war, a figure which exceeds the total number of British killed by German bombing.

Although some villages and areas of countryside had been miraculously spared during the battles, large tracts were devastated, with cratering from shells, trees stripped bare and orchards destroyed. A pestilential stench from the rotting corpses of bloated livestock still hung heavily in the air. Allied engineers had dealt with as many as they could, using bulldozers, or incinerated them with gasoline, but once the troops moved on, farmers had little but their own strength and a spade to bury the bodies. Casualties continued to rise from unexploded shells and mines after the Liberation. Around Troarn, more people are said to have been killed after the battle than during it. Many children died from playing with the grenades and ammunition they found abandoned by both sides.

As well as the towns and villages flattened by bombing, the hamlets and stone farmhouses, which the Germans had used as strongpoints, had been wrecked by artillery and mortar fire. In the departement of Calvados alone, 76,000 people had lost their homes and virtually everything they possessed. The looting and unnecessary damage caused by Allied soldiers only added to the bitterness felt by many in the strongly mixed emotions of the Liberation. A number grumbled that they had been better off under the Germans. ‘There are those who celebrate the landings,’ said the wife of the Vichy mayor of Montebourg. ‘As for me, I say that it was the start of our misfortunes. As you know, we were occupied, but at least we had what we needed.’ Although most Normans would not have agreed with her political sentiments, the vast Allied presence in Normandy felt oppressive. In any case, as the more perceptive Allied soldiers understood, the local population had much to mourn, even beyond their own losses. Many were anxious about husbands and brothers still imprisoned or taken for forced labour in Germany. There were even greater fears for local members of the Resistance arrested by the Gestapo and transported to concentration camps.

Allied civil affairs teams, in cooperation with the French authorities, did what they could for food distribution, refugees and the restoration of essential services. Some towns, however, remained without water or electricity until well into the autumn. Sewerage systems were damaged and the infestation of rats became a major threat to public health. In Caen, only 8,000 homes were habitable for a population of 60,000. Few skylines remained recognizable after the spires of ancient churches had been blasted down by tank and gunfire to destroy possible German observation posts. A major source of resentment came about because German prisoners of war put to work by the Allies received regular army rations, according to the regulations of the International Red Cross. This meant that they were eating better than local civilians.

Despite the appalling strains placed upon the social fabric of Normandy, the population had discovered a ‘camaraderie du malheur’, a solidarity in suffering. The young had demonstrated an astonishing degree of bravery and self-sacrifice in the Defense Passive, while most Norman farmers, despite a reputation for independence and even tight fists, had displayed a great generosity to the thousands of refugees fleeing the bombarded towns. The Saingt family, who owned a brewery at Fleury, on the southern edge of Caen, had sheltered up to 900 people during the battle in their deep cellars, providing them with everything they could. Even amid the fear during the bombing of the city there had been remarkably few disputes in the refuges, with almost everyone showing a ‘discipline exemplaire’ even over the distribution of food. The prolonged crisis, as many noted, had not only proved a great leveller, it had brought out the best in people.

Many British and American troops, overwhelmed by the joyous welcome they received as soon as they left