Uniformed American soldiers poured out of the bars and cafes around June 6 Square, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes.
Phil Collins shouted from the megaphone. American flags fluttered from chimneys, windows, overhead wires and even from the necks of golden retrievers trotting along with their owners.
Is this really France?
“This is the 53rd state,” said Philippe Nekrassoff, the local deputy mayor, as he walked through the square, home to Roman landmarks and medieval churches, while American paratroopers in maroon berets fought with A group of local teenagers play football. “Americans feel at home here.”
This is Ste.-Mère-Église, a small town in northwestern Normandy with only one main street. about The town is home to 3,000 residents and is home to cattle pastures and towering hedgerows.
In the early morning of June 6, 1944, hundreds of American paratroopers landed in the nearby area. American flag above City Hall.
“This was the first town to be liberated on the Western Front,” read two marble plaques in front of the building, one in French and one in English.
The story of that liberation is now woven into the town’s character.
While most villages in Normandy host annual D-Day commemorations, the Church of Sainte-Notre-Dame hosts six parades, 10 ceremonies, 11 concerts, and a parachute jump by active-duty American paratroopers.
Statues, plaques and historical panels adorn many street corners. Store names include D-Day, Bistrot 44 and Hair’born Salon. Hanging from the church steeple is a mannequin of John Steele, the American paratrooper immortalized in the 1962 film “The Longest Day,” with his parachute billowing just as he did on June 6, 1944.
At first glance, the town seems too unabashed, too literal for a country obsessed with self-criticism and understatement.
But stop just a moment and the town reveals a deep, genuine and heartwarming relationship with the American paratroopers.
Photographer Jacques Villain has been documenting the village’s celebrations for 25 years and is the driving force behind the just-published bilingual book “Ste.-Mère”.
He noted that the town’s first D-Day commemorations were smaller and took place while the war was still raging in Europe. On the first anniversary, Major General James Gavin, then commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, sent 30 soldiers from Germany to attend the ceremony.
Just after midnight on June 6, 1944, waves of low-flying aircraft roared over St. Mel’s Church and the surrounding area. Thousands of parachutes rained down from them, flying in the sky like confetti.
A parachute fell directly into the trench dug in Georgette Fleiss’s backyard, where she huddled with her parents and neighbors. Cliff Maughan is affiliated with it. Ms. Fleiss called him “our American.”
“To me, he represented something extraordinary – liberation,” said Ms. Fleiss, now 96.
She recalled how a German soldier stationed at her home suddenly appeared in her field of vision, his rifle pointed at the trench. Ms. Fleiss’s father jumped to his feet and begged the Germans not to shoot. Miraculously, he agreed.
Soon after, the German soldier realized the Americans had taken the town and surrendered to Morne, who Ms. Fleiss said was unusually calm and handed out chewing gum, chocolate and cigarettes. He curled up on his parachute and took a nap before setting out to fight at dawn.
“We kissed him goodbye passionately,” Ms. Fleiss said. “And a friendship was born.”
As the first place to be liberated, Saint-Mer-Eglise soon became the first place to bury fallen American soldiers – three fields surrounding the village were turned into a cemetery, where 13,800 fallen American soldiers were buried. Local men dug the grave.
“It’s just a small village with 1,300 residents,” said Marc Lefèvre, who stepped down in 2014 after 30 years as the town’s mayor. coffin. This left a huge impact.
One of the tombs was built for Brigadier General. General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. died of a heart attack five weeks after landing on Utah Beach. He is the eldest son of former US President Theodore Roosevelt.
A Life magazine photographer captured the mayor’s wife, Simone Renaud, laying flowers at the mayor’s grave.
America’s grieving mothers reacted immediately. Hundreds of people wrote to Ms. Reno, imploring her to visit the grave and send back photos. She agreed.
Henri-Jean Renaud, 89, recently thumbed through a photo album containing carefully organized letters to his mother, all handwritten 80 years ago.
Some women later came to visit the graves themselves. They dined with the Reynolds and sometimes stayed at their home. “I’m still in touch with a family that has kids my own age,” Mr. Reno said.
He said he still “from time to time visits a soldier’s grave to say hello”.
Years later, American veterans began making pilgrimages to St. Mary’s Basilica for the annual D-Day commemorations.
There was only one hotel in the town, which was later renamed after Mr. Steele. So Ms. Reynolds, who died in 1988, formed the Friends of the American Legion, and many locals joined in and hosted visitors at her home.
Volunteers spent the afternoon driving around trying to help veterans find the exact spot in the fields, swamps or trees where they first landed.
“For most of them, it was there that they experienced their first loss, their first strong emotion, their first friend killed, their first injury,” Mr Reno said. “These are the hallmarks of your life. So they’re always trying to find that starting point.
In 1984, Ms. Fleiss was teaching Greek and Latin at a high school in Alencon, about 140 miles away. On June 6 of that year, she was watching television when she suddenly saw on the screen an American soldier returning to Saint-Mere-Eglise. He was wider and wore a baseball cap instead of a helmet. But he also has the same laid-back demeanor. She jumped in her car and rushed back to her childhood town.
“This is my American,” she said. “We fell into each other’s arms.”
Today, 80 years later, there are not many veterans left. Their successors now gather in the town square, where Mr. Steele and his fellow World War II paratroopers are celebrated and remembered as veritable gods.
Thousands of re-enactors, tourists and French citizens also came to pay their respects.
“It’s overwhelming,” said 43-year-old Jonathan Smith. “I didn’t even take 10 steps this morning before kids stopped me to take pictures and shake my hand.”
The local tourism board expects 1 million people to flock to the town this year for 10 days of commemorations and celebrations.
They include the descendants of Americans who commanded on D-Day, from General Roosevelt Jr. to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied commander in chief.
“I found I needed to come here and be a part of it,” said Chloe Gavin, the daughter of General Gavin, who himself returned regularly before his death.
On a recent evening, a local family welcomed more than 200 American soldiers into their home for dinner.
Across the street from City Hall, an American flag hung by soldiers in 1944 hung on the wall, and three generations of the Ofre family sat in the garden with three U.S. paratroopers from Puerto Rico. Andrée Auvray, the family matriarch, talks about her memories of the D-Day invasion.
She was nine months pregnant and living on a horse farm outside the city that had been requisitioned by soldiers from a battalion of the German army. Just days before the Allied landings, she said, soldiers set out for Cherbourg, France, where they were sure the Allies would attack.
“We were so lucky,” said Ms. Overe, now 97 and a great-grandmother of 13. “It would have been a bloody battle.”
Three American paratroopers landed in her garden.
A U.S. military hospital was soon established next door. Her farm became a clinic and a temporary home for civilians fleeing the fighting that took place after German troops tried to retake Saint-Mere-Eglise. They feed 120 people a month. She gave birth to her son, Michel-Yves, on a camp bed because her bed was given to the injured.
Michel Ive is about to turn 80.
Ms Overe described missiles exploding nearby and she feared the Germans would retake the town, but was thankful they did not.
“We went through this pain together,” she said of the American soldiers and French residents. “That’s why we have such a precious relationship.”
