I turned to face an impeccably dressed elderly woman, a beautiful scarf draped about her neck and shoulders. She was to tell me that the Hermes scarves were for visitors with money to donate to the economy; hers was just as pretty at a third of the price. She smiled and asked in French, “Are you Catholic”. I told her I was and she proceeded to tell me about the church that we were now viewing.
It was the only church, Catholic or otherwise, that had survived the devastating spring and summer of 1944, the time of Le Débarquement, that included British General Bernard Montgomery and his 3rd Infantry Division driving inland from Sword Beach to retake Caen from the Germans on D-Day, June 6. But this was not to be an easy conquest. Instead of capturing the city in a day, Monty spent months hurling rockets and bombs against and onto the city, its French inhabitants, and its German invaders. This persistent and devastating attack turned the city into rubble. Each pile of crumbled stones and bricks from destroyed French buildings and homes, rather than making the enemy easier to eradicate, instead created another defensive barricade for the invading Hun. Not to be deterred by German resistance, Monty persisted in his determination to destroy the rats investing this house of Caen, even if that meant destroying every house and every French occupant along with the infesting vermin.
It was a breezy spring day and Adeline suggested a tour of the immediate city. As we walked she told me of that horrendous time and the terrible memories from her childhood that still haunted her. Every evening, when fighting would cease at sundown, the townspeople would walk from one pile of rubble to another. Someone would climb to the top and lay flowers for those crushed within while the rest prayed at the foot of the debris. Then the group would move to the next pile and repeat the ritual. It was a solemn nightly procession honoring those innocent people caught in the crossfire. There was no way to know who was buried under the debris. Adeline told me “it was up to God to separate out the prayers, giving some to any good Germans buried with her friends and family members, but none to Montgomery to help him persist in this destruction”. Her loathing for the man was palpable. He had bombed her beautiful city of 60,000 to a population of less than 17,000. The rubble had blocked escape routes for the French people and had prevented ambulances from getting to the wounded. The suffering was incalculable. The cathedral of Caen and the University of Caen, dating to the 15th Century, were both leveled by the bombardment. Caen was eventually rebuilt but the process took from 1948 to 1962.
Was this massive destruction necessary? Adeline and her friends have no doubt that it was not, a belief shared in articles in the local papers on that memorial day. It seems that only 300 Germans were holed up in the center of Caen, while the bombardment directed at Montgomery's troops came from the area surrounding the town. A bit of miscalculation resulted in an ancient and magnificent city destroyed and thousands of innocent people killed.
Adeline and I had lunch in a pleasant bistro. Despite using my best French the waiter's eyes lit up with excitement as he said, “You are an American. Wait one minute, please!” He returned beaming with pride, carrying a single, small ice cube which he plopped into my cold tea giving it a French “icing”. “That's not too much, is it?”, he asked.
It was a slow day in the bistro and the waiter and Adeline were friends, so he joined us at our table. He echoed her thoughts about Montgomery. “You know”, he emphatically added, “the British destroyed our fleet at Mers-el-Kébir on this day in 1940! They killed 1,300 French sailors just to keep the ships from falling into the Huns hands. Some allies! The Americans would have never done anything like that to us.'' I chose not to enlighten him to the contrary.
