The Village of the Martyrs

The atrocities the Nazis committed are legendary, but most of the attention falls on the Holocaust, and rightly so.

One of the atrocities committed by the SS in World War II is almost never spoken of in the United States, but it is something that is still taught in French schools, and it is but one example of many where the Third Reich took out its anger on civilians.

In 1944, near the town of Limoges in Limousin, French Resistance fighters killed an SS officer and captured another. As the D-Day landings in Normandy had just taken place, it was a time of hope for the French and panic for the Germans.

Over the following days, the Germans planned their retaliation for the killing of their officer. That retaliation was played out June 10 in the town of Oradour-sur-Glane.
SS soldiers - including some from Alsace, which had been disputed by France and Germany for nearly a century - rounded up almost 700 civilians and murdered them.

The men were shot at various points in the small town, and the women and children were herded into the church where they were machine-gunned and then burned.

The entire town was razed, with every building looted and burned.

When General Charles de Gaulle saw the city and heard of the atrocity committed there, he ordered the city be left as a reminder of what happened. To this day, visitors can walk the dead streets, passing what used to be houses and businesses, many with signs telling the barest details of the former inhabitants.
The streets today have been cleared of rubble, much of that having been done when the dead were removed a few days after the attack.

One of the few survivors wrote in his memoirs that when the Germans rounded them up, everyone thought it was an identity paper check. They were herded to different locations before a grenade going off signaled the Germans to simultaneously open fire.

The whole town is a moving experience. It reminded me somewhat of Pompeii, but even though Pompeii was ruined and its inhabitants died in their masses, there is one key difference - Oradour-sur-Glane was wiped out by people, not a devastating volcanic eruption.

Walking into the church where hundreds lost their lives, it was hard to imagine what kind of 'soldier' could set up a machine gun and mow down women and children.Bullet holes still scar the inside of the walls, and at one spot there is a memorial to those whom the village had lost in the First World War. In place by World War II, it too is perforated by machine gun bullets as the same enemy visited its hatred on the town.The town's cemetery has a memorial to those killed, with gravestones throughout the cemetery bearing images of "our dear martyrs." At the memorial, two coffers hold the last remnants of some of those who were never identified - charred pieces of bone.

Even though I know the history of many of the atrocities committed in World War II, seeing such a stark reminder of what those numbers in history books actually mean was a moving experience.

64 Years Ago Today...

The tide was out, and the waves lapped gently at the undisturbed sand. A few people walked along the shore farther up, but this was no beach for sunbathing or revelry. It had only been a short six decades since this was the scene of the action on what has been called the climactic day of the 20^th century.

Omaha beach was a far cry from what it was on that day. I stood at the waterline and faced inland, seeing the bluffs thousands of men had to assault. I’d seen all the D-Day movies and thought I had as good of a sense as any civilian can of what those men went through. One thing I can say now is that not a single one of those movies, be it The Longest Day or Saving Private Ryan, can do justice to how far it is from the waterline to the small shale berm that offered the first real cover.

I walked across the beach, trying to imagine what it must have been like to see the cliffs not full of green vegetation, but enemy soldiers, the muzzle flashes and tracers creating a terrible light show. I realized I couldn’t do it. A split-second later, I realized I didn’t want to.

Above the beach stood roughly 10,000 solemn reminders of what the ground I stood on cost. The immaculately kept lawns and monuments at the cemetery at St. Laurent are interrupted only by white crosses and stars of David, each signifying a life lost. Most have the fallen soldier’s name and unit on them. Some do not. The etching on one marble cross I looked at read, “Here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God.” I wondered who he was. Probably a lot like me.

The cemetery is not just for the soldiers killed on D-Day, but includes the dead from the invasion to the end of the war. Some graves were even marked after the cessation of hostilities.

A few rows away and maybe 30 yards down, I saw two old men. Each wore a VFW hat, and they laid a bouquet of flowers by a grave. I wanted to know their stories, and I wanted to thank them. But most of all I did not want to interrupt their reunion, such as it was, with someone they had clearly cared a great deal for. I swallowed and then headed back to my car.

It was only a short drive to Pointe du Hoc, the sheer cliffs that, on June 6, 1944, U.S. Army Rangers had scaled and taken. The battlefield has not really been altered since that day. The whole area is still scarred with craters from naval guns and bombs. Visitors can walk all over, inside what is left of the German bunkers and in the craters. As I stood in the base of a crater, the world disappeared. The hole was about 10 feet deep, and 20 feet across. How anyone could have survived such a bombardment I will never understand.

Just east of Omaha beach, on the road back to the town of Bayeux, is a German gun battery at Longues-sur-Mer. The four gun bunkers still house the artillery that fired on Allied warships during the invasion. As with Pointe du Hoc, the area was open, and I was able to go in each bunker. All were damaged to some extent from aerial and naval bombardment.

As I drove to Bayeux, I was struck by how beautiful the countryside is. Stone houses dot the landscape amid fields secluded by the hedgerows that had been hell to fight through. I rolled the window down and heard the distant clanking of a cowbell. Storybook villages and stone manors passed in the distance.

The town of Bayeux itself was alive. Being so close to the anniversary of the landings, it was adorned with French, British, Canadian and American flags. Red, white and blue ribbons hung from the shops, and welcoming French citizens smiled at me as I stopped for food. I did not have time to see the famous Bayeux Tapestry, but it is displayed in the town as well.

My final stop was another cemetery, near the town of Bayeux. This one was much smaller than the American cemetery, split between British and German soldiers. It stands as a stark reminder that, even though as an American I was most interested in discovering what my countrymen had done, it was a multinational Allied force that liberated France. And while the Germans were the enemy, I couldn’t overlook the fact that some of the men buried a few yards away were really no different from me.

I left Normandy the next day. It is a land of immense natural and cultural beauty, despite the constant reminders of the life-and-death struggle of the past century, and many long before that, even. It is a place I wish everyone could see, because, though I left Normandy, Normandy will never leave me.