The Bitter Road to Freedom: The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe by William I. Hitchcock
Authors: William I. Hitchcock
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tragic-comic air when, after a long discussion about the desperate civilian needs in the city, the British major asked if Monsieur Poirier could suggest a good hotel where he might have a hot bath. Poirier, stunned, gathered his composure and gently informed the good major that there were virtually no buildings at all left standing in the city.
The liberation of the dead and ruined city of Caen now unfolded over the course of ten days. The British Sec- ond Army pushed up to the northern bank of the Orne, but then stopped, as the Germans had strategically redeployed in a fortified line to the south, on higher ground, and were able to shell, with perfect accuracy, the center of Caen. For the civilians in the northern half of the city, this was finally the time to evacuate, and Poirier, along with the wounded and refugees of the Bon Sauveur and other shelters, were transferred by the Anglo- Canadians to Bayeux and elsewhere in liberated territory. Not until July 18 did the British, deploying carpet bombing on the German positions to the east and south of the city, manage to push the
Germans out of Caen altogether. Again, the scale of the bombing was titanic: 2,100 aircraft from the RAF and
U.S. Eighth and Ninth Air Forces dropped more than eight thousand tons of bombs on the German lines, fol- lowing which British VIII Corps managed to push the stunned German defenders a few miles south. Though the Germans remained entrenched along the Bourgue- bus Ridge, from which they would not be dislodged un- til early August, the city of Caen was at last free. It was also a largely uninhabited, stinking, burning wreck. By the time the Canadians entered the northern part of the city on July 9, the survivors of Caen were unable to show a great deal of warmth for their liberators. Caen had “suffered an undeserved fate,” said one clergy- man. 30 “ The Canadian and British armies have been received in Caen without great enthusiasm,” wrote one of the Benedictine sisters of the Abbaye of Nôtre Dame de Bon Sauveur. “ The residents have been too shaken by the memory of days of agony and mourning which we have experienced, and by all the civilian dead, by all the grief. There was not on this day the joy that we might have had if these ‘friends’ had saved the women, the children, the old people. There has been too much suffering.” 31
* * *
C
AEN WAS THE largest city in Normandy to be destroyed, but dozens of smaller towns and vil- lages met a similar fate. Some were badly hit on
D-Day itself; others, like Falaise, would be chewed to pieces toward the end of the Normandy campaign as the Germans were slowly, brutally hammered during their retreat eastward. The extent of the destruction in Normandy profoundly shaped the way that soldiers— those sent to France to liberate civilians—came to un- derstand the war. It was impossible, after some of the things these men saw, to think about the war as “a great crusade,” as General Eisenhower had called it on D- Day; or to speak of killing Germans, as Monty had done on D-Day, as “good hunting.” Those soldiers who wrote diaries, letters, and memoirs—and thousands did so— uniformly avoided such clichés. The experience was simply too lugubrious for any but direct and accurate description.
A British soldier carries a girl through the wrecked streets of Caen, July 10, 1944. Imperial War Museum
“ Villers-Bocage was a sight I’ll never forget,” wrote one British trooper. “ There was just enough room for two lorries to pass through between two heaps of rubble which once were houses; the whole place was absolutely razed to the ground and just outside, in the fields, was a complete mass of bomb holes.” The once lovely town of Lisieux, home to a glorious cathedral and a site of many religious pilgrimages, was “abso- lutely flat, words can’t describe the destruction, Cov- entry and London are nothing compared with this.… If a bomb had been placed in every house
The liberation of the dead and ruined city of Caen now unfolded over the course of ten days. The British Sec- ond Army pushed up to the northern bank of the Orne, but then stopped, as the Germans had strategically redeployed in a fortified line to the south, on higher ground, and were able to shell, with perfect accuracy, the center of Caen. For the civilians in the northern half of the city, this was finally the time to evacuate, and Poirier, along with the wounded and refugees of the Bon Sauveur and other shelters, were transferred by the Anglo- Canadians to Bayeux and elsewhere in liberated territory. Not until July 18 did the British, deploying carpet bombing on the German positions to the east and south of the city, manage to push the
Germans out of Caen altogether. Again, the scale of the bombing was titanic: 2,100 aircraft from the RAF and
U.S. Eighth and Ninth Air Forces dropped more than eight thousand tons of bombs on the German lines, fol- lowing which British VIII Corps managed to push the stunned German defenders a few miles south. Though the Germans remained entrenched along the Bourgue- bus Ridge, from which they would not be dislodged un- til early August, the city of Caen was at last free. It was also a largely uninhabited, stinking, burning wreck. By the time the Canadians entered the northern part of the city on July 9, the survivors of Caen were unable to show a great deal of warmth for their liberators. Caen had “suffered an undeserved fate,” said one clergy- man. 30 “ The Canadian and British armies have been received in Caen without great enthusiasm,” wrote one of the Benedictine sisters of the Abbaye of Nôtre Dame de Bon Sauveur. “ The residents have been too shaken by the memory of days of agony and mourning which we have experienced, and by all the civilian dead, by all the grief. There was not on this day the joy that we might have had if these ‘friends’ had saved the women, the children, the old people. There has been too much suffering.” 31
* * *
C
AEN WAS THE largest city in Normandy to be destroyed, but dozens of smaller towns and vil- lages met a similar fate. Some were badly hit on
D-Day itself; others, like Falaise, would be chewed to pieces toward the end of the Normandy campaign as the Germans were slowly, brutally hammered during their retreat eastward. The extent of the destruction in Normandy profoundly shaped the way that soldiers— those sent to France to liberate civilians—came to un- derstand the war. It was impossible, after some of the things these men saw, to think about the war as “a great crusade,” as General Eisenhower had called it on D- Day; or to speak of killing Germans, as Monty had done on D-Day, as “good hunting.” Those soldiers who wrote diaries, letters, and memoirs—and thousands did so— uniformly avoided such clichés. The experience was simply too lugubrious for any but direct and accurate description.
A British soldier carries a girl through the wrecked streets of Caen, July 10, 1944. Imperial War Museum
“ Villers-Bocage was a sight I’ll never forget,” wrote one British trooper. “ There was just enough room for two lorries to pass through between two heaps of rubble which once were houses; the whole place was absolutely razed to the ground and just outside, in the fields, was a complete mass of bomb holes.” The once lovely town of Lisieux, home to a glorious cathedral and a site of many religious pilgrimages, was “abso- lutely flat, words can’t describe the destruction, Cov- entry and London are nothing compared with this.… If a bomb had been placed in every house
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