The Bitter Road to Freedom: The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe by William I. Hitchcock Read Free Book Online Page B

the thousands of British soldiers in the field who had been badly beat- en up by the Germans for over a month now. “ What a lovely sight we saw at about 10:00 p.m.,” wrote one soldier in his diary. “Hundreds of Lancasters passing over on way home. Could see them on their bombing run somewhere over Caen in more or less single file. One can now understand the term ‘ They queued up to bomb.’ Could see the flak—a grand sight which inspires confidence.” Of the same raid, Captain W. G. Caines of the 43rd Wessex wrote, with boyish enthusiasm: “On the hillside which we were occupying we had an excel- lent grandstand view of the raid, bombers just flew in, unloaded their deadly cargo and turned and made off across the Channel. This was indeed a pleasant sight for us, the sky was literally black with bombers.” Gun- ner J. Y. White of the Royal Artillery was no less ani- mated in his diary: “July 7: This evening about 1,000
    of our brave bombers came over in a continual stream and bombed Caen. The bombs could be seen leaving the planes through field glasses. It was a grand and awe inspiring sight to watch our bombers passing overhead for over an hour in a continuous stream, right through the heavy flak, drop their load, circle around and make for home.” 29

    One can hardly blame these beleaguered soldiers for the pleasure they took in seeing someone else take a turn at plastering the Germans; they could not know that few Germans were actually being hit. Still, it is quite unimaginable that words such as lovely, grand, and pleasant would have occurred to the citizens of Caen at that moment. From within the buildings of the Lycée Malherbe, Joseph Poirier too saw the bombers overhead, “blocking out the sky.” He was then thrown against a wall by the force of the explosions. He tried to calm the screaming women and children in the Lycée, “but what can you do to calm these poor people who had already experienced the bombings of June 6–7 and who, for a month, had been living the lives of soldiers on the firing line?” As reports came in, Poirier learned that the university and its wonderful library were in flames. The church of Saint-Julien was destroyed. The battered remains of the town hall were crushed. A shel- ter on the rue Vaugueux, near the church of Saint-Ju-
    lien, took a direct hit: 54 people, including many of the church staff, were killed. Fires erupted across the city. “I feared that I would lose my mind in the face of such a calamity,” Poirier wrote. Another 250 names were add- ed that night to the lengthening rolls of the dead.

    On the morning of July 9, Poirier noticed a new de- velopment: the few Germans still in the city were withdrawing. This was an organized retreat to higher ground south and east of the city; but for those Caen- nais in the northern quarter around Le Bon Sauveur, this marked the start of their liberation. In the after- noon, along the rue Guillaume le Conquérant, Poirier encountered a column of Canadian infantry—French Canadians—who handed out sweets and cigarettes to the bedraggled citizens of the quarter. In a gesture indicative of the continuity between pre-and postwar France that most local officials insisted upon, Poirier now withdrew from safekeeping his tricolored sash, the symbol of his municipal office, and put it on so as to be prepared to greet the British commanders. “I was overcome by emotion, for I recalled at this instant that on the morning of 18 June 1940, it was I that had the sad privilege of greeting the first German officer who arrived in Caen…. But today, the man who would soon present himself was our ally, one of the determined British who never lost faith in victory and who now re-
    turned to us the right to wave our flag and to sing the Marseillaise.” Poirier greeted the commander of 201 Civil Affairs Detachment. They shook hands warmly, and Poirier acknowledged that they both had tears in their eyes. Yet the meeting took on a