MY TRIP TO FRANCE. Part Five: The Bridge and St. Mere

Thursday, May 31, 2012    

Day 5

John and Rachel out on the drop zone, a cow pasture beside the Inn.

The traffic in this tiny town is much slower than Paris traffic.  I hear the scooters going by fast this morning, obviously to work, but it is only once in a while.  Compared to Paris, I am not risking my life walking here.

            In Paris, I kept smelling a fried butter smell like the skin of a croissant.  In Valognes, I smell fresh bread and sometimes coconut.  Going down the street I would also, in Paris smell roasting meat from which they would make kebabs.  Unfortunately another smell, that of a heavy urine smell hung in the lobby of our Hotel.  Fortunately our room had no such odor but smelled clean and fresh.

The Inn originally was a barn for the Manoir which is the building behind the Inn on the left.

This morning began with breakfast in Saint Mere at a hotel restaurant where other military personnel were eating as well.  We rode with the team in the rented car.  The breakfast consisted of fresh fruit, jams (with jars perfect for sand collection!), bread, plain yogurt, ham and cheese.  The team had a pow wow in the lobby and we were off to see the drop zone. 

Let me back up for a moment to the breakfast.  Two very old and very tiny ladies shuffled into the dining area.  They were greeted warmly by other soldiers in uniform.  One of the men came over and told us the women were World War 2 nurses who served here during the D Day fighting.  Rachel immediately slipped away and helped them get their food in her natural friendly way.  They talked and laughed with her as she assisted them.  The “nurses” must have been at least 85 or 90.  They shuffled over to their seats just as spunky and alert (and joking!) as anyone half their age.  The whole mood changed.  It began a day FULL of mood changes.

We meet Vivian and her husband.

Our next stop was the Drop Zone.  We pulled over and walked to where we overlooked a cow field and Noah let us know this was the Drop Zone for the jump on Sunday.  A big stone house was next to the field and a small river (the Merderet) ran between us and the house along the field.  Noah went over to talk to those in the house.  Soon we were summoned (leaving the car) to come to the house.  We crossed back over the bridge that went over the river and were greeted at the house (a Bed and Breakfast Inn) by small flags on a rope along the retaining wall.  Then we met Vivian.

The menu is posted in the dining room.

Vivian was an absolute delight.  She had gray/white hair (unusual in France) which hung freely to her shoulders.  She was wearing a white T-shirt with the Airborn insignia printed on the front and “Join the Army” on back.  She was as tall as Rachel maybe 5’6”.  But her magic lay in her articulation of and passion for the history of DDay in its details.  She knew dates but only to place them deep within each story she told of a plane, or a soldier, or a location she was describing.  The six of us were completely caught up in her words and in the palpable love she had for each of them, those soldiers, planes and places.  One question from us would begin another discourse filled with richness rarely felt in so short a narrative.  Indeed she took us back 68 years.  We were well aware she was filled with many, many other stories and would have been happy to tell us if time was not a factor. 

We can't get enough of Vivian's DDay stories.

The team, including the newest honorary member.  John, Rachel, Vivian, Aaron and Noah.

She then gave us a tour of the Bed and Breakfast Inn.  She had been storytelling in the front room/dining area where she had memorabilia, maps and photos all over…shrine-like almost.  We entered the hallway and ascended the stairs to the second level and the attic.  The attic loft was the family suite, with several beds and other furniture.  She informed us that nothing matched because it was acquired over time and all old furniture.  The one wall was stone bricks and the other walls (slanted because of the roof) had windows with beautiful views.  We then got the tour of the second floor finding rooms all in differing color schemes and with the same approach to furnishings, used and cheap, but so well decorated that it seemed put together richly.  The economy of it was noticeable only after her explanation.  On the doors were framed battalion numbers and on the wall along the great hall were at least sixty framed photographs of the area during World War 2 of soldiers, civilians and the aftermath of DDay.  No carnage, only faces, scenes, so uplifting and beautiful amidst the war.  Tears flowed (mine!) as I gazed at them all.  Tears flow as I write and remember Vivian’s voice and those photos.

             As we went outside and I looked again at the plain house I had seen before, the stones suddenly became deeply colorful, the roof taller and widows glistened.  I stood on hallowed ground.

The loft family room in the Inn.

  Vivian was not done with us.  She explained that the Inn used to be a barn.  We saw the original everything as she pointed it out.  The barn door that let in the livestock, the spot where the creek/river used to go through that turned the mill inside the barn (now sealed off and the river route where it is today).  Then we all took in the truth.  That tiny bridge (The La Fière Bridge), which we crossed so unknowingly, just a stone arch bridge over a creek, was one of the two bridges the airborne were sent in to take on DDay.  It was arguably the fiercest battle WW2.  The Germans and the Allied Forces did not want to destroy it because the Germans needed to use it to continue their conquest of France, and the Allied Forces wanted it so they could stop Germany and push them back, which is ultimately what happened and why St. Mere celebrates the day every year.  Vivian is a great part in that celebration. 

Here we can see the door (now the entry door to the Inn) which used to be the barn door for the animals and just to the right of the door we can make out a low arch of stones where the river ran through to turn the mill.  This arch was closed off years ago, and the river diverted to its present course.

In 1944 the Germans dammed up the river and flooded the entire area so the bridge was the only way through and past St. Mere.  They felt it would offer them protection from enemy assaults.  Those who owned the barn (now the Bed and Breakfast) and Manoir (the manner house just beside it) huddled at the windows and shot at Germans who had crossed the bridge.  They later hid under the Manoir while the Allied Forces and Germany fought for two weeks for possession of that home.  



The La Fiere Bridge under which flows the Merderet River.

Vivian has books for sale that those who were there wrote about DDay.  One in French has stories about those who as children in the area helped the Allied Forces in their own way on that day (and the weeks that followed).  We are going there again and I will buy a couple of the books (in English).  Vivian is from New Jersey and then while working in North Carolina as a general’s aide, met her husband, a Frenchman (and I think a soldier) and they were married.  She is now 61 and has lived in France for thirty years, bought the building four years ago; remodeled it and now they run their La Fière Bed and Breakfast.  They own it and, despite the nay-sayers who said they’d never last, have prospered, booking six months in advance now.  But it is Vivian’s love for the heroes of DDay and the place so many fought for that is her true success.  This, she declares, is her dream—to be able to retell and relive these stories!

The tractor is mowing the Drop Zone for the big event!  The Merderet River, the pathway next to the Inn leading to the pasture. 

Flags of the Allied Forces that Vivian displays for this week of celebrations.

Across the road from all of this is the amphitheater that is used where these celebrations are held. This year is the first year the Golden Knights are participating.  Rachel is slated to be the first to jump carrying the POW flag.  She has said to more than one person that of all the jumps (about 2,500 to date) she has had the opportunity to do, this is by far going to be the most memorable.  Makes me so emotional every time I hear her say it!  I can’t possibly describe how that whole experience with Vivian changed all of us, but during the entire drive into St. Mere, the six of us talked about it and what we loved about it and how we felt.

Paratrooper John Steele jumped into St. Mere and got hung up on this church steeple during the heaviest fighting.  He survived by playing dead while hanging there for two hours.  A German aimed at him to shoot him.  A mortally wounded Allied Soldier shot and killed the enemy before he could kill Steele.  John owes his life to this selfless soldier who last act was to save a fellow airman.  This memorial is a permanant reminder of that story.

 We got to St. Mere and ended up in the market square/church parking lot.  It was a big empty place where a flea market (as we would call it in the states) was set up with vendors of all sorts.  There was a cheese man, sewing notions and yarn, jewelry, wine, wooden trinkets for kids, fashion accessories and so forth.  A church stood on the square and all around were stores and eateries that celebrate DDay either with the displays in their windows or the names of the stores.  The street we hung out on the most was Rue de D. D. Eisenhauer (spelled this way) and the square was Place de 6 Juin (the date of DDay).  There is a parachute and a "statue" of John Steele who, on DDay in the dark of early morning, got caught on the church spire trying to land at St. Mere.  Vivian had told us the story so when we saw it, it brought chills.

In St. Mere is the market in the church parking lot.

We bought some delicious cheese from a vendor in the market square (the cheese man).  He was so friendly and we loved watching him cut it.  All the vendors at around 1:00pm closed up shop and carried all their wares away in big white trucks.  The square was completely empty within 30 minutes.

Of course we order the kebab and it was fabulous!

More and more military groups are arriving and they all seem to be here together with us.  Most are American but we see some British as well.  We bought a kebab for lunch at a tiny café and ate it along a short wall that was perfect for sitting on.  It was the best kebab yet!  They had piled some French fries on top of our kebab but we couldn’t eat all of them.  It was quite a trick to manage the fries while eating the sandwich beneath.  We got to talk to four US soldiers who had come from Germany for the jump and they told us there would be 50 jumpers on the Sunday program and that it is done every year.  They will use the mushroom parachutes of the DDay time.  They are called static-line chutes.

 Our guys stationed in Germany who got chosen to jump for his year's celebration.

Rachel and I walked into a bakery shop around the corner.  A man and an older woman, whose name is Kathy, came in and because of Rachel’s uniform they started to talk to us.  It turns out that Kathy was brought here by her son (smiling next to her) to visit the place where her father, who was a pilot, had dropped soldiers on the first mission in on DDay.  We listened and of course I cried, but those few minutes, as mothers who were brought by their child to this place, and both being outgoing personalities, left with multiple hugs and another unforgettable few minutes, paying tribute to heroes of 1944.

Jeeps and dressed up people were everywhere, re-enacting in their special way.

 That evening we found ourselves in the Hotel courtyard, talking and eating some bread, cheese and jam.  I had still not bought a banana, something I wanted to do to get some fruit with breakfast.  France has very little fresh fruit with their meals and I mentioned a banana on the first day.  So it has become a joke with the group.   Finally Amy brought me a banana from her room. 

Debriefing in the courtyard.  It's an honor for me to be with them this week.

 

I still had a few things to get at Shopi, the grocery store up the street.  So I left the courtyard “debriefing”, a handwritten map in hand, and began my first foray alone.  The map the others made for me was not quite detailed enough to prevent me from going onto the wrong street (which I did per incorrect notes of the map).  But I fortunately kept track of landmarks and backtracked to the correct turn.  I walked up to the store and picked up a couple of items.  I needed plastic flatware and lo and behold, no one spoke English.  They didn’t seem interested in my gestures.  One checker finally tracked down (in a store the size of my living room) a fellow employee who could speak a little English.  When she told them what I was saying a sound an “ahhh!” all around and a flurry to lead me to the object of my search.  While ringing me up I pointed to my blue Walmart bag (they have no grocery bags, expecting we will bring our own or use a box they have emptied) and said, “See?”  She smiled and said, “Ah!” Then I said, “From America.”  She walked around and felt it, showing her friend the new, strange material.  I pointed to the word on it and pronounced “Walmart.”  She gave an interested but unknowing nod.  I broke my baguette in half and loaded the bag up with the spoons and jam and headed back, feeling the assurance of knowing my way back to the hotel.  It was my first independent adventure of this trip.  Very exciting.  I am so grateful it did not end in my getting lost  Four Golden Knights would have been out looking for me!