When I woke up around 6 a.m., the doors and windows were open, it was windy. My neighbor was sitting on my bed, I don’t really know what she was doing there. She must have been afraid. The bombings made a huge noise. Afterwards, everything came together. We left to take shelter in a small shed. I remember there were several grandmothers in the street and everyone was saying the rosary.
Afterwards, my father and my brothers went to make a trench in the meadow with fagots on top. He thought we would be safer. I was scared. It was dark, it was humid. I was under the fire. I didn’t understand, I followed.
I was out of the trench at noon when the first Canadian arrived. He had his sleeves rolled up, his helmet with a net on it. He said to us: “Where are the Germans? », in French, with an accent. He spoke like the old Norman patois, so I understood him immediately! Around 4 p.m., Bény was completely freed. The Canadians put their wounded in a street a little further up. They asked us for cider, water, eggs. My mother went with the other ladies to bring them calva. They gave us biscuits and tea in enamel mugs. We didn’t know what it was. We asked them for toilet paper, which gave us tracing paper for writing and drawing!
What has always surprised me is the freedom we had. I didn’t see any violence. But in the following days, they began to bury the dead they collected everywhere in the first Canadian cemetery not far from us. My friend and I were going to spend our time there watching the arrivals of trucks full of bodies. The gray blankets were long like that. You could see the shoes at the end. When we are young, it makes a mark. When they were overloaded with bodies, they asked us to help. They gave us the helmet with the chain and a medal so that we could follow them. There was a hole no deeper than that. There was one who put a cross and the other, two shovelfuls of earth. They would take the helmet from us, put it on, and then that’s it. It was happening quickly. The smell followed me for years. The smell of the dead. A smell not normally found [silence].
After June 6, we felt that a great freedom had arrived. But before, from my point of view as a child, we still got along well with the Germans. We played ball with them, they spoiled us. At the kommandantur, there is this guard we knew. He had two daughters. When we went to bring the milk, he gave us toast with jam, chocolates, candies. The parents said: when you go there, you don’t eat, it’s forbidden. But we didn’t say. He wasn’t bad. It was often people who were there reluctantly…
Comments collected by Jean-Christophe Laurence, The Press