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Sergeant York of WW 2

February 16, 2016/0 Comments/in Blog /by normandytours_admin

What a single soldier can accomplish. “Sergeant York” of WW 2 was a 101st AB paratrooper.

The low swampy ground west of Utah beach had been created by the Germans blocking rainfall drainage ditches over the four years of occupation. Only four slightly elevated roads crossed the swamp land thus creating a mobility impedance to the invading 4th Division. At dawn on June 6th paratroopers,who,had dropped hours before, seized the west end of the four beach exit roads to facilitate speed and restrict movement by the enemy. On the hill at the west end of exit 4 was the village of St Martin de Varreville which contained four large gun batteries, under concrete, aimed at the waters off the beach. The RAF had partially bombed them out of existence in May and June but still the 150 man gun crews remained billeted in 10 clustered chateau/homesites/barns in the Mesieres community a few hundred yards away. Lieutenant Colonel Frank Cassidy gave Staff Sergeant Harrison Summers the mission to take the buildings, eliminate the occupiers and open the road to Ste Mere Eglise. For five hours Summers, sometimes alone other times accompanied by one or two soldiers, who became casualties quickly, finally cleared out the last resistors having killed or captured 150 Germans. He said “kicking in doors and spraying lead was my mission”. In the largest building 15 were eating breakfast unaware of the chaos outside. “They never left the table”. 50 were rounded up escaping through a back door.

Summers was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. He died in 1980’s as the “Sergeant York of WW 2”. Today the all the buildings are intact except for bullet holes. The gun bunkers that were never operated are patched farm storage shields. LTC Cassidy’s HQ building is occupied by a young family oblivious of the buildings history. To walk amidst the buildings fingering the bullet holes and spranged walls is nostalgia personified. One wooden door had a line of bullet holes for which the farmer was given $20 as reparations. He putied the holes and bought a few more chickens. Eventually the putty dried and the bullet holes reappeared.

A Normandy Tour

February 16, 2016/0 Comments/in Blog /by normandytours_admin

As Americans and Canadians we, in North America, view Normandy in terms of the past hundred years when World War 2 demanded our attention for six long hostile years.

A Normandy Tour must also encompass our past history to 1066 when “William the bastard” left his fortified castles in Falaise and Caen to depart the Norman beaches, cross the Channel and invade England, successfully, through Hastings and the nearby village of Battle. From his Norman flag he transferred one of the three golden lions to the English flag. When Winston Churchill, in 1939, had the British lion roar at Hitler’s invading forces it undoubtedly was in French and English.

A tour of Normandy encompasses the architecture of the Roman and Gothic periods when the tall cathedrals speared the clouds. Stain glassed windows and flying buttresses mirror themselves in both countries. The thick foundations and walls engineeringly designed to carry the tall weighty ceilings. towers and spires for the most part with stood the ravages of two world wars. The villages and towns share a common design in the community churches with their stone walls and square belfry towers. Our paratroops prayed the evening before dropping into villages such as St Mere Eglise and Ranvtille. The footprint of the English churches they left duplicated those they entered in battle. On the grounds of the 8th Air Force Museum, in Savannah, is a replicated English village church as used by our bomber crews before and after flights. The Gothic fingerprint of Normandy, now in Georgia, is most apparent.

Should a Normandy Tour encompass its southwestern corner include Mont St Michel. An island a mile off shore accessible by an elevated tide free roadway topped by a magnificent cathedral shrine of the past. A walled fortified village interconnected by a mile long narrow spiraling street commenced in 899 AD. It looms like the Rock of Gibraltar or the Dover castle as sentinels of the seaways.

A Normandy Tour will also lead you through hedge rowed farms and orchards of considerable economic strength. Tudor and Elizabethan houses in England are here called Normanesque. Animal husbandry, grain, fishing and diary products “bring home the bacon” one might say.

On June 6th, 1944 there were 20,000 French civilian casualties. A like number of Allied men and women. Those who died but were not interned back home now rest in two American, two Canadian, one Polish and 17 British Cemeteries. Many of our wounded returned to hospitals in England and later died remain in England.

ATROCITY at the ABBEY ARDENNES

December 19, 2015/0 Comments/in Blog /by normandytours_admin

An atrocity unfolds. War brings out heroics, love for one another and infinite barbaric cruelty and atrocities. The German hierarchy searched for brutal personalities, dressed them in black uniforms, given a name easily abbreviated to SS and a symbol of a skull as a badge of impending death.

Even now so many years after their obliteration the new German army only quietly refers to them as the “Black Soldiers”. The past history of the SS exploits is a shunned subject. Let me briefly describe the actions of one of the colonels in 12th SS Panzer Division whose reputation so proceeded him that he warned his soldiers “do not expect to be captured” by the Allies’ troops.

In the town of Falasie, Normandy, 50 SS “youngsters” (as they were all 17-22) held the high school to the very last man. There were no wounded for later memoirs. In nearby, la Merri, 25 SS soldiers were holed up in barn fighting off the Canadians. Suicide was chosen as the alterative to being captured.

Colonel Kurt Meyer, commander, 25th SS Panzer Regiment of the 12th SS Panzer Division occupied a walled commune, the 12th century Abbey Ardennes, 10 miles south of the Juno invasion beach and just two miles from the city of Caen.

From one of the four turreted towers of the ancient abbey building Meyer could easily observe the Canadian tanks and infantry advancing through the waist high wheat fields towards the village of Authie, a half mile to his left. A telephone line and radios connected his observation post to antitank guns hidden in the stocks of wheat. The Canadian Shermans passed through Authie continuing on towards the Carpiquet airport ignoring the abbey commune. Silhouetted against the early afternoon sky background the anti-tank guns fired accurately and destroyed the tanks.

From behind the 10 foot high walls the SS troopers and tanks charged the half mile into Authie and the Canadian infantry. The Germans successfully captured 120 men. The dead Canadians soldiers were laid across the road leading to Bures and run over by the German tanks and tracked vehicles. The wounded were shot. Desecration of the dead was profound. In taking the prisoners back to the abbey headquarters many to slow or out of line were shot. The remaining group was split in two. Twenty four were directed through a gate into the commune enclosure.

The remainder were marched towards Caen. A German supply truck going to the abbey drove into and over the POWs. The narrow sunken road denied escape. Those still breathing were shot.

With in the commune the Canadians were allowed to wash in the animal drinking trough and then herded into a stone walled stable. The sergeant in charge went to the abbey church building being used by Meyer as his regimental headquarters. Standing beneath the elevated pulpit Meyer said “Get rid of them we cannot handle prisoners”. The statement’s meaning was clear, eliminate the prisoners. Called by name, one by one,after shaking hands all around, each soldier was taken from the stable, lead around the corner, up four steps into a garden and shot in the back of the head. (see a photo of the garden go to www.NormandyBattlefields.com/Virtual Tour and click on #24). The bodies were buried haphazardly in shallow graves throughout the garden.

The commune remained in German hands until late July . The Colonel Meyer had become the commanding major general of the division. Over June, July and August the 77 day campaign closed with the decimated Germans fleeing eastward into Belgium. A few of the SS involved in the abbey event survived to later become witnesses at Meyer’s trail. The Canadian atrocity had been discovered so the hunt was on for the SS general, previously a colonel. Belgian resistance men were killing Germans when found. Meyer was captured, in September, hiding in a pig pen (that still exists) at Spontin. About to be shot, on the spot. his rank announcement that he was a general, uniformed as a private, saved his life. Captured generals were wanted by the allies.

His trial was held in the Dachau concentration camp (near Munich)administration buildings. He was found guilty and sentenced to death by firing squad. His successful appeal gave him life imprisonment in Canada’s Dorchester Federal prison in New Bruswick province. The Canadian Appeal court officers had concluded that “We all shot POWs. That’s war.” Ten years later a reporter from the Montreal Star newspaper went to the prison for an interview and surprisingly discovered Meyer had been returned to a German jail where he had weekend passes and had been elected as the President of the German Waffen SS Association !! He was released shortly thereafter and became a brewery representative selling his company’s products to the Canadian occupying troops PXs and bars !! He visited the Abbey Ardennes. Monsieur Jacques Vico, who as a young boy with his brother Pierre had discovered the murdered soldiers bodies “would not shake hands with Meyer”. Meyer died of a heart attack shortly afterwards.

There is much to visit on the grounds. The garden has a memorial wall of enlistment pictures of the murdered soldiers. During the battle period the occupying German soldiers sculptured insignias on the soft stone walls. The trough and stable remain. Little has changed, in the commune, beyond the essential repairs to the war torn abbey/church. Truly a place of remembrance and sorrow.

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Sergeant York of WW 2

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