Juliette Brault can never forget D-Day. She was supposed to be married. Then invading Allies bombed her Normandy town on June 6, 1944, and she discovered that her fiance, Georges, was missing and presumed dead. Among the minor casualties were her wedding dress and white shoes. Fortunately, Georges eventually turned up safe, and the two were married on June 23, a garage standing in as a chapel. The mayor called it "love in the ruins." The bride, wearing brown lace-up shoes donated by a U.S. Army officer, served army rations at her wedding dinner. "Not only did the Americans liberate us but they made our marriage," Juliette recalls. Now grandparents and pensioners, the Braults still live near Utah Beach and still thank the Yanks. They plan a 50th wedding anniversary open house for U.S. veterans. A sign in their living room says, "Welcome our beloved American friends."
Emotions run high on the Normandy coast this month. Both for returning Allies and for the French people they liberated from Nazi occupation, D-Day remains an indelible memory. Sometimes the jubilation of victory is mixed with the pain of remembering loved ones lost in the carnage. Often it is tinged with the sad remembering loved ones lost in the carnage. Often it is tinged with the sad knowledge that the D-Day generation, now in their 70s and 80s, will celebrate this year their last big anniversary.
Spry spy. One man with vivid recall is Guillaume Mercader, who was chief of the French resistance on Normandy's coast. A professional bicycle racer, he had a permit to train along what became D-Day invasion beaches. Under the eyes of German soldiers, he carried plans of their defensive positions, rolled and hidden in the tubes of his bike, to Allied agents. Now 80 years old, Mercader remains fit and trim. In his only concession to age, he has cut his bicycle runs down from 60 miles a day to 18. Decorated with America's Bronze Star and France's Legion of Honor, Mercader downplays his wartime heroism. "It was our duty," he says, "the only way to regain our liberty and our dignity."
Odile Mugler's memory is of fleeing from D-Day bombing on St. Lo to a 10-foot by-4-foot trench her father dug outside town. She was 15. Together with her parents and three young brothers, Odile hid in the trench for 40 days. They sat and slept on damp, cold stone that wore through her dress and left her bottom bare. They had no light or heat, and lived on flour diluted with milk, "but we were better off than the Bosnians," she recalls. "We had hope of liberation." One morning as her father read from a prayer book, U.S. soldiers arrived and took the family to a refugee camp. "The Americans were amazing," Odile says. "They had air mattresses, food we hadn't seen in years, and all of it brought from across the sea. We couldn't thank them enough."
Others feel more resentment than gratitude. Like all wars, D-Day took its share of innocent civilian lives. Some French still question why the Allies bombed cities rather than military targets like railheads. Horror stories are plentiful_the mother who refused to admit the baby at her breast was dead, or the woman coming from her kitchen with a soup bowl as she saw her dining room, husband and children blown up only steps away. One French woman, who asked that her name not be used, remembered in tears how her brother and sister were killed in D-Day bombings. "Fifty years later, the pain is no less," she says.
The French also bloodied their hands. Dr. Pierre Martin, now 89, recalls how after D-Day the French used German prisoners of war, crawling on hands and knees, to locate and explode mines left on farmland, sometimes at the cost of their lives. "People don't talk much about this anymore," he says. Most French, even those who lost close relatives, now stress the joy of liberation.
But for many U.S. veterans who return to the American cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach, the first emotion felt comes closer to fear and trembling than to joy. Some 9,000 white marble crosses mark graves of soldiers who died. Some vets kneel at the graves of Army buddies, in tears and guilt. "Why him and not me?" is a common thought. Yet even those haunted by D-Day for half a century, postponing a visit to the cemetery for decades for fear they couldn't take the strain, often go home relieved. They say they will now think of D-Day in a new light. The fallen were not left in some haystack; they were buried on manicured lawns with full military honors.
To honor their sacrifice, 14 Allied heads of state, including Bill Clinton, will take part in a June 6 ceremony at Omaha Beach to be televised live around the world (among the missing will be German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, an omission from the invitation list that has stirred controversy). In addition, religious services, fireworks, dinners and balls have been laid on up and down the beaches. In Vierville, Jean-Pierre Chedal-Anglay will open his magnificent 18th-century house and give each veteran a diploma as "an honorary citizen of Omaha Beach." He says, "If it were not for the Americans, we'd have ended up in a Nazi concentration camp."
Franc emotions. Stores all over Normandy have signs saying "Welcome to our Liberators." The merchants clearly hope to profit. But commercialism is minimal. Vierville, for example, rejected a scheme to sell bags of Omaha Beach sand.
Nowhere is the welcome likely to be warmer than at Ste. Mere- Eglise, the first French town liberated. Some 650 American vets will stay with local families there. Ties are particularly strong, thanks to Simone Reynaud, the English speaking wife of the mayor there in 1944. She put flowers on the graves of U.S. war dead, photographed them and then wrote their families with details on how they died. To show her gratitude, she kept on writing weekly to veterans and their families in America for 44 years until her death in 1988. In return, she got their love. One mother mailed Simone the last Valentine her soldier son sent before dying on D-Day.
Simone's son, Henri-Jean, the local pharmacist, now writes the letters. "This anniversary is a bit sad," he says. "It will be the last great occasion." Most veterans from now on will be pensioners, too old or infirm or too poor to return. "When they can no longer come, I will go speak to them in America," he says. "I will dedicate myself to the memory of their sacrifice for as long as I live." No statesman could say it better. Fifty years after D-Day, France has not forgotten.
