Chapter 44: Jul 1944 U.S. Troops Advance West of St. Lo, France

Franklin D. Roosevelt – 6 May 1942

“Books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever.”

Shortly after the breakout from the beaches of Normandy, the allies expanded their beachhead to include portions of the hedgerow country of France. In the last chapter, we saw how they took the port city of Cherbourg as a beginning of a sweeping operation to push the Germans out of the country of France.

Just as General Rommel had taken Cherbourg back in mid-1940 and consolidated his position with the taking of St. Lo sitting on a strategic crossroads, the allies started the immediate bombardment of St. Lo to clear out the German defenders before they attacked across a wide line that made certain that they left no stragglers in their rear area.

The city of St. Lo was virtually totally destroyed except for some underground fortifications that survived the bombardment.

The civilians were warned by the allies to leave the area and move to a safer place to avoid being killed in the action. However a large number of them remained and were killed in the battle along with an unknown number of German forces that were ordered to stay at their position and not surrender under penalty of execution. It was suspected that the German high command thought that by forcing the civilians to stay in place it might deter the allies from the bombing campaign.

In a way, this “human shield” tactic had been used by the Axis before in other battles and it was not to be unexpected in the chaos of the battlefield.

The initial bombings of the area actually began even as the allies were landing on the beaches of Normandy and were intended to slow down any reinforcements sent to the beaches of the landing to repulse the allied invasion.

The fighting in and around St. Lo was close hand to hand combat style with fixed bayonets and hand grenades. The Germans were trapped like rats in a trap and their officers were reluctant to surrender due to the orders from above that indicated it would be considered treason against the Fuhrer to surrender to the allies. The ruins of St. Lo were similar to the scene in Stalingrad to the East.

One of the reasons for this brutal fighting was that one of the Wehrmacht Divisions defending the St. Lo center was the third division of the 2nd Parachute Corps. This was a highly decorated division that had survived the fighting on the Eastern Front and most of the members were in combat since the early invasion of Poland several years earlier. The unit had refused to surrender on the Eastern Front and they had broken out of the trap at Stalingrad using captured Soviet tanks and trucks as their transport. They did not allow their ranks to be filled with underage recruits not properly trained in combat and discouraged any dilution of their enlisted ranks with non-Aryan members.

Soon the pipeline of combat operations began to flow with manpower and equipment that moved inland from the beaches of Normandy and the port city of Cherbourg was back in full operation before the end of July 1944. Faced with this build-up of arms in favor of the allies, the Germans had no option other than to slowly retreat back to the final line of defense at the borders of the fatherland.

My visit to the isolated farmhouse/mansion was interrupted by the sound of slamming car doors outside and I looked out the huge floor to ceiling window in Margarite’s unheated bedroom at the scene down in the courtyard.

Several cars and small trucks had made a semi-circle in the courtyard and the men and a few women spilled out onto the gravel underneath their feet.

Margarite’s daughter Simone was out greeting the newcomers and I could tell from her generous hugs and kisses that they were definitely not strangers.

Margarite shouted at me from under the blankets,

“Come back to bed, you foolish man, I need you here not over by that drafty window.”

I could tell from her lack of concern that the visitors were not completely unexpected and that bothered me more than the fact I was totally naked and shivering in the early morning dampness.

“I take it that those men are not farm workers from the fact that they are all well-armed and look like they mean business.”

Margarite laughed at me without saying anything and she threw one leg over my thighs effectively pinning me to the mattress. In point of fact, I found no problem with this because I was already sporting my early morning wood just waiting for something to push away the boredom of not making entrance into my host’s pretty flanks.

Moments later, we were both sweating profusely under the covers locked in an age-old battle of give and take with me doing most of the giving her doing her best to take it all without protest. Unfortunately, I came far sooner than I really wanted to and knew that Margarite was equally disappointed as well.

We both reluctantly got dressed and headed to the kitchen which had the advantage of being nicely heated by a large fireplace and hot food on the stove with plenty of coffee to take away the chill in the air.

I knew right away that this was the area’s local resistance unit from the markings on their caps and belts. Of course, this didn’t constitute a uniform in any stretch of the imagination and they would still be immediately executed after lengthy interrogation if any of them fell into the hands of the Gestapo.

Simone looked at me with a little frown on her beautiful face and rudely told her mother,

“You are staying in bed a lot longer now that Mister Jack is visiting us, Mama!”

I heard a few snickers from the little pack of armed resistance fighters and saw some amused smiles on the women’s faces like they wished they were in her place instead.

One middle-aged female with a small moustache growing under her oversized nose even winked at me in a pouty way that promised me paradise if I proved not to be of the faithful category when it came to romance.