Famous for Calvados apple brandy and Camembert cheese, Normandy is a green and pleasant land dotted with thousands of British-owned second homes. Only the many indestructible reinforced-concrete bunkers and gun emplacements on the coast remind the visitor that the region was occupied by Hitler’s troops for four long years and more under military law that allowed the Gestapo and its French collaborators to torture and execute hundreds of people – and deport thousands more to concentration and death camps.
Tourists driving through ferry ports like Boulogne, Cherbourg and Dunkirk may wonder why there are hardly any old buildings. Few know that the murderous demolition which preceded the urban renewal of the ancient town centres was effected by British bombs that kill and maimed the adults and children living there. Allied airmen killed more civilians in northern France than German bombs claimed in Britain during the whole war.
Before its liberation three terrifying months after D-Day, the sirens in Le Havre wailed 1,060 times to warn of approaching RAF and American bombers. After one single raid of dubious military value, over 3,000 civilian bodies were recovered from the ruins, without counting the thousands of injured, maimed and traumatised survivors and the bewildered homeless refugees.
Here, told largely in the words of French, German and Allied eyewitnesses—including the moving last letters of executed hostages—is the story of Normandy’s nightmare war.
