The Bitter Road to Freedom: The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe Read Online Free PDF Page A

and the bit- tersweet recovery of freedom after the horrible ordeal
    of German occupation. Even today, in the Norman dé- partements, local residents cannot tell the story of the liberation of France without bowing their heads, and grimacing. 5

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    IT WAS RATHER a shock,” wrote Corporal L. F. Ro- ker of the Highland Light Infantry in his wartime diary, “to find that we were not welcomed ecstati- cally as ‘Liberators’ by the local people, as we were told we should be…They saw us as bringers of destruction and pain.” Fellow soldiers concurred: Ivor Astley of the 43rd Wessex Infantry Division noted in his memoirs that, far from waving flags and handing out bottles of bubbly, “the French peasants to whom the shell-torn villages and ruined farmlands belonged” were “sullen and silent; if we had expected a welcome, we certainly failed to find it. Some of the people looked utterly be- wildered.” Major Edward Elliot of the Glasgow High- landers, whose diary is studded with acute observa- tions, noted that “the French are having a pretty thin time at present. First the Germans dig holes all over the place and pull down houses, then we shell and bomb their homes and drive their vehicles all over the fields. Naturally their attitude to us is inclined to be a bit stiff; however, I think they are mostly for us, though
    they are desperately tired of the war and the misery it has caused them.” In Creully on June 16, Major M. H. Cooke of the Royal Scots noted that “the people came out in force, but for the most part they stood gravely and seriously watching us. Many nodded, and once or twice there was a little clapping, and once a French- woman rushed forward crying, ‘ Welcome, Messieurs, welcome to France.’ It was still a little disappointing.” 6

    Why such a chilly reception? Some observers tried to explain this French reticence as typical of the Norman character. A. J. Liebling, the war correspondent for The New Yorker, noted the “foolish talk in the British news- papers…about the Normans’ lack of enthusiasm,” and chalked up such stories to “correspondents who ac- quired their ideas of Frenchmen from music-hall turns and comic drawings. One might as well expect pub- lic demonstrations of emotions in Contoocook, New Hampshire or in Burrillville, Rhode Island, as in Nor- mandy, where the people are more like New England- ers than they are like, for instance, Charles Boyer.” 7 A British Civil Affairs officer also relied on such typolo- gies to explain the surly civilians: “ Taking into account the naturally reserved disposition of the Norman, we have received an enthusiastic welcome.” 8

    But there may have been something else behind the
    diffidence that Allied soldiers encountered among the liberated peoples of Normandy. Though Normandy looked to Ernie Pyle like a peaceful rural idyll, this was an area that had endured four years of a bitter occu- pation. 9 Consider the département of Calvados, home to four of the landing beaches (Sword, Juno, Gold, and Omaha). A productive region of cider, apples, brandy, butter, and milk, Calvados had some 400,000 inhabit- ants at the start of the war. It was one of the most po- litically conservative parts of France, and Calvadosiens were known for their independence, their dislike of state intervention, their pro-business attitudes, and strong Catholic traditions. In the national elections of 1936, when France voted for a left-center Popular Front government, Calvados bucked the trend and went fur- ther rightward. The department actually became a re- cruiting ground for the far-right Croix de Feu, which strongly opposed the rise of the Popular Front. What- ever the prewar inclinations of the region, however, opinion in Calvados during the war was firmly anti- German and grew distinctly more so as the war went on. The reason for this was geographic: Calvados, like all the northern coastal departments, was heavily in- vested with German soldiers