news archives
politics

politics archives 1 2 3 4 5 III-2004: 10 18 22 25 27 31 IV-2004: 09 13 15 26 V-2004: 03 03-2 07 13 18 19 21 23 26 VI-2004: 06

on being liberated: normandy, and iraq

“Hardy, the 83-year-old resident of Caen sought to dispel the idea of Allies being greeted with flowers and cheering crowds. "We didn't dance at the liberation," Hardy said. "I was angry at the Americans." The D-Day landings were followed by weeks of intensive aerial and naval bombings that leveled almost the entire city of Caen and many other towns in the area. Hardy said that her house had been destroyed by Allied bombings, her neighborhood turned into a "crater" and many of her childhood friends buried in the rubble of the explosions. When she met an American officer soon after the city was liberated, she refused to shake his hand, she said. "That's not saying that I didn't appreciate the boys who came here and died," she said. "But you have to understand what it is like to be bombed like that." Terry Lovick, a British paratrooper who arrived in Normandy on a glider in the evening of D-Day, said he had seen very few French people in the days after landing. "They were all in their cellars," he said. By contrast, in Belgium and the Netherlands, Lovick said, troops were greeted with large crowds.

email email_abelard [at] abelard.org

© abelard, 2004, 7 june
all rights reserved

the address for this document is https://www.abelard.org/news/politics040607.asp

variable words
prints as 1 A4 pages (on my printer and set-up)