Once again, the sky is filled with a continuous, ever-intensifying hum. We hurriedly get dressed and go out into the courtyard. Grandma was also not sleeping, and saw them from the window of the bedroom. Like big black umbrellas, they rain down on the fields across the way, and then disappear behind the black line of the hedges. It is in this sort of half sleep that I begin to see fantastic shadows, somber shapes against the clear blackness of the sky. The need to sleep slowly overwhelms me, but my eyes remain wide open. But I sit on my bed and continue to study the rectangle of cloudless night carved out by the window. “It’s just like the last time,” says my mother, “when they had to bomb the blockhouse on the coast.” And we all go back to bed. Then the noise decreases and becomes vague and distant. Yet there seems to be an endless number of planes mysteriously roaming about theirengines create an incessant hum. The only thing you can hear is the distant murmur of a bombardment in the direction of Quinéville. I rise out of bed, and soon the whole family is up as well. But the noise gets louder, and the sky begins to light up and get red. Since there are no military targets here and the railway is more than five miles away, we normally do not pay much attention. It was time to go to sleep.Ībruptly, the noise of airplanes breaks the night’s silence. I thought, but then refused to let my mind wander further. I had received news that he had landed in North Africa, so perhaps he was now in Italy? Perhaps it will be soon. D DAY NORMANDY LANDINGS FREEWith sadness I think of a similar June night in 1940 when my boyfriend, Jean, had left to join the Free French. In this way, from my bed, I am taking a moment to reflect on the end of this beautiful day. The daybed faces the window, itself wide open on the night. Since the evacuation of Cherbourg, we have given our bedroom to my grandparents. We are both sleeping on a daybed that we open up every night in the common room. this Monday, the fifth of June, I have just gone to bed next to my mother. In the month of June, the days no longer have an end and the night is really just a long twilight because the darkness is never complete. He is one of the very first American servicemen to arrive in France. The paratrooper she meets is a pathfinder sent to illuminate the landing areas for thousands of paratroopers who would soon land in Normandy to begin the invasion. Hamel-Hateau lived close to the village school and spoke some English. In her memoir, Madame Hamel-Hateau, a schoolteacher in Neuville-au-Plain, near Sainte-Mère-Église, captures the dreamlike magic of the night of June 5–6. These sights were terrible, frightening, but also oddly beautiful. Soon the Norman night was filled with strange sights as well as sounds: the landing of parachutes and gliders, the dancing lights of artillery, the red glow of villages in flames. In response, German machine guns and artillery were firing furiously, contributing to the din. The aircraft were flying close to the ground and reaching targets. But this night was different something new was happening. Allied bombing of strategic sights throughout northern France had become a common event. In the past months, civilians had grown accustomed to planes flying overhead-hundreds of them-almost every night. The sound of airplanes was by no means a novel phenomenon. Is this it? they wondered, overcome with fear and excitement. They rose from their beds, ran outside in their nightclothes, peered at the sky, and tried to figure out what was happening. The constant rumble of plane engines and the distant roar of artillery-these two sounds combined to create what one witness called “a ceaseless storm.” Together they awakened thousands of Normans from their deepest sleep of the night. Just before midnight on Monday night, the fifth of June, hundreds of airplanes could be heard flying south over the Cotentin Peninsula. For Normans, the invasion began with noise.
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