Testimony of Marie Le Gand
Resident of Aignerville (Calvados)
In June 1944, Marie Le Gand was 11 years old and living with her family in Aignerville, a few hundred meters from the village of Trévières and 7 kilometers from Omaha Beach.
From June 6 to 9, she experienced the liberation sheltering beneath the lime kilns of Aignerville, located 150 meters from her home. The village of Trévières was finally liberated from its last snipers by the 2nd U.S. Infantry Division on June 9, 1944. Marie remembers the liberation particularly well and shares her experience with us through her personal account.
Tuesday, June 6
“On the morning of Tuesday, June 6, we left the house to take shelter under the lime kilns. In the field opposite the path to the kilns, there were about twenty American paratroopers taken prisoner by the Germans. We were joined by other locals; there were 42 of us sheltered under the lime kilns for three days. There were the dogs; we had brought feather beds. We didn’t have a freezer at the time, so my mother and Madame Dubois would both go and milk them in the morning and evening. My parents had four or five cows, but on Friday mornings they were never able to milk them. Otherwise, we ate porridge and hard-boiled eggs, the poor man’s fortune. We were all crammed together; we had fleas with the dogs, and eventually, we had lice. The men had gone out to look for food and found an American paratrooper who had a rifle. We put him in a cart to hide him from the Germans. He was injured, and Madame Duval had trained as a nurse and treated him, but it wasn’t very serious. He stayed with us for three days.”
Thursday, June 8
“During the night of June 8-9, the Germans spent the night on the path between the lime kilns and the house. They left at dawn, and we weren’t showing off. But three Germans came to see us. It was fine, they didn’t say anything, we didn’t say anything, they didn’t see the paratrooper.”
Friday, June 9
“When the shooting started all around, a German set up a machine gun in front of our shelter. The German was firing his machine gun, so the paratrooper stood up with his rifle, and the men there grabbed him and sat him down; otherwise, the German would have shot us. The Americans retreated three times before taking Trévières; the Americans didn’t liberate the lime kilns until the afternoon. That’s when the paratrooper left. Apparently, the church protected us; it suffered practically nothing except shrapnel, but that’s all. A shrapnel fell right in front of us; he was completely red.
Sunday, June 11
“On Sunday morning, my brother went out and found a wounded American with a hole in his back. He had been hit in the marshes. We found him at the entrance to the courtyard of the house, asking for milk, so we gave him some. We put a blanket over him, and then some black soldiers came to get him.” They came from the Château d’Aignerville, the Red Cross was there. A few days later they came back and brought the blanket. They asked my mother to hold out her apron and then they gave us chocolate, cakes… everything to thank us. They told us: “He’s going back to England, he’s going to be saved.”
