Three months after D-Day, the inhabitants of Normandy could no longer tolerate abuses at the hands of the soldiers who liberated them. Revisiting an unknown episode...
"Scenes of savagery and bestiality desolate our countryside. Between the looting, the raping and the killing, all sense of security has disappeared from ours homes and on our streets. It's a veritable nightmare that sows terror. The exasperation of the population is at its height."
On October 17, 1944, four and a half months after the Normandy landings,
La Presse cherbourgeoise, a local newspaper in Cherbourg, published this warning under the headline 'Very Serious Warning'.
In the fall of '44, those who were plundering, raping and murdering were the Americans: the newspaper accused the liberators of behaving like soldiers in a conquered country. How was there such a paradox two months after the end of the fighting in Normandy?
Once liberated, the peninsula of Cotentin and its port became a gigantic logistics base. On the quays, a thousand American officers and sailors, together with the French dockers, ensured the daily landing of 10,000 tons of vehicles, ammunition and food. On September 29, 1944, 1,318 General Motors trucks leaving Cherbourg sent 8,000 tons of equipment to Allied troops on the front line. For several kilometers along the 'Red Ball Highway Express' - the road to the front - were hospitals, depots, airfields, rest camps, repair stations for tanks and trucks.
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