The massacred village

On this day…….67 years ago, the SS murdered 642 men, women and children at the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane.    The victims ranged in age from one week to 90 years.    Most were inhabitants, but a few just happened to be seized as they were cycling through the village.

Soldiers from the 4^th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment were on their way to confront the allies who had landed in Normandy four days earlier, when they were approached by members of the Milice, the French secret police who worked with the Gestapo, to say the Resistance were holding an SS officer hostage in the village of Oradour-sur-Vayres, about 15 miles from Oradour-sur-Glane.   

It seems the SS got the wrong village.    At Oradour-sur-Glane, they herded the men into barns, shot them, then burned down the barns.    Then they locked the women and children in the church, set it on fire, and shot down any who managed to get out.    Just one woman survived.    Finally the village was destroyed.

Today its ruins are still preserved as a monument.

*Something more cheerful.   My friend Johnny Bull’s wonderful picture of the Queen Mary, The Return of the Native, has been selling like hot cakes at the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition in London.     Get along to see it while stocks last!

http://johnnybulletins.blogspot.com/2011/01/work-in-progress-return-of-native.html

D-Day - civilian casualties

I’ve been reading Anthony Beevor’s impressive tome, D-Day. Beevor puts the number of French civilians killed in the months leading up to the 1944 Allied landings in Normandy at 15,000.

The Allies’ trump card was their air supremacy, but Churchill had mooted the idea of setting a ceiling of 10,000 for the number of French civilian casualties during the campaign. After that bombing would have to cease. The suggestion was rejected.

About 3,000 French people were killed in the first 24 hours of the operation, double the number of US service personnel who died. Among the places that suffered particularly heavy casualties during the invasion were Saint-Lo where about 300 died, and Caen, where the death toll was over 800.

The Germans, meanwhile, continued their systematic murder of French civilians. On June 8, 1944 they hanged 98 citizens of Tulle from the town’s trees. Two days later, in the most notorious massacre of all, they descended on Oradour-sur-Glane, shooting all the men, then herding the women and children into the church, which they set on fire. A total of 642 died, and the Nazis had got the wrong village. They were supposed to be taking revenge for an attack by the Resistance at Oradour-sur-Vayres, 15 miles away. Altogether, nearly 20,000 French civilians perished during the campaign.