Foreign News: The Liberated

  • (2 of 2)

    of partisanship for the Allied cause. As we

    'paused to gaze at a German trooper in a

    cabbage patch, a 14-year-old French lad joined us and clapped his hands in delight. An old man picked up a wooden plank and tried to crush the skull of one of a file of German prisoners who were being paraded down the thoroughfare. Men and women leaned on their picket fences and smiled ironically at their erstwhile masters now humiliated before their eyes."

    Men of Earth. Other reporters' first impressions:

    Two cures on bicycles begging that Allied dead be buried in the village churchyard.

    A cider-drinking oldster saying "We never thought you would come. I was in bed with my wife when we heard the bombardment. I said to her, we can die downstairs or we can die upstairs. We may just as well die in bed!" Frenchmen crying "A has Laval!" or "We are all behind De Gaulle!" At Bayeux, first town freed, two ancient enemies—the schoolmaster and the priest —met on the cathedral steps.

    "You?" said the schoolmaster.

    "You?" said the priest.

    They embraced in tears.

    Most of the accounts bore the glaze of battle, the slightly romantic touch of excited and hurried newsmen. An ancient Norman, dozing in his house, was nearer the earthy truth of France. A correspondent asked him what the people thought of De Gaulle. The old man, authentically sour, growled that Normans cared more about the price of pigs.

    1. 1
    2. 2
    3. Next Page