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| Europe |
| French mayor invites german paratroops to join jump at Normandy |
| 2005-06-07 |
| INVITING 40 German paratroops to land on Utah Beach was perhaps not the best way of celebrating the 61st anniversary yesterday of the Allied invasion of the Normandy beaches. For one thing, it was a historical travesty. It was the US 82nd Airborne Division that dropped from the skies on to the town of Sainte Mere Eglise in the early hours of June 6, 1944, paving the way for the greatest seaborne assault in history. Marc Lefevre, the town's mayor who invited the cream of the Wehrmacht to his weekend party, may have been feeling a pang of guilt at his fellow-countrymen voting a resounding "non" to further integration of a European community that has for six decades dissuaded the French and Germans from knocking lumps out of each other. "I knew it would make me unpopular," M Lefevre admitted yesterday. "We needed to turn the page, and welcome the Germans without bitterness." But, in a repetition of the events of 1944, the Allies won the day. At the last minute, after strong objections from US veterans in town for the commemoration, the German invasion was cancelled. The organisers hastily muttered an excuse about the weather being too bad. US forces on the ground were more forthright. Barry Wells, 78, a veteran from Des Moines, Iowa, said: "There was no way we were going to allow German paratroops to hijack our time of remembrance. "Our boys had a hell of an unpleasant time around here but came out victorious. Allowing the Germans to jump over Sainte Mere Eglise would be like allowing the Luftwaffe to fly a plane over London to commemorate the Battle of Britain. Some of the guys had a word with the French, and thankfully the jump was cancelled." John Wayne would not have liked it either. He starred in the 1962 film The Longest Day in scenes that centred on the 82nd's parachute drop on the town. In one memorable, and more or less historically accurate scene, Private John Steele of the 82nd has his parachute caught on the church steeple, and he dangles there as fierce fighting continues beneath him. Private Steele is now commemorated by a mannequin permanently suspended from the church. Utah was one of the Normandy beaches designated for the huge amphibious landing that turned the tide of the Second World War. A number of bold preliminary strikes in the early hours before dawn as a massive invasion flotilla approached the French coast included the US parachute drop and the British capture of Pegasus Bridge, a vital transport link across a canal near the city of Caen. Although fighting was fierce, the Americans fared better at Utah than they did at their other designated landing ground of Omaha Beach, where casualties on both sides were much higher. By the end of the first day US forces had landed 23,000 men and 1,700 vehicles on Utah. M Lefevre remained deflated at the cancellation of his Euro-friendly stunt. "We are all devoted to world peace now," he said. The German military maintained a diplomatic silence. "It's best that we just go back to Germany," a spokesman for the parachute unit said, using words that the residents of Sainte Mere Eglise would dearly like to have heard in 1944. |
| Posted by:too true |
| #25 JFM, I rather doubt too many of today's German paras fought in WW2. As for most of the Germans at the time they fought for victory,for Germany and towards the end to delay the Russians long enough to get as many civilians as possible to Western Powers occuppied areas. I have not and will never forget about the death camps. Just as I will not forget the Soviet gulags. I had distant relatives disappear into each. The question is how long does the guilt linger? To me,the French Mayor was wrong to invite the Germans to participate in the jump,as that was part of a ceremony to show respect for the sacrifice made by the Allies who liberated France. But once he did,there was a better way out than saying Germans go home. |
| Posted by: Stephen 2005-06-07 23:46 |
| #24 Hardly. The Victory is a 104 gun Man O'War with 32 pounders. The Constitution is a 54 gun Frigate with 24 pounders. It would be like a fight between a battleship and a cruiser. |
| Posted by: ed 2005-06-07 23:42 |
| #23 Shipman - The Victory can fight the Constitution and the modern world can see exactly why the Royal Navy issued orders that American frigates were to be engaged only when outnumbered by 3-1 or better odds. ;) |
| Posted by: Laurence of the Rats 2005-06-07 22:56 |
| #22 AC in 2014? Hell Yes! Have 'em come over in the Victory |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-06-07 20:30 |
| #21 I feel sorry for the German paras of today... they are some fine young dedicated people. But really, they don't belong there. |
| Posted by: True German Ally 2005-06-07 19:51 |
| #20 Not yours AC. The French idiot-mayor. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2005-06-07 19:34 |
| #19 It's almost as stupid as recreating Trafalgar without a "French" enemy. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2005-06-07 19:32 |
| #18 Maybe we can invite the Royal Marines to a celebratory Rose Garden bonfire on the 200th anniversary of the burning of Washington in 2014. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2005-06-07 19:32 |
| #17 Maybe the Vietnamese Nike-shoe Reds will invite French paras to drop in on the 60th anniversary of Dien Bien Phu in 2014. Who knows, they might accept. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2005-06-07 19:26 |
| #16 This perfidious bastage LeFevre should be strung up by his thumbs from the same church steeple where Steele dangled. I spit on his toupee from a great height! I urinate on his favorite vineyard after drinking 12 pints of Guinness! I force him to drink from his mother's bidet! while he is drunk! Pttui! We protest! That ought to scare 'em. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2005-06-07 19:24 |
| #15 One of the most moving places at West Point is the Civil War Reconciliation plaza. It documents step by step the coming back together again of West Point grads who fought for each side. What is missing in this case was an invitation by those who actually fought to the Germans to participate. It was presumptuous, arrogant and manipulative for the French mayor to issue the invitation. But it might have been a healing occasion if the British and Americans had talked it over and done so themselves. |
| Posted by: rkb 2005-06-07 17:31 |
| #14 Stephen These guys were buying time to gas chambers operators to finish the job. |
| Posted by: JFM 2005-06-07 17:25 |
| #13 All it would have taken was for the invited German paratroopers wait on the LZ and help those landing and saying last time we were opposed,today we are allies and we like it much better this way. Honor satisfied,and today's realities respected. |
| Posted by: Stephen 2005-06-07 17:08 |
| #12 By God I've changed my mind. Let's ban the Japanese from Pearl and keep the Yankees outa Recreations aren't history and they aren't holy. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-06-07 16:25 |
| #11 I've been to normandy. turning the corner into the american cemetary, my knees weakened at the sight of row upon row of headstones marking the extinguished lives of young men. we may be friends with germany now, but they do not belong there. they simply do not belong there. if a loved one were killed, and the killer was repentant, I would not invite him to weep with me. though I may at some point forgive him (though I think I could never do so, fully), my pain, my loss, my grief is not his to share. as for germany, it's the same. watch from the sideline. but do not "commemorate" with us ESPECIALLY if you include your own dead in the commemoration. |
| Posted by: PlanetDan 2005-06-07 16:11 |
| #10 I think he's just trying to pull some gay shit on those guys. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2005-06-07 16:09 |
| #9 Private Steele is now commemorated by a mannequin permanently suspended from the church. OK, that's just bizarre. Sounds like some of the more oblique semi-abstract "installation" sculptures inflicted on unsuspecting unversity campuses by deranged artists and their faculty enablers. |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2005-06-07 16:08 |
| #8 Oops again. Should have read: "every minute the Germans managed to delay the defeat meant ten more people being gassed" |
| Posted by: JFM 2005-06-07 14:42 |
| #7 M Lefevre remained deflated at the cancellation of his Euro-friendly stunt. âWe are all devoted to world peace now,â And that is he wants to make peace with Nazism. A month ago I was in Germany (Baden-Wurtemberg) and I never found more charming people than there. Far more than my beloved compatriots. And still I don't want any German however charming coming to Normandy commemorations or, worse, jumping over Normandy: the Germans were defending one of the more murderoous and evil regimes who ever plagued humankind and every minute they managed to delay Germany's defeat meant roughly the more people being gassed (I have made the calculations). The mere idea of honouring German soldiers is repellent. What is the next step for this clown? Inviting German concentration camp guards to the ceremonies at Auschwithz? Have them make an exhibition of handling attack dogs? PS: I suspect that pressure from his voters was not foreign to his change of mind: I was in Normandy last September and to my delight (I was enraged by Chirak's decision to invite Schroeder) I saw the shops had tags "Welcome to war veterans" with little flags of every allied country and no German flag be it the old or the new. PS2: There was a monument in Omaha Beach funded by French citizens from their own pocket. The prefet ie the governemnt representative wanted it withdrawn. There was a petition against it. I signet it but don't know how the whole thing ended. |
| Posted by: JFM 2005-06-07 14:39 |
| #6 Should have read it was the British who parachuted first into Normandy. Ever heard of Pegasus Bridge? |
| Posted by: JFM 2005-06-07 14:08 |
| #5 To begin with it was the Britsih who parachuted to Normandy. And the Geman paratroopers didn't see action in France in 1940: they jumped over the Neterlands and made a glider assault on the Belgian front of Ebben Emmael. |
| Posted by: JFM 2005-06-07 14:07 |
| #4 French mayor invites German paras, eh? So how is this different from the last time Germans parachuted into France? |
| Posted by: SteveS 2005-06-07 13:35 |
| #3 Only if we can do a re-enactment of the Crete landings. |
| Posted by: mmurray821 2005-06-07 12:58 |
| #2 No good deed goes unpunished... Why risk our necks for anyone except ourselves and our English-speaking allies? |
| Posted by: anon1 2005-06-07 12:38 |
| #1 Luftwaffe aircraft in a BOB re-enactment? Shit Yeah! Landser at Normandy Memorials? Hell why not? We should ask a certain turn-coat E. Tennessee Cav. about this. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-06-07 12:32 |