We Were There at the Normandy Invasion

Toward sunset on the first day of June, a small black car rattled past a crossroads sign in a tiny village in northwestern France. The sign pointed to the near-by town of Sainte...

The farmer stiffened. “It was _not_ about a cow! Raoul sent for me only as an excuse. Ask Victor. He also was there. At once Raoul began to scream so loud, if it were not for th...

“Well, I’m in your hands,” the young Englishman replied. “But I’d certainly feel foul if I got you into trouble. Of course, I’m willing to take any kind of chance. The sooner I...

Three of them were ordered upstairs while the others set to work poking into every cupboard and drawer on the first floor. When they had emptied the kitchen of its copper they t...

Clinging to his uncertain perch, for the first few seconds André felt stunned. Could this be his own Normandy sky? He watched the flicker of moonlight here and there on the para...

He braced himself by the door frame and looked toward the sea. A pall of dense, black smoke was drifting inland, blotting out the newly risen sun. Fires flared over the tree tops.

The room was crammed with soldiers. Several neighbors, men and women, pressed through the crowd, begging to give help. Many wounded villagers lay sheltered under the trees, they...

As a very small boy, riding on the broad platform of La Fumée’s back had been André’s delight. But La Fumée had not then quivered at the whine and roar of shells, or the nerve-s...

As the jeep bumped rapidly along, André explained to the lieutenant, “I didn’t want to leave there, sir, till I found my friend Victor. He was the one who really stopped that Na...

Long before dark, André, too tired to care any more what happened, had stumbled into his old bed in the kitchen. During the night he roused at times to hear the hum of trucks an...

André saw the old man--scrubbed pink and bristling--beside the guard at the door. With Victor was another of the village fathers--a farmer who had once been a schoolteacher. M....

When they reached the food dump, the prisoner was put under guard. Meanwhile Slim carried out the captain’s orders for food supplies. Slim pointed to the stacked cartons he had...

André’s suspicions leaped up. Dirty brown coveralls, the strange cap, the German-looking, tow-colored hair. And the plane. André had never seen one like it, and the star insigne...

He looked up at the priest’s long, bony face, lined with weariness, and halted. The old man’s embrace was kind, but André knew at once that the news he brought was not good. His...

“I wish they could, too,” he said. “And, as long as I am responsible here, maybe you’d like to tell me why you went off with that pilot in his plane.”

As he and Victor drew nearer St. Sauveur, André began to notice that the sound of firing came from many directions. He turned his eyes from north to south and counted several ri...

A few minutes after André left Victor, Captain Dobie, Weller, their colonel, and his aide were poring over a map. They were hidden under trees, a mile and a half from the stone...

“No! Since I left your home, I have not.” The captain’s voice was sharp with anxiety. “And I haven’t time to look for him now. My men are in that burning barn with Germans all a...

His words were drowned in the shriek and explosion of a second shell, and the rending crash of roof timbers. The blast hurtled the three of them into a corner. A shower of falli...

“The French Army will soon join the fight to free our country,” Leon whispered to Marie. “They will enter France from the Mediterranean. But do not tell anyone yet I said so.” A...