Читать книгу Remembering D-day: Personal Histories of Everyday Heroes - Martin Bowman - Страница 47

French Resistance fighter.

‘I shall never forget that night or the thrill of knowing the Allies were coming to expel the Nazis at last. My mother woke up in the early hours when she first heard the noise and said, “It must be the landings.” But I dared not confirm it, even to her, because I knew that the Germans thought it might be a diversionary tactic. So I told my own mother nothing. In the morning a friend called and told me the sea was black with ships. Then the bombing began. I was helping to take the injured to our local hospital, which was run by nuns, but there was nothing to distinguish it from other buildings the Germans had been using. We couldn’t paint a red cross because the Germans had requisitioned all the paint so the nuns brought out the sheets, red with blood, that had been in use in the operating theatre and we spread them out in a cross.

‘I’ll never forget the next RAF plane to fly over us. It waggled its wings, and we all knew it had worked. The bombing stopped in our area.’