JUNE 6, 1944
By Alexandre Renaud, Wartime Mayor of Ste. Mère-Eglise
THE SUN WAS RISING. MANY OF the inhabitants had come out onto their doorsteps. All was quiet; not a bullet, not a shell. In the trees and on the roofs of the church, of the poorhouse, of the Town Hall, the great silken parachutes, relieved of their loads, were floating softly in the breeze.
Others, on the ground, made great many-colored patches, and already the children were gazing enviously at them. Each person was telling his neighbor the tremendous night’s adventures. The paratroopers had dropped everywhere: in the courtyards, in the gardens, on the trees and the meadows, on the rooftops, on the top of the steeple of our 12th century church, where a paratrooper whose name has become legendary stayed hanging for nearly the whole night: John Steele!
Except in La Haule Park and in an inner courtyard where a flak unit was installed on the first floor, casualties were slight over Ste. Mère-Eglise. It really takes many bullets to kill a moving man at night.
I returned to La Haule Park. At the entrance lay a dead German infantryman. Near the pump our fire-fighting apparatus remained more or less intact. The fire was finishing off the house, its corn loft, and its stables.
In the trees of the park, bodies were hanging beneath their parachutes. Other men who had got rid of their bonds were lying on the ground, stayed in their flight by the Flak bullets. The poor fellow who had fallen into the furnace [of the burning building] had rolled some distance from the house during his struggles, and his charred body was still smoking. One parachute had come down on top of a giant cedar, and the man had contrived to clamber to the bottom of the tree.