Eighty years since D-Day: Remembering Normandy's summer of sacrifice

France in focus

Between the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944 and the liberation of Paris on August 25 lies the Battle of Normandy. For three months, the Allied forces fought fiercely against the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany. From heavily bombed towns, to relentless artillery fire and hand-to-hand combat in the "Falaise pocket", Normandy was ravaged and civilians were trapped. But the Allies achieved a strategic victory that changed the course of history. FRANCE 24's Florence Gaillard and Héloïse Mélan report.

The Germans were expecting the landings in northern France, near the English coast. But on June 6, 1944, the Allies landed on the vast beaches of Normandy in a deluge of fire and brimstone. For D-Day to succeed, it was crucial to minimise the number of German military reinforcements on the landing beaches. So the Allies created barricades by carpet-bombing Normandy to block roads and communications. The result was razed towns and a heavy toll on Normandy's population. The Battle of Normandy cost 20,000 civilians their lives.

Mireille Goudier was only five years old when the Allies bombed Condé-sur-Noireau, where she lived peacefully with her parents and brothers until June 6, 1944. She describes apocalyptic scenes that evening: "noise, screams, and smoke everywhere!" In their neighbourhood, entire families were wiped out. For several weeks, Mireille and her family found refuge with farmers around the ruins of the town. They later decided to take to the roads of Normandy. But, like tens of thousands of civilians, they found themselves trapped in the raging battles.

From August 16 to 21, 1944, 150,000 Allies managed to encircle 100,000 Germans in the "Falaise pocket". German troops were pounded by Allied artillery. To escape the pocket, they had to pass through a bottleneck, soon dubbed the "corridor of death". Soldiers sometimes fought hand-to-hand using bayonets or rocks off the ground. The toll of these five days of carnage was heavy: 2,000 Allied losses, with 10,000 dead and 40,000 prisoners on the German side. By the end of the summer of 1944, the region was ravaged but the Allies had won the Battle of Normandy. For Nazi Germany, it was the beginning of the end.