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A short old story of war and but also familly at the same time.
I live in Belgium but one part of my familly is from Normandy (not close the famous landing beaches, but in the East part of Normandy)
Last week-end, I discussed with my Grand mother and we spoken about her memories of the war.
My grand mother was 12 in 1940 and lived with his familly in a small village near Gournay-en-Bray. This town was a important point of communication with railways and highways coming from Paris to the coast. (The town was heavily bombed and damaged in 1944)
One day, an aerial combat occured in the area and a American pilot was downed. He landed close the familly farm, in a small valley.
The unfortunate pilot was unhurt but very desoriented and was trying to escape the area. But in fact, he was running directly to a road on wich the Germans were coming to try to capture him.
The uncle of my grand Mother was spending a few days of vacations there.
He was in a intel section of the french resistance in Paris, and it's was very common to resistants to spend some days in remote location, when the situation was "too hot" in Paris, for example after one massive arrestations of resistants.
By the way, he was at the good place, at the good time: he saw the Americain pilot running in direction of the Germans, without expecting that he was running to the danger and interecepted him just at time.
They have very limited options: the Germans were only few hundred meters from there, and they have dogs "to smel the path" of the pilot.
The only way he found is to put the US pilot in the river, below an "downed tree" (hit by the lighting few weeks before) to discouraged the dog. After that he only have the time to run away enought to be able to look like an innoncent bistanders.
The unfortunate pilote spent the day in the cold river, during the germans were looking everywhere except in the river. (As expected, they think that the pilot cross the river and continue to run after that, in direction of the woods)
During the afternoon, the little sister and one cousin of my grand-mother were asked to try to provide water and food to the pilot.
As Children their presence near the river were less suspect than an adult. They receive an "picnic" basket with the instructions to "forgot" the basket against the tree where the pilote was hidden.
After the sunshine and the germans had left, the uncle came to retrieve the pilot and hide him in the farm for the night.
The following days, he was able to bring the pilot to Paris (with counterfeit papers) and hand over her to an espace section of the resistance (The resistance in Europe was organized by speciality: some people organised espacing section for downed pilot, others were collecting information, other were combat and sabotage section, etc)
The familly never receive news of this pilot. We never known if he achieved to return to England or was captured and was sent to Stalag in Germany.
Unfortunatly, I don't have lot of information except:
- the pilot come from a single seater plane (type is unknown)
- I don't have the exact date, but it was probably during the second part of the war (43 or 44)
- I have the exact location where the pilot land but not the location where the plane ended.
So, If one of you have idea of an offical service or association who have data about downed plane in France during the war, I'm more than interested.
Regards
Loïc
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Sorry for my bad English:-(
Last edited by Iclo on Wed Feb 23, 2011 7:47 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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