Sainte Mere Eglise May 5th, 2012

After Utah Beach, we headed to Sainte Mere Eglise.  Like everywhere else we visited this day, it was really neat to be there in person.  For a long while after this trip, my brothers were making napkin parachutes for their army men and playing the paratroop drop on Sainte Mere Eglise!


"When you visit Sainte Mere Eglise you will see the mannequin of John Steele hanging from the church steeple. Steele landed on the roof of the church on D-Day but not where the model of him is. The actual landing location of John Steele was verified by fellow trooper Ken Russell who landed on the church below Steele.
Steel landed left of the clock face in this picture and Russell landed above the middle window where he was caught in his parachute. When Russell was trying to cut himself free of his chute he cut the top of his thumb off.
Russell could see paratroopers landing all over the square including his buddy Sgt. John Ray who landed near the church. As soon as Ray landed a German shot him in the chest. The German then turned and aimed at Russell and Steele who were still hanging on the church.
Ray who hadn't been killed by the German could see what was going to happen and pulled out his .45 pistol and killed the German, saving his friends before he died of his wounds."

(from the web)

An old church we passed on our way.

French tourist sites have fun signs. :)

Streets of Sainte Mere Eglise.

The church at Sainte Mere Eglise.

The square (as best we could find out) where the fire took place the night of the paratroop drops.

For those of you not familiar with the story, there was a fire the night of the paratroop drop which caused many of the Germans who were occupying the city to be outside fighting the fire.  When our troops over shot their drop zones and came down right in the middle of town, unfortunately many of our paratroopers lost their lives.