D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

lieutenant, started yelling when he realized that the surgeon wanted to amputate his right arm. A translator was called for and the lieutenant explained that he was a painter. The surgeon agreed to do what he could to save the arm. The man nearly died during the operation, but he was saved by a nurse who offered herself in an arm-to-arm transfusion.
    Another event which shook everyone in the Bon Sauveur occurred after a café owner was brought in with a bullet wound in the thigh. It transpired that, when drunk, he had shot at some soldiers from the Hitler Jugend who had been pillaging his café, a common event. While a surgeon was operating on him, an SS officer appeared armed with a sub-machine gun. The SS officer began hitting him as he lay on the operating table, asking whether he had fired at the soldiers. The café owner was speechless and did not reply. The SS officer fired a burst from his gun into his chest, killing him right there in front of all the medical staff.
    Estimates of the number of people seeking shelter in the Bon Sauveur and the Abbaye aux Hommes vary greatly. There were well over 3,000. The Eglise Saint-Etienne was also crammed with refugees, sleeping on straw as if ‘in the Middle Ages’. Ancient wells were opened up as the only source of water. Young men and women acted as foragers, seeking food in the larders of ruined houses or going out into the countryside, evading German patrols. Livestock killed by shells and bombs were butchered for meat. Dairy products were easy to come by since farmers could not send anything to market. In the city’s main refuge south-east of the Orne, the convent of Les Petites Soeurs des Pauvres, the 500 refugees were tempted to complain that their bread was too thickly buttered. (In Paris, meanwhile, butter fetched astronomical prices on the black market.) Outside these havens, Caen was a sinister morgue. Rats grew fat on the corpses buried underground and stray dogs searched for an arm or leg sticking out of the rubble.
    The Vichy authorities in Paris made an effort to help Caen. Two trucks loaded with food and blankets and a field kitchen were sent off by Secours National under the direction of Monsieur Gouineau. It was a hazardous journey. German soldiers in Lisieux were obsessed with ‘terrorists’ of the Resistance. They shot a policeman in the street simply because he carried a service pistol on his belt. Monsieur Gouineau, knowing that all the banks in Caen had been destroyed, had the authority to draw 100 million francs in Lisieux. There was no time to count the money, so he signed the receipt with his eyes closed and they drove on to Caen. When Allied fighters appeared overhead they waved a white flag frantically and the aircraft veered off.
    After the money and supplies had been delivered, the return journey proved even more complicated. They obtained a laissez-passer from the German army Kommandantur in Caen, but were warned that the SS did not respect such pieces of paper. And beyond Lisieux a German patrol opened fire, suspecting that the trucks belonged to the Resistance. Monsieur Gouineau and several others were wounded. Nevertheless, a relay of supplies began and altogether some 250 tons were delivered.
     
    For those French behind Allied lines, life was at least a little easier. In Lion-sur-Mer a local wrote, ‘The English since their arrival distribute to left and right chocolate, sweets and cigarettes.’ But there was no electricity or water, except from wells, and for food, most survived off their kitchen gardens. Rumour ran riot. Some believed that the swimming tanks had crossed the Channel all on their own, and a few convinced themselves that they had crossed on the bottom of the sea like tracked submarines. Often the sweets and cigarettes were not given but bartered for milk, eggs and meat from fallen livestock. An unofficial rate of exchange - ‘ le troc ’ - rapidly established itself, with two eggs for a tin of corned beef.
    Barter extended to other commodities with an astonishing rapidity. A surgeon with the 2nd Field Dressing Station recorded that on 7 June ‘a senior officer of the Military Police arrived in a Jeep loaded with medical comforts - army-issue chocolate, sweets and cigarettes for the wounded. Earlier that morning the police had raided a brothel set up on the beach in a wrecked landing craft by three ladies on the evening of D-Day and had confiscated the trading currency.’ British sailors, sometimes drunk but