PHOTO ARTICLE: D-Day - Remember the French!

Le Débarquement en Normandie

It will not surprise anyone to know that I’ve elected to spend today shouting: STOP FORGETTING ABOUT THE FRENCH! The men who were at this moment 80 years ago fighting to gain a toehold across the Channel deserve our deepest respect and commemoration. However, in the English language far fewer are talking about what the experience of the Battle of Normandy was for those that called it home. Here are some images that ram home exactly what the cost of ridding Europe of the Nazi scourge was for civilians. Unless specified, the following images, including the first one of a mangled street scene at Barenton, all come from the outstanding Bibliotheques Specialisees Paris.

Below is the devastating scene of a train station at Barenton, about sixty miles southwest of Caen. The amount of bombs dropped on France in WW2 was seven times more than those unleashed on Britain.

Victory came at a staggering price, and for the French, the preparations for Overlord resulted in massive destruction. Think back to Saving Private Ryan, because throughout the film, you can actually see it.

(Dreamworks/Paramount Pictures)

In total some 60,000 French civilians were killed by Allied bombing. Tens of thousands more were wounded. The next image shows a man presenting with injuries to his hand from an incendiary bomb at Alençon, about a hundred miles west of Paris.