Sainte Mère Église

Any kid raised in the 60s or 70s will remember the movie The Longest Day. Back in those days there was no cable TV and only three channels. Every night, at least one of the networks showed a movie to compete with the sitcoms. A good movie was a great thing, as it would provide the main topic for the playground the next day at school. War movies were the best. And the best of the war movies were The Longest Day, The Battle of the Bulge. and The Dirty Dozen. Because each these movies is well over two hours long, they would be split and broadcast in two halves. Sometimes there were several days between the showing of the first and second halves. Each of these movies was good for at least a week of playground chatter.

One of the best moments in The Longest Day was when Red Buttons parachuted into France on the night before D-Day, only to have his parachute become tangled in a church steeple. There he dangled, helplessly watching the battle in the town below. The story, they said, was true. It happened in some little village in France.

Sainte Mère Église is that little village.Ste. Mère Église is just down the road from Quinéville and several miles inland from the beaches. On the night of June5, 1944, paratroopers from the 82nd and 101st Airborne jumped into the countryside behind Utah Beach and became hopelessly scattered. Some of those that survived converged on this little village and were able to capture it. It claims to be the first village in France liberated on D-Day. Ste. Mère Église is French for "Church of the Holy Mother". The church in town still displays a parachute dangling from it's roof in memory of its airborne visitors. The church also displays two stained glass windows that commemorate the day. The intro picture shows one of these windows. If you look closely (or click to enlarge) you can make out the shapes of the parachutes above the head of the archangel. Along the border you can see the insignias for the airborne divisions and also the double cross of the Free French Forces. At the bottom of the window it says simply "Ils sont revenues" or "they have come back".

Another window, shown below, also commemorates. It shows two paratroopers on either side of the Madonna and Child. Ste. Mère Église is also home to a museum dedicated to the 101st Airborne. They have an old C-47 on display as well as the usual tanks and artillery pieces. The town seems to draw quite a few visitors on the D-Day trail. They definitely are milking the fame that comes from being featured in The Longest Day. They know there are lots of kids who grew up in the US in the 60s and 70s who will come to see their church and its parachute.