There, there is a collapsed wall, blue sky, an apple tree... yes but...
The little bunker in the meadow...
Everyone knows "the little house on the prairie". And, on the Normandy coast, everyone knows the casemates and bunkers built during the last war that still exist. Well, imagine a mixture of the two.
Ever since men have been beating each other up for various reasons, they have been perfecting their weapons and their camouflage. So they've been hitting each other with a few branches, painting random spots of color...
But, in Azeville, they put into practice a particularly unusual idea!
The battery of Azeville
This was one of the first constructions of what was to become the Atlantic Wall, and it actually played its role during the landing of the Allied forces.
Why did it do that? Because, until the day of June 6, 1944, it had not been spotted by the Allied air force.
Indeed, with great care and detail, it had been transformed into a poor ruined Normandy house, having obviously been bombed, the sections of walls having collapsed, even revealing a few trees standing out against the sky.
Today, we can see again these paintings so well done, in a very faithful reconstruction!
An exhibition...
Inside the building there is an interesting exhibition about the life of a German garrison in a Norman village for more than three years. The garrison consisted of 170 soldiers, and the village had 115 inhabitants. And, inevitably, contacts take place, and exchanges are realistic, pragmatic, hostile or friendly.
We follow this history through documents from the German military archives, but also thanks to documents offered to the department by one of the children of the commander of this fortified place. A discreet testimony of the madness of the time… of this rime?
Batterie d'Azeville
La Rue
50310 Azeville
Tél. : 02 33 40 63 05
musee.azeville@manche.fr
Click on the image
Click on the image
