National Security

French survivors keep D-Day gratitude alive

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Published May 30, 2014 1:28pm ET
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French survivors keep D-Day gratitude alive
In this photo dated May 14, 2014, Andree Auvray answers question during an interview with the Associated Press in Sainte Mere Eglise in Normandy, France. Andree Auvray, nine months pregnant, was hiding from German bombings in a Normandy ditch with her husband one night in June 1944 when their dogs started barking. The shadows of three soldiers appeared. The soldiers were Americans. D-Day had begun. Auvray relives that wrenching time with clarity and a growing sense of urgency. Seventy years have passed since the Allied invasion of Normandy helped turn the tide against Hitler. With their numbers rapidly diminishing, she and other French women and men who owe their freedom to D-Day's fighters are more determined than ever to keep alive the memory of the battle and its meaning. (AP Photo/Nicolas Garriga) | Nicolas Garriga

SAINTE-MERE-EGLISE, France (AP) — Andree Auvray, nine months pregnant, was hiding from German bombings in a Normandy ditch with her husband one night in June 1944 when their dogs started barking. The shadows of three soldiers appeared.

“We both came out to see what was going on,” she recalls. She initially thought the men were the Nazi occupiers who had upended life in her quiet farming village. “And then I said ‘No, it’s not the Germans!’

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Tag:

France History World World War II