Tuesday, September 21, 2010

MORE Normandy

Okay, so really this is the last post about Normandy. I just had to share an awesome site with you guys that we saw on our last day in Normandy.

We visited a town in France called Sainte Mere Eglise. Sadly, this town was practically destroyed during WWII, but today they have a great D-Day museum and believe it or not the town church survived. An amazing story about this church involves one of our soldiers John Steele, who was a paratrooper. He was parachuting into Ste. Mere Eglise and happened to land on the spire of the church and got STUCK there. IN THE MIDDLE OF D-DAY while Germans and Americans were fighting below. He hung there for TWO WHOLE hours while pretending to be dead. Finally Germans soldiers took him prisoner, but shortly after he escaped and reconnected with his troop! Isn't that a crazy story! I couldn't believe that actually happened and that he survived to tell the story.

What is really neat about the church is they actually have a model or mannequin/dummy paratrooper trapped on the church spire to commemorate the story of John Steele. Here are a couple of photos.

The Town Church
At the left of the church you can see the mannequin.

I hope you all enjoyed the story and the photos from one of our last stops in Normandy!
I hope you all have a wonderful Tuesday!