On the evening of June 5, 1944, Louis Leroux, his wife, and their six children scrambled atop an embankment near their farm to investigate the sounds of distant explosions. Three miles south, Allied fighter-bombers were attacking bridges over the Douve River on France’s Cotentin Peninsula. In the fading twilight the family watched silhouetted warplanes peel away from the glowing tracers of German anti-aircraft fire that stabbed sky ward. When the excitement ended, the Lerouxs returned home to bed, unaware that their farm would play a vital role in the Allied liberation of France.
Their slumber was disturbed a few hours later by the droning of low-f lying aircraft. Gazing out their windows, they were startled to see descending parachutes. “They looked like big falling mushrooms,” recalled Madame Leroux. “We didn’t know what they were but could see that they were landing in the marshes.” W hen shrapnel from German flak shells pelted the roof, Madame Leroux and her husband gathered their children to take shelter in the stone stairwell.
The farmstead sat on the east bank of the Merderet River, which bisected the Cotentin Peninsula north to south. The farm overlooked one of just two crossing points: the La Fière Bridge on the road to the village of Sainte-Mère-Église. While on the high ground, the family home was closer to the riverbank than originally intended thanks to the German occupiers who, recognizing the defensive potential of the landscape, had manipulated locks to f lood the area with seawater. Rivers and streams had overf lowed their banks to turn wide swaths of bucolic fields into swampland and a shallow lake.
At dawn on June 6, a platoon of Germans arrived at the Leroux’s farm. They searched the stables and occupied the house while the family retreated upstairs to the main bedroom. W hen gunfire erupted outside, the Lerouxs again scrambled for cover. Bullets cracked through windows, splintering
