Reflections of the past: World War II vets receive hero's welcome at Normandy

When the tour bus stopped in a French hamlet with one store and maybe 10 homes, Par Nilhammer, the tour guide, got out, walked behind the bus and started crying.

He'd recently been told his father died.

If it weren't for this particular group, he would've left the tour and asked somebody else to take it. But he couldn't desert these men. No. Not these 12 men.

"Don't tell any of the guys," he said after he wiped his eyes. "It's important they don't know so it won't spoil their tour."

In the bus were a dozen World War II veterans from the 398th Bombardment Group and assorted friends and families. Because of their advanced ages, they called it their "One Last Look" tour to France. Mr. Nilhammer had given them two tours in previous years, and he wasn't about to give up on this one.

The previous day he took them to Normandy to take part in the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, June 6, 1944. Amid 9,386 American military laid to rest at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, many of the retirees were honored by being seated at the front of the crowd. President George W. Bush spoke, and some of the vets were given earpieces so they could listen to the Interpretation of French President Jacques Chirac's speech (see Notebook, Page 48).

The next day, Mr. Nilhammer took the bus across flat, curvy roads that cut through barley fields and hedge rows about five miles west of Saint Lo to visit a monument at La Chapelle Enjuger.

The battle there would have made an epic mark in history had it not been eclipsed by D-Day a month earlier. After landing on Normandy, Allied forces needed to break free from the beaches and march through France and into Germany. Operation Cobra was the answer. On July 25, Army Air Forces and ground troops savagely attacked the embedded German enemy at La Chapelle Enjuger. The successful mission was the first of many inland battles that led to the defeat and destruction of German forces.

This was the first time the Swedish tour guide had ever taken a tour group there. He hadn't scheduled anything--just a quick peek at the monument, then he'd load them on the bus again. But something spontaneous happened on this trip.

As the 80-year-old vets shuffled across the road to look at the Operation Cobra monument, they noticed a woman placing fresh flowers next to it.

When she saw them, she jumped up and started to excitedly speak in French. When Theresa Maquerel realized she wasn't being understood, she reached into one of her pockets and pulled out a newspaper article, faded and wrinkled from use. She pointed at a family portrait: Mother, father, sons and daughters. In the picture, the family was all smiles. It was obviously taken well before the Germans occupied the town for four years.

Underneath the picture, in English, a caption explained how Operation Cobra leveled the little hamlet in July 1944. It also told of a 2-year-old girl who ran into the woods and survived America's saturation bombing.

The 62-year-old woman before them was that 2-year-old girl. As though reliving that moment 60 years ago, Mrs. Maquerel thanked all the veterans profusely for what they had done.

"Had it not been for the Americans' kindness of giving me milk and food I would have starved to death," she said to Mr. Nilhammer, who interpreted for the group.

To show her appreciation, every day she places fresh flowers at the foot of the monument.

Retired Maj. Keith Anderson, a former B-17 Flying Fortress pilot, remembered the operation, at least from his view at 30,000 feet. On July 24, 1944, he and his l0-man crew, along with 1,600 Allied aircraft, carpet-bombed an area three-and-a-half miles by one-and-a-half miles square. La Chapelle Enjuger was in their Norton bomb sights.

By the end of Operation Cobra, 2,500 aircraft had dropped 6,000 tons of bombs in a week. At that time, it was the biggest ground support mission of the war.

From his view, the major didn't get the full effect of the bombing campaign. But those on the ground, like Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ernie Pyle, did.

"Then a new sound gradually droned into our ears, a sound deep and all-encompassing with no notes in it--just a gigantic faraway surge of doom-like sound. It was heavies. They came from directly behind us. At first they were the merest dots in the sky. I had a feeling that even had God appeared beseechingly before them in the sky, with palms outstretched to persuade them back, they would not have had it within them the power to turn from their irresistible course. Then the bombs came. They began like the crackle of popcorn and almost instantly swelled into a monstrous furry of noise that seemed surely to destroy all the world ahead of us," Mr. Pyle wrote.

He added, "The Air Force was wonderful throughout the invasion and the men on the ground appreciated it."

The attack is said to have killed 70 percent of the Germans in that area. To this day, villagers break their chainsaws when they ricochet off of shrapnel imbedded deep inside tree trunks.