In Normandy, the landing of archaeologists on the scene of D-Day

 

It is one of the great episodes of D-Day, a day that did not fail. Around 9:30 a.m. on June 6, 1944, about twenty paratroopers from companies D and E belonging to the 101^e airborne division of the American army destroyed a battery of four guns served by about sixty soldiers of the Wehrmacht, at the manor of Brécourt, in fact a large farmhouse, located 4 kilometers behind the beach of the Madeleine , better known to history and tour buses as Utah Beach. Four American soldiers were killed.

The archaeological excavation site of the Brécourt manor site, in Sainte-Marie-du-Mont (Manche), on May 17, 2022. QUENTIN BASSETTI FOR M LE MAGAZINE DU MONDE  

For nearly eight decades, the peaceful Norman cows have won back from the belligerents the fields located in the town of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont (Manche), 700 inhabitants. But, since May 2, here they are again disturbed in their rumination. An excavation site has just opened on the site of the battle.   

On hundreds of square meters, the surface layer of grass has been stripped in order to access the period of the war. The campaign is led by Alexis Gorgues, lecturer in archeology at Bordeaux-Montaigne University. As he is a specialist in prehistory, his knowledge of the Iron Age designated him to probe this terrain full of metals. At his side, eight people are methodically turning over the earth in order to bring military artefacts to light. 

A successful outnumbered assault model

The assault has gone down in history and, in the United States more than in France, in the mythology of the Landings. Recounted as early as July 1944 in a report by the expedition commander, Richard D. Winters, the capture of the mansion will very quickly be taught to all West Point promotions as the paragon of a successful assault in numerical inferiority. Cadets from the American military academy will regularly make the trip to this corner of the Norman bocage to take some seed. 

It was inevitable that a screenwriter should end up taking possession of such a glorious page. Building on a 1990 bestseller by historian Stephen Ambrose, titled Band of Brothers (Brothers in arms), Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks produced a television mini-series which, from 2001, was a huge success all over the world, under the same title. She told the story of company E, better known as Easy Company. In episode 2, the capture of the Brécourt mansion is filmed with great detail and cinematic effects 

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