Écouché in World War II
World War II for Écouché culminated with several days of street fighting by Free French forces under General Philippe Leclerc.
[1][2] During World War II Écouché’s buildings and homes suffered 15% heavy damage from aerial bombing and street fighting during the liberation.
[5] Ecouché is surrounded by farmland, thus farm produce was distributed, either exchanged in complex negotiations, or given freely through networks of families and friends.
Reduced wardrobes meant people rarely changed clothes, but those aspiring to elegance painted false stockings on their legs with liquid chicory.
As a result, the young women's boarding school was filled with children from the towns, sent by parents who were desperate to find a way to feed them.
The sabotage of telephone lines, plus frequent parachute drops of weapons and supplies created a demand for suitable hiding places.
The recovery of airmen rescued from crashes increased as well as the need to find secure escape routes for vulnerable Resistants.
Direct denunciations were made, sometimes by French people influenced by Nazi propaganda, sometimes by anonymous letters, ending in the arrest of men and women who were to experience imprisonment, interrogation, torture and deportation.
[7][16] On the other hand, summary executions, sometimes ill-informed, were carried out by the Resistance, contributing to the stress and confusion preceding the Allied Landing.
The mayor of the adjacent commune of Joué du Plain and a Belgian interpreter used by the Germans were both assassinated by the Resistance.
[7][16][20] Parachute drops took place generally near Brûlevain wood towards Rânes, ground with the code name Levite Ouest 136, and also in the valley near the Château de la Motte at Joué du Plain.
[5][21] On 6 June, Ecouché was bombed by two consecutive formations of planes at high altitude: in less than a minute, more than a fifteen percent of the town was destroyed.
[22] Rescue teams, mobilized by municipality and civil defense organizations, recovered the bodies and took them to the church of Notre Dame where there were kept overnight.
The boys’ school was leveled and the railway station was badly damaged; the tree allies of the fairground had their treetops lopped and blown to bits.
[22] A second bombing in July 1944 destroyed a block of houses at the end of rue Notre Dame near the main road, consisting of some businesses and the post office ; there were no victims as the inhabitants had vacated their dwellings.
A powerful roar of aircraft engines made us rush out into the courtyard, eyes straining into the clear sky of early summer.
We rushed back to the house and into a small passage of two square metres, chosen a long time ago as a shelter because it had very thick walls.
Just 50 metres away, some German ammunition lorries, concealed under the shade of the horse chestnuts in the fairground, had also been hit, and were blowing up one after the other.
"[23] See article Strategic bombing during World War II On 12 August 1944, the 2nd Free French Armored Division of General Leclerc left Alençon.
Its objective was to cut off the Granville–Paris trunk road from the German units which were retreating towards the Seine after their setback at failed counter-attack at Mortain.
[24][25][26] In the north, as the Canadians were holding Falaise, the German units under artillery and aircraft fire were forced to use the minor roads linking Putanges-Trun-Vimoutiers.
Roger de Normandie, a resistance member and retired officer from Macé, volunteered to lead the Warabiot column.
At sunrise, an advance force, jeeps and half-tracks, followed closely by the tanks of Captain Buis and the motorised convoys, reached the level crossing at Ecouché and made a surprise attack.
[26]The 2nd French Armored Division (2nd DB) of General Leclerc entered Ecouché, blocking the German retreat on the main road, the current D924.
The shell exchanges came to an end to the advantage of the French, who established a bridgehead on the farside bank, but the Germans remained in command of the heights north of the village for the whole week.
The French numbered only 130 compared to the enemy, but they had a lot of equipment, which led the Germans into making an error of judgement.
Thus, on the western side of town, at "Udon's" crossing, the French tank Bir Hakeim was destroyed along with its crew and four nearby civilians.
Ferocious confrontations pitted German armoured vehicles and infantry against the French position, which had to resist them in order to retain the Udon junction.
[26] From Goulet and Montgaroult in the north, the salvoes of shells from hidden Panther tanks rained down on the Shermans, piercing the armour of some of them - one of them the Massaouah -, and heavily damaging many village houses.
A rain of French shells hindered their progress and an attack by the « Nueve » infantry soon moved into close combat, resulting in casualties on both sides, though the Germans were stopped.
