André
LEDRAN
Carentan & Ouistreham Riva-Bella
André Ledran, 11 years old at the time of the landings, former mayor of Ouistreham
I was born in January 1933 in Carentan, in the Manche département. Hitler came to power. It was the month of my birth. It was the beginning of many sad things. So I was born on January 33 in Carentan. Carentan, like the rest of the coast, was the first line of defense against a possible landing. So the occupation there was denser and more restrictive than elsewhere.
French and British decorations awarded to André for his commitment to the Resistance and remembrance work
The hardest year was the first, because we were deprived of food. We went to the canteen, which wasn't very good. We were forced to eat soup, even if it was bitter.
The second year, the gardens gave us enough to eat. It was potatoes, beans, all the vegetables. But the occupation was still a very restrictive, humiliating period. Because men like my father, who had fought in the First World War, who thought they were the best, couldn't imagine the Germans in their streets. It was a terrible shock.
There were 18 of us in the cellar, in our house, which wasn't a vaulted cellar, and there were a lot of single women. Father Ledran protected them. We'd been bombed at 6am, it was the first bombing of Carentan, at 6am.
The small Rue des Villas was crushed by bombs and there were three families there, including the Lamy family, which was completely destroyed. There were 3 children, including Communion's little girlfriends who were 11 years old, like me.
Every year at All Saints' Day, I go to Carentan cemetery to lay white roses on their graves. I don't want to forget them. For me, when we talk about civilian victims of the landings, it's not percentages, it's not numbers, it's people I knew. At 7 a.m., someone passed in the street shouting: ‘It's D-Day! Who was it? I've no idea. But that's how we knew it was D-Day. And my father, who was very cool-headed, said, ‘If it's D-Day, it's going to be the liberation, so we mustn't move. Because there were already a lot of people leaving on the road. ‘Don't move, it'll pass’.
And indeed, we didn't move, and it passed. It was the liberation, it was D-Day, and D-Day was all we were waiting for. We lived in the hope that D-Day would liberate us. And that was a very strong feeling. Whatever the risk.
23 June was a terrible day because it was the day that little Delphine Laisney was killed on the Place de la République by German fire just as she was holding out a bouquet of flowers to the American general. Three shells landed in the square. And that's where the child was killed. And the American general came back often after the war. He always went to visit the child's grave at the CArentan cemetery. Four years, four years…
About his career as mayor of Ouistreham
So it was a chance that brought me to Ouistreham. But I was very happy there and I'm still very happy. Ouistreham had remained somewhat aloof from all this because De Gaulle had somewhat despised the Kieffer Commando because they were in the British army.
And in 84, François Mitterrand, who attached a great deal of importance to all this, wanted to give a certain dimension to these D-Day ceremonies. And the President of the French Republic could only be welcomed where French people had landed, i.e. at Colleville and Ouistreham. But there was nothing, nothing at all. And I was there. Re-elected in 84 after dissolution, so something had to be invented. And that's when we came across this turret that had been borrowed from the Maginot Line during the war to reinforce the Atlantic Wall. This turret is made of French steel. That's how this flame was born - which wasn't a flame, by the way - it became the flame by ‘drifting’. But in the beginning, it symbolised the prow of a ship: it symbolised the force that comes from the sea and dominates the fortress.
Every 5 years, we have received the President of the Republic: Chirac, Sarkozy, Mitterrand. All the Presidents of the Republic have come. Macron…
But we have to keep this memory alive because the Normandy landings were a tremendous turning point in the war.
The memory of these victims must be preserved. They paid a high price to regain their freedom. And we must do everything we can to preserve that freedom. It's very important to keep this memory alive.