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devastat- ing bombardments from both air and sea. The purpose of these assaults was obviously to kill Germans and to impede the movement of any reinforcements from the Pas-de- Calais, where large concentrations of Germans had been placed in anticipation of Allied landings there. Yet air power was at best a crude tool: Allied air- craft did not possess the accuracy required to destroy a bridge, a railyard, a crossroads, a telegraph station, or an artillery position without also destroying a great deal of the surrounding area. The results were predict- ably awful: dozens upon dozens of hamlets were heav- ily bombed, and their lovely lyrical French names are now as synonymous with death in the minds of Nor- mans as places like Coventry, Dresden, and Hiroshima are dolorous place-names for the British, Germans, and Japanese: Argentan, Aunay-sur- Odon, Avranches, Colombelles, Condé-sur-Noireau, Coutances, Dives- sur-Mer, Évrecy, Falaise, Lisieux, Mézidon, Mondeville, Montebourg, Ouistreham, Saint-Lô, Thury-Harcourt, Tilly-sur- Seulles, Valognes, Villers-Bocage, Villers-le- Sec, Vire…

    More than any single location in Normandy, however, the city of Caen offers testimony to the brutality of Normandy’s liberation. 19 Caen was the chief target of the British and Canadian landings on D-Day, but for a
    number of reasons that still stir controversy, General Bernard Montgomery’s men failed to take the city. 20 Partly it was because the German 21st Panzer Division put up a stubborn defense just north of Caen, partly it was because the British tanks got bottled up on the beaches, partly it was because the plan was simply too ambitious an objective for units that had crossed the channel and undertaken an unprecedented amphibi- ous landing the same day. Yet it was not for lack of try- ing. From June 6 to June 8, Anglo- Canadian forces tried to bash their way into Caen, and the skies filled with bombers to help them. At 1:30 P.M. and 4:30 P.M. on June 6, and 2:30 A.M. on June 7, Caen was pummeled from the air by RAF and U.S. Eighth Air Force bombers in an effort to destroy the city’s bridges across the Orne and slow German reinforcements from moving through the city. Yet for all the bombing, at least one bridge over the Orne was still intact, while concentrations of Ger- man troops were not hit. The 21st Panzers were already established north of the city and were soon joined by the 12th Panzer Division. On June 9, the Panzer Lehr Division arrived in the field and now there was a strong defensive shield to the north and west of Caen. There had been little military value in the air attack on Caen. The rubble in the streets impeded passage of military vehicles, yet even the jaunty official history by the U.S. Air Force admitted the bombing was insignificant: “the
    effect upon the enemy was small,” it concluded, “since detours were easily established.” 21 Caen did not see any liberating soldiers for another month.

    The effect of the bombing upon the enemy may have been small, but the effect upon the 60,000 inhabit- ants of Caen was great indeed. In a matter of thirty-six hours, the city was shattered. The attacks on June 6 killed 600 people. The attacks on June 7 left 200 more dead. Thousands were wounded. The city lay in ruins, ablaze. Thirty-nine-year-old Bernard Goupil, a mem- ber of one of the défense passive (civil defense) teams in the city, recalled just after the war in a detailed ac- count that he and his family, who had built an air raid shelter in his garden, heard the initial bombing on the coast in the early hours of June 6. He reported to his command post, with his helmet and white armband at the ready, only to spend most of the morning in anxious anticipation of liberating soldiers. When none came, he returned home for lunch. At 1:30, he heard “a pow- erful throbbing”; running into the garden and looking up he cried, “the bombers are coming at us!” Before he could get his family into the shelter, “the