Few of the veterans of D-Day are still alive, but we remember them and honor them for their bravery.
Eighty years ago, the Allied Forces began the largest amphibious military invasion in human history. On June 6, 1944, more than 130 battleships, cruisers, and destroyers bombarded the French coast while 277 minesweepers cleared the water. Behind them, about 7,000 vessels, packed with nearly 200,000 soldiers from eight Allied nations, crossed the channel, ready to storm the beaches of Normandy. Overhead, over 1,200 aircraft delivered paratroopers behind enemy lines. It was feat the size and scope of had never been seen. It still remains singularly large and impressive today. More than 2 million Allied personnel took part in Operation Overlord, the code name for the Battle of Normandy that began with the D-Day invasion and continued on through August. During the Trident Conference in Washington in May 1943, the Allies appointed U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower to command the Expeditionary Force and put British General Bernard Montgomery in charge of the 21st Army Group, which comprised all the land forces. The allies chose the Normandy coast for the landings, assigning Americans the sectors codenamed Utah and Omaha, while the British were to land at Sword and Gold, and the Canadians were to land at Juno. The Allies needed to develop special technology to meet the conditions expected on the Normandy beachhead. They invented artificial ports, called Mulberry harbors, to provide deep water jetties and places where the invasion force could download reinforcements and supplies before major French ports were recaptured from the Germans and their damage repaired. Two Mulberry harbors were created: Mulberry "A" at Omaha Beach and Mulberry "B" at Gold Beach. The harbor at Omaha Beach was damaged by a violent storm before it was ever completed, and the Americans abandoned it, landing their men and material over the open beaches. However, the harbor at Gold Beach was a great success. Over 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles, and 4 million tons of supplies used Mulberry “B” during the 10 months it was in use. Another technology developed for the D-Day landings were the Hobart's Funnies,a group of specialized armoured fighting vehicles based on the British Churchill tank, and American M4 Sherman, but equipped with bulldozers, flamethrowers, demolition charges, reels of canvas that could be unrolled to form paths for other vehicles, assault bridges, ramps, and other modifications to help take the beach and destroy German fortifications. Hobart's Funnies were named for Major-General Sir Percy Cleghorn Stanley Hobart, a British Engineer. All the while that Allied forces were developing their plans and technologies, Resistance groups were active throughout German-occupied France. Their contributions to the invasion of Normandy included the gathering of intelligence on German defences and the carrying out of sabotage missions to disrupt the German war effort, including the destruction of rail lines and train engines and the cutting of telegraph and telephone lines. Because there were many different Resistance organizations that operated independently and often had different goals, coordinating them with the Allied forces was difficult. Many, however, listened to the secret messages from the Free French that were broadcast over the BBC. On the first of May, and again on June 1, such messages warned that the invasion would be soon and encouraged Allied secret agents and resistance fighters to carry out their acts of sabotage as soon as possible. Although the Allies failed to accomplish their objectives for the first day of the invasion, they were able to gain a tenuous foothold on the land that Germany had held since taking France. They captured the port at Cherbourg on June 26, and the city of Caen on July 21. By August 25, the Allies had liberated Paris. Five days later, the Germans retreated east across the Seine marking the close of Operation Overlord and the beginning of the end for the Nazi regime. Few of the veterans of D-Day are still alive, but we remember them and honor them for their bravery. Code: Elephants on the Moon is author Jennifer Bohnhoff's novel about Eponine Lambaol, a girl who senses that strange things are going on in her Nazi-held village in Normandy. As D-Day nears, she joins with others to resist the Germans and prepare for the Allied invasion. Written for middle school readers, adults have also found this an informative and entertaining read.
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June 6th marks the 72nd anniversary of D-Day, the day when America and its allies invaded the beaches of Normandy, France, and began to push Hitler’s forces out of Western Europe. Four men earned the Medal of Honor during the D-Day invasion. Many people feel that one of them, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., shouldn’t have been there in the first place. The eldest son of President Theodore Roosevelt and First Lady Edith Roosevelt, Theodore Jr. was 57 years old and disabled at the time of D-Day. He walked with a cane because he had been shot in the kneecap during World War I, and his heart and lungs had been weakened from a poison gas attack. A Brigadier General, Roosevelt’s two requests to accompany the leading assault elements, were denied. His third request, a written one, was approved, allowing him to be the only general who landed in the first wave of troops. Roosevelt asserted that his presence within the 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division would encourage the troops, who would be emboldened and comforted by seeing an older man who walked with the assistance of a cane among them. He said: “They’ll figure that if a general is going in, it can’t be that rough.” When he discovered that the landing craft had drifted and his troops were a mile from the planned site of the invasion on Utah Beach, Roosevelt Jr. is said to have said, "We'll start the war from right here." General Omar Bradley described Roosevelt’s actions as the “single greatest act of courage” he witnessed in the entire war. His citation, for gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty, states “He repeatedly led groups from the beach, over the seawall and established them inland. His valor, courage, and presence in the very front of the attack and his complete unconcern at being under heavy fire inspired the troops to heights of enthusiasm and self-sacrifice. Although the enemy had the beach under constant direct fire, Brig. Gen. Roosevelt moved from one locality to another, rallying men around him, directed and personally led them against the enemy. Under his seasoned, precise, calm, and unfaltering leadership, assault troops reduced beach strong points and rapidly moved inland with minimum casualties. He thus contributed substantially to the successful establishment of the beachhead in France.” Roosevelt Jr. died of a heart attack on July 12, 1944, shortly after the D-Day invasion. He was buried in Sainte-Laurent-sur-Mer, near Normandy. In the 1962 movie The Longest Day he is portrayed by the actor Henry Fonda. To read more about General Roosevelt and the other three medal of honor recipients, click here. Jennifer Bohnhoff has written several historical novels suitable for ages 11 and up. For more about Code: Elephants on the Moon, her novel about a French girl’s involvement in D-Day, click here. L.M. Elliott's Under a War-Torn Sky is one of my favorite novels. It is a fast-paced read that really excites middle school boys who are otherwise reluctant readers. I used it several times when I was a reading intervention teacher, both as a class read and as an individual recommendation, and I've never had a boy not enjoy it. The story is about Henry Forester, a young man flying a B-24 in World War II. When his plane is shot down and he is trapped behind enemy lines, kind French citizens, some who are members of the Resistance and some who are just sympathetic to a frightened young man, help him to escape and return home via Switzerland and a treacherous route over the Pyrennes. As one might expect, there are several plot elements in common between Under a War-Torn Sky and Code: Elephants on the Moon. My French girl, Eponine, has a very different life from the French girl who helps Elliott's Henry, but the both share some of the same opinions about the callow young aviators they help rescue. Some of the questions I was asked when it came time for me to commision the cover for Code: Elephants on the Moon was if there were any other books whose subject or theme were like mine. Could I suggest any covers that looked like what I wanted my own cover to look like? I immediately thought of Under a War-Torn Sky. I googled it to find cover images and was surprised to find not just the one I was familiar with, but three covers. I I sent all three of these images to the artist who created my cover. As you can tell, mine came out very different than any of these. This isn't surprising, since the focus of the two books is different. My aviator plays just a small part in my plot, while he is the main character in Elliott's. I'm curious: which of these covers attracts your attention? Based on the very sketchy synopsis I've given you, which one best expresses the story? Would you buy any of these three books? Knowing how you think might influence me when it's time to commission my next cover! "Write something about a girl and her horse," an editor had said at a SCBWI conference I had attended that spring. Living out in New Mexico, I don't have too many chances to interact with editors at major New York publishing companies, so when told me to do something I took note. And the fact that SCBWI, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, had brought this editor out impressed me even more deeply. So here I was, walking with my husband through the little French Norman town of Amblie. It was evening and we had eaten the dinner of sausage and cheese and fruit and wine and very good bread that I'd carried back from Bayeaux in the handlebar basket of my bicycle. The shadows were growing long in this sleepy little town. Every once in awhile a villager would throw open their window and greet us. "Bonjour, les Americaines!," they'd call. Obviously we were the only visitors in town. As we walked I thought about the story possibilities that this town offered. I thought about Amblie's close proximity to the D-Day beaches, the little Norman church, which had parts dating from the 9th Century and sat on a hill overlooking the 12th Century mill house we'd rented. There were so many possible time periods in which to set a story. And time period aside, what should the story be about? My French poet friend on the train (See the blog post entitled "Where Ideas Come From" in the April 2014 archives) had suggested the idea of the animosity between Normans and Bretons, but what could I do with that idea? We came around a corner and saw this horse, and the editor's suggestion came back to me. Here was a horse whose story, perhaps, needed to be told. He was certainly not what I'd call a handsome horse. He had a very thick neck and a large head, which made him look front-heavy. He had a barrel body set on short legs. I snapped his picture anyway, and told myself I'd think about who he was and how I might work him into the story. When I got back home I began researching my stocky little horse and came to the conclusion that he was a Breton. The Breton is a horse bred for heavy draft and farm work. The breed was developed, as one might expect from the name, in Brittany, but the origins of its native ancestral stock, which dates back thousands of years, is disputed. Some sources say that the Bretons comes from horses that were brought by Aryans as they migrated into Europe from Asia four thousand years ago. Other sources says that the breed was developed by Celtic warriors who were preparing for their conquest of the British Isles. The ideal Breton stands 15 to 16 hands high, considerably larger than the horse I saw. Many of the pictures of Bretons on the internet show horses that are even greater in girth and shorter of leg than my horse. But he had won me over, ugliness and all. And as I began to write, he became Gallopin, the horse beloved by my protagonist. Add yourself on to the mailing list on the homepage of this website if you want to be notified when Code: Elephants on the Moon becomes available.
We didn't exactly storm the beaches when my family traveled through Normandy on bicycles. We tottered along back roads and through the narrow streets of villages. We were no army; just five Americans doing our best to absorb the sights, sounds and scents of a beautiful land. Not everyone who's been on a bicycle had such idyllic purposes. Bicycles were used more extensively during World War Two than I had ever guessed. In 1939 every Infantry Division within the Polish Army had a company of bicycle-riding scouts. that included 196 bicycles. The Jaeger Battalions of the Finnish Army used bicycles to deploy rapidly against the 1941 advances of the Soviet Union, switching to skis when the snow became deep. The Finns were still using bicycles in 1944, when the Germans had destroyed so many Finnish roads that tanks and other heavy equipment had to be abandoned. Bicycles were used in France by the occupying German forces. They used bicycle patrols to cover areas quicker than patrols on foot and to send messages. They were used more often as gas became more difficult to attain. The Allies used bicycles in France during World War II also. Canada's Highland Light Infantry used bicycles to cover the French countryside quickly. You can see pictures of their bikes stacked within the landing craft that took them to the beach on my pinterest board: http://www.pinterest.com/jbohnhoff/ Even some of the American forces in France had bicycles. US forces dropped folding bikes, called "bomber bikes" out of planes behind enemy lines for use by our paratroopers and for messengers and French Resistance fighters who were supporting us. I haven't included a single bike in Code: Elephants on the Moon. Perhaps I should in a future revision of the manuscript. Maybe by the time this book comes out in print (as opposed to an ebook) Sergeant Johannes Hegel will be leading his patrols through the narrow streets of Amblie and Reviers on bicycle. The Bohnhoff boys laughingly refer to family vacations as death marches. We routinely try to pack too many adventures into too little time. Frequently we don't plan adequately for little things like eating and sleeping. I researched the story known as Code: Elephants on the Moon while on one such vacation with my family in the summer of 2005. Our plan was to take an overnight flight to Paris, spend one night sleeping and getting over jet lag, then take a train to Caen, and a bus to Ouistreham where we would pick up the bikes I had reserved over the internet, then ride 12 miles to Amblie, a little Norman village where we had rented a house for the week. While exhausting, this plan seemed doable. We packed lightly in suitcases that converted to backpacks and headed out with high hopes. But things seldom go as planned. We ended up spending our first night in Paris in Dallas after our flight was delayed 24 hours. Determined to keep on schedule, we got off the plane midmorning and immediately made our way to the St. Lazaire train station, just in time to buy tickets and scramble aboard a train. We had no idea that some seats were reserved and some were not, so of course we sat in seats reserved by others, who happened to be French and not at all entertained by our lack of understanding. Soon we were on our way. Without, of course, any provisions for lunch. But that was okay. After all, we had gotten a small breakfast on the plane and the train trip was only two hours. We would be in Caen in time for lunch. And we were. But, careful travelers that we are, we decided to first make our way to the bus station and check the schedule before eating. Of course, we arrived just in time to buy tickets and leap onto an out bound bus. No problem. Caen is only 17 km from Ouistreham. Google maps says it takes 16 minutes. 21 in traffic. But Google maps didn't account the frequent stops that a bus makes. I don't remember how long the ride actually took us, but by the time we arrived in Ouistreham we were hungry and tired and jet lag had caught up with us. Big time. We must have looked terrible by the time we dragged our sleep deprived bodies into the bike shop; terrible enough that the workers adjusted the heights of the seats, then told us that they would drive us to Amblie in their little car and deliver the bikes the next day My husband was too proud to accept this offer, but I wasn't. While he and my two older sons rode through the picturesque countryside my youngest son and I careened through the French countryside in the back of a tiny car being driven by a woman who spoke French as rapidly as she drove. Before she left us she made sure that the proprietess of the property we rented knew that we needed a ride to the nearest market to get supplies. We were in good hands. John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson may have been among the first Americans in France, but they weren't the last. Americans have been fascinated with France since the very beginning.
During World War I thousands of young American men arrived in France as part of the AEF, the American Expeditionary Force. Although the boys who went "Over There" were called "Yanks" or "Sammies" (from 'Uncle Sam'), their most popular nickname was "Doughboys," a name that may have come from the adobe dust that covered marching foot soldiers involved in American military operations on the Mexican border in 1916. My grandfather was one of these doughboys. There were Americans in France even before America entered the war. Many adventurous and idealistic young men, among them Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Julian Green, William Seabrook, E. E. Cummings, and Dashiell Hammett, served as ambulance drivers attached to the French forces before the United States entered the war. Many of these men, both adventurers and regular doughboys, became enamored with France. “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast,” Hemingway wrote decades after having discovered the adventure of the city in 1918 at the age of 19. Some, like a character in Code: Elephants on the Moon, stayed to recuperate from wounds (there are some great photos of them, like the one below, at http://www.firstworldwar.com/photos/medical.htm). After the war, some of the AEF found that going home and settling down wasn't easy. A popular song of the period asked "how ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree?" It was a valid question. Many disliked postwar American culture, seeing its social mores as moralistic, standardized, and vulgarized. Others felt that America had become a civilization of businessmen devoted to the worship of materialism. To them France represented ancient wisdom, history and refinement. Because it offered a cultural environment free of the racial obsessions of American society, France also appealed to African-Americans. Writer Richard Wright, entertainer Josephine Baker, and jazz musicians Arthur Briggs, Benny Carter, and Dexter Gordon were a few of the prominent African-Americans who found a home in France after World War I. Eventually, though, Americans began to leave Paris. Some, like Hemingway, were addicted to the excitement of war and found even postwar France too tame. They left for other conflicts, most notably the Spanish Civil War, where Americans volunteered as soldiers, technicians, medical personnel and aviators in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Approximately 2,800 American volunteers fought for the Spanish Republicans against Franco and the Spanish Nationalist. Between 750 and 800 died. Other Americans in France got homesick, changed their minds about France and returned to the States. France itself was changing. In the 1930s France was rocked by the same extreme social tensions and class warfare that brought Hitler to power in January 1933. A year later, in February 1934, several thousand fascists and Royalists mobilized and brought down the French government. They accused Jews, communists, and foreigners, including Americans, of being mentally deficient and culturally detrimental to France. As the war drew nearer, Americans fled France. After the German invasion, a considerable number of the French people backed the Vichy regime and collaborated with the Nazis. There are no official numbers available for how many Americans live in France today, but estimates near 100,000. Nearly three million Americans vacation or visit France every year. My family and I were five of the Americans who visited in 2005, and that visit led to Code: Elephants on the Moon. How do I get a story idea? For me, it's a slow, rumbling process punctuated by flashes of ideas. The early part of the story process is like a gathering storm, and I feel it in my bones more than know it with my conscious mind. There's a restlessness, an unsettling feeling that something is building within me. Slowly. Unseen. And then ideas start to come. Some ideas are fleeting, mere sparks that leave little behind. Many just fizzle away. Others seem brilliant: flashes on inspiration so strong that they burn themselves on my brain. A very few of those ideas are true strikes. They light up my mind, make everything seem clear and sharp. They leave behind the clear scent of ozone, as rarified and pure as the thin air at altitude. The story known as either Elephants on the Moon or Identity began on a train in 2005. My family was on vacation and were traveling. We took a plane to Paris, transferred to a train to Caen, then a bus to Ouistreham. There we rented bikes to ride the 20 km to Amblie, a little Norman village where we had rented a house for the week.
We ended up sharing a seat with a man named Philippe. At least, that's what I remember his name to be. Being a writer, I have to admit that I fill in forgotten details with memories of things that have never been. At the very least, I polish and refine those memories so that they make more sense to me. Never sacrifice a good story line for truth. Philippe was a poet and a playwright. He had flowing brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and lively, hazel eyes. He wore a linen poets shirt, the cuffs of the sleeves turned back over hands that had long, slender fingers that had seen their share of hard work. My husband, on the other hand, remembers a man in a grimy t shirt that was stretched out at the neck, whose hair hadn't been combed in days if not weeks and whose fingernails needed a good long encounter with a nailbrush and soap. He agrees with me that the man, whatever his name, said that he was a playwright. We talked for a while on books. Philippe was not very impressed with what I had read of French literature. Hugo and Flaubert were romantic hacks. Dumas was quaint and populist. Camus was almost worth talking about. But the writers that he considered worthwhile were people whose names I had never heard. Never mind the fact that I'd read everything in translation. His English was close to impeccable. My French was almost up to what a two year old might produce. It was soon obvious that I couldn't hold up my end of this conversation. Our talk turned to what we were doing. We told him our plans: living in the country. Biking to the Normandy beaches, to museums, to Caen and Bayeux. Eating locally. Speaking our terribly inadequate French and relying on the goodness of the French people to put up with us and forgive us our ellipses. He told us that he was leaving the Parisian theater scene, which went a little slack in the summer anyway, to spend a holiday with his parents in Normanday. And then the really interesting part of the conversation happened. At least, for me the talk became interesting because it caused my thoughts to begin gathering. Philippe talked about growing up in a provincial Norman town and why he had been compelled to move to the big city. Normandy was such a backwater, he said, the people so provincial. They cared little for literature or art. They were concerned with local politics, which amounted to little more than petty family feuds that had raged for decades. They thought of little except their cattle and crops, their small shops and businesses, their reputations. And yet, despite all their trivial spats, the Normans were of one mind on one subject; they were better than their neighbors, the Bretons. At this point, Philippe forgot his urbane, Parisian leanings and began to rant about the people from Brittany: how "unfrench" they were despite years of living on French soil. How uncouth. Uncultured. Foreign. And as he stormed on, the thunderheads of a story began building in my mind. What would it be like to live among these people, who had lived together so long? What would it be like to be a Breton among the Normans? Ideas began to rumble about like distant thunder. |
ABout Jennifer BohnhoffI am a former middle school teacher who loves travel and history, so it should come as no surprise that many of my books are middle grade historical novels set in beautiful or interesting places. But not all of them. I hope there's one title here that will speak to you personally and deeply. Categories
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