Return to Normandy Part 5

The first assignment the 552nd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion received when they reached the shores of Utah Beach was to move to the La Londe airfield, the first airfield established by the Allies during the invasion, and provide artillery cover against German bombers and strafers. We want to see this airfield and Ste. Mere Eglise, the village made famous by the movie The Longest Day and the town in Normandy Daddy most often mentioned.

I ask the same museum employee who gave me the certificate for Daddy if he knows where the La Londe airfield is. He says he knows it well. I am happily surprised and relieved to get his hand-drawn map with directions to the airfield, which he says is close by. We say our goodbyes to the museum staff and load our memorabilia into the car. The narrow road carries us past small black and white street signs with the names of members of the 1st Engineers who were killed making the way for those who would follow.

The directions take us right to the La Londe "airfield"---a pasture. It was a pasture in 1944, and it is a pasture in 2001, but it is a special pasture, and it has been memorialized by the 552nd Association. We take a picture of Haley and I beside the monument holding Daddy's photo. The monument reads:

LA LONDE
First U. S. Army Air Corps Airfield in France
12 June to 25 July 1944
Protected by the 552nd AAA AW BN (MBL)
Colonel Benjamin M. Warfield, Commanding
By Courtesy of Association Members
June 1970

In Ste. Mere Eglise we see the world-famous church steeple and a dummy dressed in paratrooper garb dangling from it, bringing back memories of the scene in The Longest Day in which the actor Red Buttons portrays John Steele, the paratrooper who actually lived this frightening experience.

We have dinner in a creperie across from the church square and read the inscriptions made on the wall by D-Day veterans. The owner gives me permission to add Daddy's information to the wall. I write: Roy Moore, 552nd AAA BN, D-Day+8, Utah Beach, his hometown, and today's date, April 11, 2001, and note that the inscription is made by his daughter, with my name. We partake of something else for which Normandy is renowned, apple crepes and sparkling apple cider.