St Georges

The Mayor of St Georges de la Riviére (Henri Leveel) has a passion for the history of his little village. To commemorate the liberation of his community on June 19th 1944, he organised a history tour for all who wished to learn about the events sixty years ago.
We started a the local church where a plaque to three people deported by the Germans for hiding guns was unveiled. They did not return to Normandy.
We then followed the Port Bail town band to the wall by the railway, built to enable the Germans discharge sand from a narrow gauge railway into mail line wagons.
Then onto the war memorial and another plaque to two people killed in Allied bombardment the night before the liberation.
The final part of the tour of the village was to the shrine of "Our Lady", during the occupation the villagers came here each Sunday after mass to pray for deliverance. As the priest observed after the liberation, "we only lost two villagers in four years, it must have worked" A plaque commemorating a visit to a local manor by Eisenhower and Patton was also unveiled.
We then visited the village hall where we drank a toast to our liberators.