Release of Ernée

On the evening of August 4, 1944, Ernée was encircled.

The men from the Resistance moved bravely between the two fronts, supplying information to the American army coming from Normandy on the Mountaudin Road.

Three kilometers from the town, the enemies had positioned cannons and were flanked by caches of ammunition. Farmers were working in the fields.

About 6:30 in the evening one armored car with white stars appeared, making its way slowly towards Ernée. Two explosions rang out, frightening the workers who had recognized their liberators three of the four occupants of the vehicle were shot immediately Lieutenant Blaha and soldiers Michel and Paroskie.

After the skirmish, night fell. The following day, at dawn, some young people from the neighborhoods went to the place of the battle and found the armored car still smoking and the burnt bodies of the poor soldiers.

They also found a wounded soldier at the entrance of “le chemin du Petit Val,” just opposite the monument, which was bordered by hedges at that time.

The American, exhausted and shaking with cold, his face badly burnt, had courageously trued to bandage his right leg which was also badly burned. The young people from Larchamp and Ernée surrounded the surviving hero and carried him in a wheelbarrow to the farm “La Bigottiere” one hundred meters away where he was looked after before he was taken to the hospital at Ernée.

The Germans departed during the night, leaving the town opened to the progressing Patton’s army. John Smith, the courageous soldier, was taken to the hospital at Laval the same day, across the German lines, in an ambulance belonging to a person from Ernée, accompanied by another man and a young woman from the same town.

The courage and composure of this ambulance man and his companions allowed John Smith to return to his family in the United States in 1945 where he died in 1954, probably from the effects of his wounds. This monument, erected on 4th July 1948 (Independence Day) at the exact place where the American armored car was attacked, pays tribute to the Resistance fighters of our town and to the American soldiers who paid with their life for the liberation of Larchamp and Ernée.

Mayenne-ww2.forumactif.org

 

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