An exhibition on the Landing opens near the beach

An exhibition dedicated to the Vierville sector and Omaha Beach was announced from April 5 to July 1, for five francs, in a communal premises near the Hôtel du Casino. Located in the heart of the fighting of June 1944, this place was however too small to accommodate all the collections of Messrs. Leveel and Tréfeu, forced to select the pieces.

A railway employee based in Saint-Lô, Mr. Leveel had lived in Lison during the Landing and remembered the first bombings. He had only begun to gather memories much later. After twenty-five years in the countryside, always busy, his installation in the city had given him the desire for this activity. About ten years of research had transformed this interest into passion: the objects were found, restored, cataloged and classified.

The two friends complemented each other: Leveel studied the German occupation in the region and Tréfeu the American documents. The visit passed mannequins, uniforms, weapons, ammunition, photos, maps and posters in French and German attributed to Hitler, with the arrival of the American divisions.

The objects of the soldiers' lives ranged from the soap to the German-American or Franco-American dictionary, from the razor to the medicine kit, from the bowl to the ball and the baseball glove. More than twenty mannequins, sketches and paintings evoked the Landing. The legend showed Tréfeu with a grapple found at the tip of the Hoc.

Ordinary objects were sometimes the rarest: the German mountain cap, although common during the war, was presented as having become difficult to find. Bread tickets, priority and food cards and passes were also reminiscent of civilian life. The Resistance had its place, despite the limits of the premises.

Nearly thirty-six years after the Landing, the report highlighted the role of such exhibitions, based on the documents, to maintain a history still vivid in the memories.

Archive image: https://vierville.cordelle.eu/PhDoc10/1980Avril2-Musee.jpg