THE VILLA "LES MOULINS"
7271 - From the beach of the Golden Sands to the epic of the landing at Omaha Beach
On March 23, 1883, Félix Bourdoux, a resident of Paris, bought two old wheat mills in Saint-Laurent sur Mer, at the bottom of the village, 300 meters from the beach to make it a resort for his family on the Normandy coast. The wheel of the "mill above" fed by the water of the bief, worked until the war. He set up, in the years that followed, "the mill below" by leaning against the old part (probably from the 16th century) a villa of the type of those then being built on the coast, made of stone with pink brick equipment, flanked by two turrets, one of which was destroyed during the war.
This property remains one of the few witnesses of the villas of the interwar period, where the beach of Les Sables d'Or had become fashionable.
Generations follow one another, with the same passion for garden roses whose hill was covered until the war, plantations and fishing on the nearby beach. It was the time when everyone knew each other between the top of the village and the bottom by the sea.
During the war, Henri Bourdoux, son of Félix, and his wife Octavie, born in Nevada, left Paris and settled in St Laurent with their daughter Odette Benoist, whose officer husband was a prisoner in Germany, and their grandson Michel, to take refuge in a region that the family thought safer.
The house was occupied by the Germans and the family, like all the others, reduced to occupy only a part of it.
In the spring of 1944, Rommel gave the order to blow up the houses by the sea to clear the shooting ranges. Odette and her parents left the area not to see their house blow up. But, miraculously, the order stopped at the property, which leaning against the hill and set back from the sea, did not hinder visibility. So she stood up.
When the Americans landed, their shots hit only one of the two turrets and the house was saved.
The day after the landing, the property was occupied for 5 months by a medical detachment, composed of 17 men, from the 149ème combat battalion of genius, one of the components of the 6ème Special Engineer Brigade, within the American first division.
The family knew this episode without ever having met one of them. Also what was his surprise to see Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Eigenberg knocking on the garden door on a Sunday in June 1999, 55 years later. He had never returned since the time he served as sergeant-in-chief in this unit, at the age of 19. He relived in its smallest details, with emotion, life in this house then transformed into a hospital. He shared his memories with Michel, who was 11 years old at the time. Everything had changed but he remembered the floor of the living room that had become a dormitory for the sick whose tiles were the same and that they cleaned every night, the location of the old kitchen transformed into an operating room, the top mill that became a radio station and intelligence service.
He went around the garden, evoking the hours of demining. They had orders to be wary of everything and should not open a tap untimely at the risk of it being trapped. Such were the orders in all the houses.
But what was Michel's surprise when Alfred asked to visit the cellar, which was then filled with mud, because adjacent to the stream that then flows under the house. In this cellar, now accessible following the installation of a pump, there was a bottle locker that protruded from the mud. The Americans thought that with the French, there could be some good bottles. Sheads and shovels made it possible to quickly empty the mud. No bottles, but the discovery of another locker, at the bottom of the cellar, with boxes that intrigued them. After a more thorough inspection, they saw that they contained 50 kg of dynamite with a scheduled firing planned to trigger after eight days. Of course, they immediately defused it.
It took 55 years to discover the real reason why this villa, close to the sea, had not been destroyed. The dynamite had been installed in this house, as in the others, by order of Rommel, but it had not been used, as told above. The Germans, by fleeing the property they occupied on the day of the landing, probably invented this scheme, fortunately foiled, to blow up the house when it was occupied by the Americans.
This American battalion was awarded the French War Cross and the American "Distinted Unit Citation" for its heroic behavior in June 1944.
The medical assistance station also benefited, at the time, the local population. Two elders of the village still remember being treated by the American dentist of the unit after the landing.
This house, so strongly linked by its history to America, has long regained its peaceful and family role, but it will always remain open and welcoming to our veteran friends, their families and their memories.
Spring 200, testimony of Marie-France Benoist, widow of Michel Benoist.
In agreement with Alfred Eigenberg who endorsed the English version of this text. Saint-Laurent sur Mer, Omaha-Beach