First Normandy town to be liberated awaits Bush

Associated Press

SAINTE-MERE-EGLISE, France — Howard Manoian knows a thing or two about French hospitality toward Americans: He was one of the U.S. paratroopers hailed as liberators for wresting this small Normandy town from its Nazi occupiers early on D-Day — June 6, 1944.

So when the decorated veteran heard President Bush would be coming to town on Memorial Day, it came as little surprise: Normandy has long been a hub of pro-American feeling in France.

But decades after D-Day, that feeling has begun to fade, said Manoian, who 18 years ago retired near the town he helped liberate. The United States has grown too pushy abroad, he said.

"There was a time when Americans could do no wrong here," Manoian said at a cafe in Sainte-Mere-Eglise, the first French town freed during the Normandy invasion. "I don’t know when it changed, but it has."

Unlike his father, Bush is not a combat veteran. But he will be the first sitting U.S. president to visit Sainte-Mere-Eglise when he comes here on a swing through Normandy to honor the U.S. soldiers who fought and died here. So his reception is likely to be friendly.

The welcome in Paris, where Bush arrives today, may not be so warm.

U.S. policies on the environment, trade, Iraq and the Middle East have angered many French people, and several organizations are planning protests, including pro-Palestinian groups, pacifists, Greens and Communists.

Manoian, 77, said he understands their sentiments.

"We Americans stick our noses in everybody’s affairs. We push ‘em around," said Manoian, wearing an 82nd Airborne Division baseball cap and New England Patriots sweat shirt.

Still, Normandy is about as pro-American as France gets, and Sainte-Mere-Eglise is more pro-American than most Normandy towns — it’s just a few miles from Utah beach, one of five beaches where American, British and Canadian troops landed by the tens of thousands on D-Day.

The town is teeming with references to the U.S. paratroopers who freed it. A stained-glass window at Our Lady of Peace church features paratroopers gliding earthward at the foot of a Madonna and child. The streets bear names such as Rue Murphy or Rue de la 505th Airborne. Each year, there are commemorative parachute drops and parades.

Most visibly, a life-size mannequin hangs from a parachute twisted around two of the church’s gargoyles, commemorating how the parachute Pvt. John Steele got entangled on the church as he landed on D-Day. According to Cornelius Ryan’s book "The Longest Day," Steele survived by fooling the Nazis into thinking that he was already dead.

A corporal on D-Day, Manoian parachuted into a cemetery behind the church. On the town’s walking tour, plaque No. 4 — with his picture — shows exactly the area where he landed.

A widowed former police officer from Lowell, Mass., and a father of five, he says a feeling of gratitude runs so deep here that the locals receive every World War II veteran with open arms.

"If you are a veteran here, you will never go hungry, never go thirsty, and you’ll never sleep in the rain here," he said.

Bush is expected to visit the impeccably groomed Normandy American Cemetery in nearby Colleville-Sur-Mer, which contains the graves of 9,386 American military dead and inscriptions of the names of 1,557 missing U.S. soldiers whose remains were not located or identified.

"It will be ironic to see Bush visit the war graves at the same time he seems to be preparing for a war against Iraq, and more death," said Solange Bazire, 77, at a cafe in nearby Caen. "It doesn’t please many people that he’s getting ready for war."