Posted by Normandy Allies on Dec 6, 2013 in Tributes and Remembrances
Virginia d’Albert-Lake was born on June 4, 1910, in Dayton, Ohio, the daughter of Franklin and Edith Rousch. Her father was a physician while her mother headed a country day school. The family later moved to St. Petersburg, FL where Virginia worked as a teacher in her mother’s school. She attended an education conference in the UK during the 1930s where she made a side trip to see France. It was there she met and then married her husband, Philippe...
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Posted by Normandy Allies on Nov 4, 2013 in Tributes and Remembrances
KIA 6/12/44 Buried at Normandy American Military Cemetery Colleville-sur-Mer, Plot 14 Row 11 Grave 17 John Garvik was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on November 25, 1915. He grew up as most kids of the day, playing outside with his friends and competing in whatever sport was currently in season. John loved the out of doors and spent many a summer at YMCA camp in northern Minnesota. He was adept in dealing with what the weather could deal out and spent many a night “under...
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Posted by Normandy Allies on Nov 4, 2013 in Tributes and Remembrances
Violette Szabo: A Woman of the French Resistance by Donna Coulson If you’ve been with the Normandy Allies in the breakfast nook of the Hotel Churchill in Bayeux, you likely noticed the portrait of a young woman on their wall. I asked the hotel owner, Madame Rima Hebert, who the woman was–fascinated to hear this was Violette Szabo, a heroine of the French Resistance. Violette was a French female spy who was executed in a German prison camp. Walter Ford Carter shared...
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Posted by Normandy Allies on Nov 3, 2013 in Tributes and Remembrances
Capt. Charles M. Peal of Nashville died in a crash in Crouy, France, 67 years ago, and the village still commemorates him as a hero. August 14th is not Memorial Day. It’s not Veterans Day or the Fourth of July. It is, however, the day that a Tennessee soldier is being remembered for making the ultimate sacrifice for his country and for mankind. In fact, every year since his death, Nashville native son Capt. Charles M. Peal has been commemorated in Crouy, a little-known...
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Posted by Normandy Allies on Nov 3, 2013 in Tributes and Remembrances
by Ed Kochian, International Experience 2010 For the American men that participated in Operation Overlord on the 6th of June 1944 D-Day, their lives would be forever changed. I find from my twelve day immersion in Normandy this past summer (12-24 July 2010) like Hemingway’s Moveable Feast, it has stayed with me wherever I go! I have since found many new perspectives and details about the events in Normandy that have enriched me and make me yearn to revisit. During my trip...
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Posted by Normandy Allies on Nov 3, 2013 in Tributes and Remembrances
Jacques Chambon, Normandy Allies Leader, Honored As Knight in the Order of Merit Departmental delegate of the Society of Rescue at Sea (SNSM), Jacques Chambon (shown on left in photo) was elevated to the rank of Knight in the Order of Merit, a high national honor for those who have worked on behalf of others and of the French nation. Admiral François Celerier reminisced, “It is difficult to believe that a child of Beaujolais would go and make a career at sea. At the...
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